Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. It is actually a pleasure to be able to stand up and support a piece of legislation. It's been a reasonably confronting and hostile day as we've dealt with other issues—Hon Scott Simpson: Contentious—other contentious matters.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —contentious issues—whereas here on this matter the House—I'm not sure about the Greens but the House is more or less aligned in their thinking around counter-terrorism acts because I mean there is no more fundamental duty for any Government than to defend and protect its citizens as best as it can. You know we do have a lot of argument and disagreement around justice policy more broadly—not so much on the outcome of course which is to keep New Zealanders safe but lots of disputes about how best to go about that. If I could characterise things this Government does tend to be more focused on the rehabilitative needs of the perpetrators of crime; we tend to focus a little bit more—we acknowledge that's very important but we also need to acknowledge the needs of the victims of crime for justice to denounce the act that has been carried out and thirdly to show that serious crimes have serious consequences. That is highly sort of debated particularly in the context of youth crime and ram raids at the moment.But when it comes to counter-terrorism I think there is much more of a meeting of minds in that nobody defends the acts involved of course but we are determined to do everything we can to keep our citizens our New Zealanders safe as best we can. Now we all acknowledge that the threat of terrorist acts is very difficult to predict and we all in New Zealand of course think very often of what happened in Christchurch. Nobody expected something of that scale and barbarism to occur in our country but it did. The threat is real and no Government can promise to avert every such incident but we can and we should make sure that we are best prepared that we have both the legislative settings correct to give ourselves the best chance to keep New Zealanders safe and also that we have the physical assets in place in terms of police and security agents in that sense.Now this piece of legislation the Counter-Terrorism Acts (Designations and Control Orders) Amendment Bill we are supporting and we want to hear at the select committee any concerns raised. The two elements of it as has been widely canvassed already: amendments to the Terrorism Suppression Act in order to deal with the situation where under the designation scheme somebody in prison—it only lasts for three years but if you're in prison at the moment it can't be extended and it needs to be for obvious reasons. That was just something that hadn't been thought through originally.The second area though is around amendments to the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Act. As my colleague Mark Mitchell mentioned the Minister of Justice who quite rightly was conscious of the desirability of bipartisan support for such legislation did engage with us and we're grateful to her for meaningful engagement because we did have some concerns with the original proposals that aligning certain clauses together could have led to an unintended impingement of sort of free speech fundamentally. The Minister did listen and did amend what was brought to the House in order to ensure our support and we're grateful to her for that. We don't think it diminishes the Act in any way shape or form but it doesn't muddy the waters as it were when it comes to the very important element of free speech in our society and not confusing opinions that we don't like—some people don't like—with terrorism itself.So what this amendment does—these control orders impose restrictions on people in the community who pose a real risk of carrying out terrorism-related activities. It may limit an individual's rights to freedom of movement and expression—can only be imposed however when the High Court is satisfied that the two-stage test has been carried out and in this case that the person has been convicted of a specified offence related to terrorism and that the person continues to pose a real risk.The point of this bill is to extend the control orders regime to expand the list of specified offences related to terrorism to include the range of objectionable publication offences—again it doesn't take too much imagination to think of some of the objectionable publications that occurred in relation to the horrific Christchurch act—enable control orders to be an option where a person has been sentenced to home detention that's been mentioned; and also to allow greater judicial discretion in the setting of those control orders; and making name suppression requirements more flexible and clarifying protocols for management of electronic monitoring of the conditions. So things that more or less make sense and will enable that regime to work effectively.Of course we hope—we hope—that there will be very few people indeed who are captured by these control orders and by this legislation. We hope that New Zealanders are safe from terrorism in the years ahead. But of course we have to hope for the best but prepare for the worst and that's why this legislation is important in putting in place a framework so that those people who have been convicted of terrorism-related offences can be monitored effectively in the community if required over time in order to keep our New Zealanders as safe as we can.So without further ado I just would like to again thank the Minister for the genuine engagement on this issue. I think it's an approach that they might like to consider in a couple of other areas particularly electoral law and that may be an opportunity for them to think about that. But on this area we stand with the Government and we support the passage of this bill at its first reading.