Goff Phil: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9683. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): This motion has two elements to it; both are important. The first aspect of the motion is to truncate the process by which submissions can be made to the Intelligence and Security Committee. I want to come back and construct the argument around why this legislation of all legislation should be subject to a full and proper process of democratic consideration. The second aspect of the motion is to refer the legislation the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill to the Intelligence and Security Committee. I want to suggest to the House and seek a response from the Minister of Justice why that is not an appropriate committee to send this legislation. Those are the two aspects of the motion.Let me come back to the first one which is the truncating of the period of time for submissions because the Minister’s motion states that this legislation needs to be referred back to the House on 26 July. It will not go through the full process of scrutiny. It will not allow people the normal time they would have to put their submissions together. It will not allow them the time that they would need to present those submissions. I would argue that it would not allow the committee to properly analyse the submissions that are made to it.For as long as I have been in this House I have seen changes in the process of Parliament that have actually strengthened democracy. That process was predominantly about sending all legislation to a select committee and making sure that people had the proper time to be able to present to the select committee. That is how we involve the New Zealand public in the scrutiny of legislation and give them confidence that as members of a democracy they will have their voices heard and they will be listened to. There is a particular reason why we need to reinforce public confidence in that process on this particular piece of legislation. That reason is that this is a particularly intrusive piece of legislation giving very strong State powers to interfere in the lives of people to subject them to scrutiny and to intercept their correspondence. It is something that would not normally be allowed in a free liberal and democratic country. There may be an argument specifically for why the intelligence agencies need these powers but you therefore need to be very careful in terms of what powers you give them and what scrutiny the exercise of those powers are subject to.We know at the moment because of a variety of reasons that the Government Communications Security Bureau has lost a huge amount of public confidence. In a TV3 poll 40 percent of people have said that they do not have trust in the Government Communications Security Bureau. I think that is bad. That is bad because we need an organisation of this nature but because of its intrusive powers we need to have public confidence that it is exercising its powers properly that it is subject to proper scrutiny and that the process of giving it those powers and the process of determining the oversight is subject in turn to the scrutiny of the public. They get this opportunity at the statutory committee but the Government has made the decision in this motion to cut back the period of time that people have to have their voices heard. If ever there was a piece of legislation that you wanted to build public confidence in the process that you are operating so that the Government would get it right it is this legislation.We know that what the Government Communications Security Bureau does in its normal course of events is not subject to public scrutiny. We do not know how it operates what it does—or most people do not know. I know because I have worked with them but most people do not know. They have a worry that for the first time this organisation is being given the power explicitly to spy on New Zealanders. You would think that the process by which we debated giving it this power would be subject to the strongest possible public scrutiny of the legislation itself and that is not going to happen. We saw in the debate on the bill that the National Party got up and spoke for 1 minute or 2 minutes. It did not speak to any matter of substance and did not take the full call to properly debate in front of the public why this legislation was necessary. This motion itself is a motion that truncates the process of democracy and no member of the Government is getting to their feet to defend why they are doing that. That is wrong. That is why we are opposing this motion. This is a process that should be particularly thorough and that should give the public the maximum import. If anything they should have longer to do their submissions on this piece of legislation but under this motion they have less. We are against the time frame that the Government has set but equally we are against sending this bill to the Intelligence and Security Committee.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!Hon PHIL GOFF: I have sat on that committee.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Standing Order 286(3) is quite specific and in reference to the debate on the question: “for a motion under this Standing Order is restricted to the special powers or instruction set out in the motion. It may not extend to the principles … of the bill.” etc. The statutory committee motion has already been passed by the House. The motion that is under debate does not mention the specific statutory committee. The House has already dealt with that element.Hon PHIL GOFF: The statutory committee that it is going to is relevant to the point of how much time that committee will have to hear the submissions. This has been commented on earlier in this debate but it is a particularly important point and I want to reinforce it.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well I will hear the member but it must be pertinent to the truncation of the process.Hon PHIL GOFF: Yes it is pertinent. Firstly the statutory committee is a very small statutory committee. It has only six members. The second thing is that it is unique amongst committees because you cannot substitute for those members. I am wondering how you are going to have the time on that committee in a truncated time period to hear the submissions when that committee has for example the Prime Minister who is normally known to be a reasonably busy person so he may not be available for the timing that committee needs to meet. It has the Leader of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition will be going up and down the country both talking on the Budget which comes in the middle of the submission period and campaigning in the by-election in Ikaroa-Rāwhiti. So it is really difficult for the two key members of that committee to actually be able to be there so that the committee can hear from the submitters in the time frame that is given. If you look at the other members of the committee you see that one is John Banks. Given the court case today he might not be available at all but we do not know that yet. The other person is Peter Dunne. He is the leader of a political party and one suspects that he has a lot of things to do. The other is the Leader of the House and the Minister of something or other. He is going to be busy. It is pertinent to the question of timing. We have got a truncated period of time for the committee to consider submissions and we have got members of the committee who will make it even harder for those submissions to be heard within that time frame. It is a real problem it is a practical problem and I do not think that the combination of those things will give adequate opportunity for the democratic process to be followed properly in this case.I want to reiterate the point. The timing that people have to participate in the statutory committee process is absolutely essential given the nature of the legislation and given the confidence-building period that the submissions should be involved in helping to develop given the loss of confidence in the Government Communications Security Bureau. This is an important piece of legislation. The Government should be taking it seriously by taking calls in the debate. The failure of the Government in this debate to take calls will just reinforce the impression that members of the public have that this is designed to be a quick and dirty process. The Government has made up its mind. It does not actually want to hear the submissions on the legislation. It is limiting the time and it is making it really difficult actually even to put the committee together to hear those submissions.There was a really important opportunity in hearing the submissions on this legislation. It was to build an understanding about why certain powers should be given to the Government Communications Security Bureau and why strong powers should exist for oversight of that organisation. But if the public takes the message that the National Government is giving it tonight that it is not taking this process seriously thenthe public will take the corresponding message from that that the Government is not interested in a process of democracy that it is not interested in people having adequate time to prepare their submissions and have their submissions heard and that what the public says actually will not count for anything anyway. This bill itself is wrong and the process is a disgrace.