Shearer DavidDAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): The Labour Party will support this bill in the first reading and we look forward to receiving the comments and submissions when we go into the select committee. It is worth remembering that this bill was first put on the Order Paper—the protocols were first signed I think in 2007 by the Rt Hon Winston Peters. They were put before the select committee as treaties in 2009 and it is now what 7 years later that the bill finds its way into Parliament. I do not know what has happened in the meantime but the bill is welcome and we will certainly be supportive of it. As the Minister of Foreign Affairs said the aim of the bill is to amend the Maritime Crimes Act of 1999 to implement the obligations under the protocol of 2005 to the Rome Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Maritime Navigation and the Rome Protocol for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Fixed Platforms Located on the Continental Shelf. It is worth remembering that the Rome convention and the protocol resulted from the Achille Lauro affair back in 1985 when members of the Palestine Liberation Front hijacked the Achille Lauro a passenger ship. They shot a Jewish-American man who was in a wheelchair at pretty much point-blank range and tipped him over the side into the Mediterranean. The ship then went on to Italy where the Palestinian terrorists faced trial and were imprisoned. Since that time there has been a recognition that actually there was a bit of a gap in the law in that most of the time the taking of a ship was reliant upon the laws of sea that related to piracy. This was an act of terror; it did not have financial private gain involved. It was actually a political statement—so as a result of that the first Rome convention came into being. This is a further manifestation of that convention which dated back to 1988 if I recall. This 2005 protocol amends that Rome convention and the Rome protocol to ensure that the maritime security framework established under those parent treaties can respond to contemporary transnational terrorist threats. It is worth thinking that back in those days it was pre - al-Qaeda pre-9/11 pre - Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—a lot has gone on in the world of terrorism unfortunately since that time. So this bill enables New Zealand to ratify those 2005 protocols which amended the Rome convention and relate to maritime terrorism; the illicit trafficking by ship of weapons of mass destruction their delivery systems or any sort of related material around that; the transportation of fugitives by ship; the intentional causing of death or injury in connection with those offences; and maritime boarding. So effectively it broadens them in keeping with the changes that have happened in the world. Largely the prevention of terrorism in New Zealand is broadly bipartisan—I do not think there is a member in this House who would not support this bill—but it is also worth remembering that in preventing terrorism we rely heavily on a number of issues the first of which of course is the people in New Zealand themselves. Particularly I am referring here to our Muslim community which in many ways is our front line our bulwark against terrorism taking root here and ensuring that we have a good relationship with that community and ensuring that that community is well integrated into New Zealand is probably the best defence that we have against the sorts of events that we have seen in Paris and Belgium and so on. But so too do we rely on the professionalism of our diplomats and on ensuring that the diplomats that we have are of the highest quality can put together the type of legislation that we have in front of us here and make sure that we are fulfilling our obligations under the various treaties. I want to mention two of those diplomats—they are former diplomats now—Derek Leask and Nigel Fyfe. They are two of our more distinguished diplomats but unfortunately they were targeted in what can only really be called a witch-hunt in an inquiry that unfairly accused them of leaking documents which they did not do. The Ombudsman's report which came out very recently exonerated those two diplomats and it is now as the Ombudsman recommended that they are owed an apology and compensation. I know that for example it cost Derek Leask tens of thousands of dollars to take his grievance into court and get his name cleared. He needs to have recompense for that and an apology. I think it behoves the Minister of Foreign Affairs that he too offers those two very distinguished diplomats—Derek Leask served for 5 years as our High Commissioner in London—an apology. I want to mention something else that I think is very very important when it comes to combatting terrorism. It is of course what is laid out in this bill in terms of ensuring that New Zealand fulfils its requirements under international law. We also have stepped up when it comes to sending our armed forces overseas to combat terrorism in various parts of the world. We did it in Afghanistan. We currently have troops in Iraq at the moment training the Iraqi military forces. I am not going to go through the issue of whether they should be there or should not be there—that has divided the country in terms of who supports it and who is against it—but I want to speak on one thing and that is the way that we send our troops overseas. When I look at countries like Australia the United Kingdom and the United States their sending of troops overseas potentially into harm's way is recognised as being one of the most important decisions that a Government and ultimately a Prime Minister can make. For that reason they adopt a far more bipartisan approach to the way that they do that than we do here. Think back to when we sent our troops overseas. We decided to make that decision in the end of 2014—to send our troops into Iraq. They were as the Government said sent to fight terrorism in the form of the ISIS. For many months the Government denied that we were going to send forces overseas although everybody knew that there was training and planning going on for months amongst our armed forces. Finally—finally—the Government made the decision and an unholy debate erupted in Parliament where the Prime Minister accused Andrew Little and the Labour Party of not standing up for human rights and of being gutless. I want to point out that I went back and actually asked the Parliamentary Library When was the last time the Prime Minister unsolicited mentioned the words 'human rights'?" and that was back in 2007 with regard to Zimbabwe when he was Leader of the Opposition. So it is a bit rich for him to stand up and talk about human rights when it suits him. But more importantly the point is that it actually would have been better to engage across the House in an important decision like sending our troops overseas. Sharing the information being able to ensure that whatever happened and whatever decision was made—and it may have been that the Government would not have been able to convince the Opposition that it was a good decision to send those troops overseas but nevertheless we would have been able to engage in that process and whatever happened as we did anyway they would go with our goodwill and our best wishes. We do this in terms of the intelligence review that is ongoing now—and I am a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee which is looking at that and it is done on a bipartisan approach. What I would like to see is that we do exactly the same and take a much more bipartisan a much more considered and a much more open view when we send our forces overseas because right now I believe it is unedifying the way that we carry that out. Thank you."