Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) — In Committee Third Reading 
Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:7082] 
Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) 
In Committee 
Clause 1 Title 
JUDITH COLLINS (NZ National—Clevedon) 
: 
 This title is not a fair reflection of the contents of the bill and it is very disturbing that a Minister who purports to be in charge of telecommunications has not picked that up. I note that this bill should have been with the Associate Minister of Justice; he might have read it but I doubt it. This bill has a terrible flaw in it: it is missing a very important part. I hope the Minister in the chair the Hon Harry Duynhoven will listen to this because this is very important. A huge part of this bill deals with increasing the penalties for home invasion. That sounds great except that this Government repealed the part of the Crimes Act that deals with home invasion last year. 
I know that the Minister in the chair is looking puzzled by that so I say to him that he should get the officials here. If he looks at clauses 3 to 7 he will find that a huge section of the bill is absolutely redundant because sections 17A to 17E of the principal Act were repealed by this Government last year—and here is the proof. We have a Government that is asking this Parliament to put through and to vote on bills that are redundant. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Read the clauses. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: I will list the clauses for the benefit of the officials. Perhaps the Minister could talk to the officials about clauses 3 4 and 5 which deal with increasing the penalties for home invasion crimes. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: You can’t amend provisions that don’t exist. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: One cannot amend provisions that do not exist and worse than that further on in this bill that we are being asked to vote on today are provisions dealing with sections 17A to 17E of the Act. There are errors throughout this bill because Parliament repealed sections 17A to 17E of the Act last year. That is shoddy work from the Government. 
We have looked through the bill and put in an amendment dealing with that issue. We would like it to be sorted out because it should have been addressed in this bill. The issue of home invasion has been in and out of the bill everywhere. Moreover if we go through to other clauses in the bill we find there are whole clauses about it. 
I would also like to talk about the concept of colour of right. This Government has said in this bill that it does not like the concept of colour of right and it wants to change the definition to “claim of right” because it does not want to extinguish customary rights. Instead it wants to look at cultural interpretations. “Colour of right” is a term that has been used time and time again through the courts. It has been used in the legal system of England and then in New Zealand for hundreds of years. Consequently that particular part of the bill should be left as it is. I talked to criminal lawyers about it last night and they said it is shocking to change a term like “colour of right” by trying to make it become a claim of right. That is absolutely appalling. It is a very poor piece of drafting which should have been fixed. 
I will come back to the particular part of the bill about home invasion. That part was looked at only in May of this year. This bill had been floating around for the last 3 years until someone suddenly looked at the issue of home invasion and that is not good enough. It is not good enough for this Government to take 3 years to work out what it has already done. That issue occurs all the way through the bill and the Government has not even taken the time to go and get it fixed in a proper way. That is not good enough. If we go through the bill we see there are other clauses that need to be looked at. 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The title of this bill relates to amendments to the Crimes Act. To justify that title these amendments should improve the ability of the New Zealand justice system to apprehend and convict criminals. Some of the provisions in the bill are good; they modernise the language and description of offences. One of the main features of the bill is the inclusion of a whole new category of offences that deal with people intercepting other people’s electronic communications and hacking into their computers or to use the correct terminology remotely accessing others’ computers. The bill makes it illegal to interfere with people’s conversations through listening devices by applying that to electronic interception or computer hacking. 
There would be a big privacy problem if we were to allow people to freely intercept others’ electronic communications and it is good that the bill addresses that. For example we do a lot on the Internet these days and increasingly we buy things on the Internet. So stopping people from intercepting our credit card numbers as they whizz around the Internet as part of that electronic commerce is a very good thing. The provision against hacking is good too. Although people sometimes glorify the successes of some hackers—there is sometimes a bit of a David and Goliath atmosphere with some hackers treating it as a sport to try to access the Pentagon or a big Government computer— 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The title is a very narrow debate. 
KEITH LOCKE 
: Yes. I think it is important in this debate to see what has changed in terms of improving the ability to catch criminals in relation to hacking. Although hacking may have some popular appeal—and the people who do it for sport are usually snapped up by the security companies and end up on big salaries—for the ordinary person it is very upsetting to be hacked particularly if it affects one’s computer. So it is good that there is a provision here to make that illegal. 
Unfortunately the bill does give exemptions from those provisions to the police the Government Communications Security Bureau and the Security Intelligence Service and that is not in keeping with the theme of the title. Instead of improving our ability to apprehend lawbreakers we are giving those agencies the ability to affect in some way our privacy which is a right under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act that should be very much upheld in our society. No good reason is given in this bill for doing that and a lot of innocent people will get caught. Members should think about how many emails they receive in a week and in a year—it ends up being thousands and thousands—and if any one of the people who send those emails is intercepted under these provisions then a member’s communications will also be intercepted and could end up being affected in that way. 
I accept that there has to be a balance and sometimes we may give away to some extent the hard-won right to privacy if there is a very clear community gain. That is the real spirit of a crimes amendment bill but no one gave any statistics or anecdotal evidence to the Law and Order Committee through any stage of its consideration of this bill to show that we would catch many extra criminals through giving the police and the intelligence services that ability. We need such evidence if we are to give away our privacy in that respect. This bill is about the Crimes Act and about catching criminals and everyone knows that serious criminals can very easily avoid interception using code encryption and those sorts of things. 
Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN (Minister of State) 
: 
 I will just take a very brief call on behalf of the Minister the Hon Phil Goff to respond to the comments made by Judith Collins in respect of clauses 3 to 8. I suggest that the member actually gets up to speed. If she looks on the Table she will see that there are Supplementary Order Papers and that Supplementary Order Paper 84 in the name of the Hon Phil Goff answers all her questions. The provisions on home invasion have already been taken care of in the Sentencing Act. If Judith Collins—instead of jabbering away with snide comments—looks at that Supplementary Order Paper she will see that the issue has been taken care of already. 
Hon TONY RYALL (NZ National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 I want to speak against the title of this bill simply because I do not think the title reflects the content of the bill. I say to the Minister in the chair the Hon Harry Duynhoven that if he wants the Opposition to be cooperative in relation to the provisions of this bill he should not go around insulting members who have taken the time to go through it given that the Government has taken over 4 years to bring Supplementary Order Paper 84 to this Committee to fix amendments in this bill that should have been fixed earlier on. If the Minister looks at the  
Hansard 
 record of when this bill was introduced he will see that the promoting Minister Mr Goff railed against the previous Government for not having done something about the home invasion issue in its 9 years in office. In October 1999 Mr Goff said that this would be priority legislation for the Labour Government and here we are with the bill having taken 4 years to get into the Committee. 
Judith Collins was absolutely right when she said at the beginning of her speech that the title does not reflect what is in the bill. This bill would more correctly be called the “Crimes Amendment (To Cover up Ministerial Laziness) Bill”. That is the point that Judith Collins made. If that Minister thinks he will have cooperation from the Opposition to get this bill through Parliament more speedily then he should be more respectful of members who have made an effort to identify the failings of this Government which has taken 4 years to fix amendments in this bill that refer to repealed amendments. That is a sloppy performance by the Minister. We do not want to see the Minister in the chair behave as he did in the previous call. 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (NZ National) 
: 
 I want to follow on from my colleague Tony Ryall and basically just to emphasise what clearly is— 
Judith Collins 
: A Supplementary Order Paper. 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU 
: The Government has clarified that there is a Supplementary Order Paper. It has been sitting around for quite some time and when did the Government actually realise that? When did the Government realise there was the anomaly that my colleague Judith Collins has pointed out? 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: About a month ago after 4 years. 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU 
: That is symptomatic of the Government’s knee-jerk reaction on a whole raft of things. We saw that earlier in the week with the immigration legislation that was passed through all its stages in urgency. We see it again today. Stuff-ups occur and suddenly people think they had better do something about them and with this bill it is the same sort of thing. The problem is that these issues are very serious so they deserve a more coherent approach than this Government seems to be willing to give to them. 
In particular the area of crime and penalties for home invasion tugs at the hearts of New Zealanders. We all know that and certainly because of the way the public reacts when various violent things happen out there then yes Parliament feels— 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: This is a narrow debate. Could the member please speak to the title? I know it is difficult. 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU 
: Of course this is about the title. What is in that title to tell anybody what the Government is trying to do? OK this is the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) but what is this Government attempting to do in this bill other than to react in a knee-jerk way to public reaction and to try to give the impression that the Government is doing something when it has taken 4 years to do anything to fix the anomalies in the bill? We have the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) and Supplementary Order Paper 84 in the name of the Hon Phil Goff but that says nothing about the way that the Government approaches a very serious area indeed. It does not give that area its proper attention. 
This bill should be called the “Crimes Amendment (Corrections In Haste) Bill” or the “Crimes Amendment (Corrections in Haste) Bill (No 6)”. The Government has been sitting for 4 years and only now has this bill come to this Committee when the Government knows the matters it deals with concern us as well. It is not as though we have to suddenly go into urgency. If one approached this area in the comprehensive way that it deserves then this bill would have been approached in a different manner. 
This title like a lot of the things that we see in this Parliament while it gives a bare understanding of what might be covered in the bill does not tell the public anything. The title is very innocuous. It does not say to the public that the Government has only just seen fit to address this bill after letting it sit around for so long and that although it knows these matters are important that was the best it could do. Well I say that that is not the best this Parliament can do. I say that this Government should pick up its act approach these things in a more serious manner and stop the knee-jerk reaction kind of stuff that we have seen this week on a number of other bills. That is not the way to treat serious issues. The area of crime and penalties for home invasion is a serious issue for New Zealanders. 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I will say at once that I come to this bill with half-an-hour’s reading. The Hon Ken Shirley who took the time and was on the committee when this was first dealt with in 1999 has given me some briefing notes. Looking at the title it is very hard indeed to see why we should have a title as bland and as innocuous as the “Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6)”. It could have been descriptive. It could have been something like the “Property Crimes Amendment Bill”. It could have been something that would give people a handle and an opportunity when they glanced through the Order Paper or were looking through the statute book or searching through a computer entry system to see something that would have told them what this amendment did that others did not. In other words a title should distinguish a bill. This is simply a label that is no better than a number. The “No 6” actually gives more information than the title that has been chosen for this bill. The number of different times that we have heard it mentioned it could also have been referred to as the “Anti-hacking Bill” the “Computer Crimes Bill” or it could possibly have been the “Tidy-up Bill” but to simply call a bill the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) does not tell users anything. I believe that it is bad practice. It is consistent with other bad drafting practices that we have like the practice of having enormous single parts. 
This bill actually shows all of the tawdry little tactics and the defects in dealing with a Government that subverts the integrity of the document and its usability to its short-term political objectives. Plainly there must have been a short-term political gain in introducing it back in 1999. 
 The bill with “No 6” in its title means that it probably was the sixth amendment to the Crimes Act in 1999. That shows a very active Government. It shows that at the time there was a Government and a Minister of Justice the Hon Tony Ryall who were actually doing something in the area of crime. Now here we are 4 years later and No 6 is still No 6. I do not think there were any amendments to the Crimes Act in 2003. It shows just what priority or lack of priority is given to crime. 
When speaking to the title of a bill that amends such a fine piece of legislation as the Crimes Act and considering why we would have a title as uninformative as this we could just assume that it was laziness or a drafting practice that does not take account of the needs of those who are looking for the label or description—those who will need to try to find the amended legislation. I am coming to the view having realised just how long this bill has been before Parliament that this innocuous kind of description—this kind of labelling—does serve a Government. It helps to disguise just how long something has been sitting without attention while other more fashionable things like the enormously useful Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill went through while the Government changed matrimonial property law and now is turning lesbian mothers into fathers. All of these things have had more urgency than the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6). 
Ron Mark 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That member Mr David Benson-Pope has just called the honourable Stephen Franks a crook. Chuck him out of the Chamber for God’s sake! 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member will stand withdraw and apologise. 
David Benson-Pope 
: I withdraw and apologise. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: I thank Mr Mark for trying to uphold standards in the Chamber. I have managed to create a sort of filter that filters out the drivel one gets from Mr Benson-Pope. The contribution Parliament gets from the member for Dunedin South must be one of the worst from any whip. He is a whip who lowers the tone of Parliament every time he opens his mouth. 
Ron Mark 
: When he gets off his backside. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Exactly. To bring this to a conclusion—the Government has had 4 years to try to make this bill mean something. It has had 4 years in which it could have relabelled the component part to this bill in a way that would have helped the people who are going to use the legislation. The bill should at least have been called the “Crimes (Property Crimes) Amendment Bill (No 6)”. 
DAVID BENSON-POPE (Senior Whip—NZ Labour) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Mr Mark has indicated he wants a call and we have not heard anything from New Zealand First. I am pleased to accept the call from the member. 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to indicate that like other parties we will be supporting the passage of this bill through Parliament. That is not to say that we will agree with everything we hear from the Government on it—if we hear a jolly word other than abuse from across the Chamber which the senior Government whip has become renowned for outside the walls of this Chamber as well as inside them. I put it on the record that I have to concur with Mr Franks when he says that “Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) and Supplementary Order Paper No 85” is not a very inspiring title to look at first thing in the morning. One could be forgiven for thinking that the bill deals with a whole heap of the extremely serious crimes that are currently facing this nation—such as violent crime which has escalated. 
In fact this bill deals with surveillance issues. It was long in its gestation in the Law and Order Committee. Given the length of time it has taken to get this bill to the floor I am bemused about why the Government has to do all of this under urgency. One would have thought we would have been debating this important bill a year or so ago at least. 
There is not a lot that I will say about the title of the bill. I simply signal that I have received a copy of Judith Collins’ proposed amendments. We will look at those from New Zealand First’s perspective and make a decision as we progress about whether we will support them and we will discuss some of the finer points of the bill as we progress through it part by part. Essentially if I were to suggest any change to the title it would probably be something along the lines of the “Bill that Shows Quite Clearly How Labour Just Doesn’t Seem to be Able to Get its Act Together and Get Legislation That is as Important as This Through the House in a Timely Fashion”. But of course that is a very hard sort of statement to condense down into one title. I simply say this one time that we will support the title and discuss the bill further in the part by part debate. 
JILL PETTIS (Junior Whip—NZ Labour) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
Motion agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That clause 1 be agreed to. 
Ayes 99 
Labour 52; New Zealand National 26; New Zealand First 13; United Future 8. 
Noes 16 
ACT New Zealand 8; Green Party 8. 
Clause 1 agreed to. 
Clause 1A Commencement 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 84 in the name of the Hon Phil Goff to clause 1A be agreed to. 
Amendment agreed to and clause 1A as amended agreed to. 
Part 1 Amendments to principal Act 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 I would like to address clause 16B which gives exemption to the Government Communications Security Bureau from the prohibitions in the bill against intercepting electronic communications. [ 
Interruption 
] 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member but members are well aware that it is not permissible to have cellphones ringing in this Chamber. I ask the member whose cellphone was on to please stand and apologise to the Committee. 
Ron Mark 
: I apologise to the Committee. My cellphone is now on silent. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I thank the member very much. I appreciate that. 
KEITH LOCKE 
: I was speaking about the exemption being granted to the Government Communications Security Bureau under this bill from the general prohibition about intercepting electronic communications. The bill states that the communications that will be intercepted by the bureau will include foreign intelligence and in section 216A(1) in clause 16A(1) it defines “foreign intelligence” as being intelligence to or from foreign organisations. We see from the definition of “foreign organisation” that that can include for example the subsidiary of an overseas-owned company. We know that in our society a large proportion of our economy is now overseas owned so even though the Government has often claimed that the only targets of the Government Communications Security Bureau will be overseas people in fact when we look at the definition we see that a large proportion of people in New Zealand would be subject to interception because they work for subsidiaries of foreign companies. 
 This bill could give a bit of an impetus to the Taranaki savings bank.The rest of our banking system is made up of subsidiaries of foreign companies. If one sends an email to one’s bank under this legislation one’s communication could be intercepted by the Government Communications Security Bureau because all those overseas banks are included in the definition of a foreign organisation. 
The other question and it comes up in the report back from the Law and Order Committee is the extent to which electronic interceptions by the Government Communications Security Bureau and other agencies will go into the area of key word searches. I shall quickly read out a couple of sentences from the report relevant to this: “Key word searching is where the person undertaking the interception or search uses a computer programme to help find or monitor information by searching for particular target words. Key word searching is viewed as being more invasive than other methods used to monitor postal mail or phone calls. It is seen as a gross invasion of privacy as it is indiscriminate as to the context in which the words are used leading to the scrutiny of many innocent emails and the potential threat to the safety of political dissidents in countries where political opposition is not tolerated.” The report then goes on: “The committee considered the safeguards in the bill are adequate to ensure that personal privacy is balanced appropriately with the rights of the State to protect its citizens.” 
That conclusion from the committee is not correct. When one looks at the Waihopai satellite communications interception station which does intercept millions over a year of communications that pass through to Pacific satellites that its dishes are focused on many of us may have our international communications—fax phone or email—intercepted by that system and that system is a key word system. It is not a system that is fixed on particular lines as envisaged say in the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Bill now before the Law and Order Committee. The Waihopai system is a key word interception system. In regard to the bit I quoted from the bill it could lead to the scrutiny of many innocent emails of New Zealanders and that is very bad. 
There has been a concern around the world about key word searching. Under the bill the Government Communications Security Bureau is granted the power to intercept communications and where does it end? It can extend into key word searching or there can be other developments that people are worried about internationally. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Keith Locke to clause 19 be agreed to: 
to omit new sections 254 and 255. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment agreed to. 
Ayes 8 
Green Party 8. 
Noes 107 
Labour 52; New Zealand National 26; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8; United Future 8. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The next amendments are also in the name of the honourable member Keith Locke. 
Keith Locke 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. These other amendments are amendments to the next part as I understand it? 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: No Part 1 is clauses 2 to 24. The amendments in the member’s name range from 21A through to 21J so they are covered in that part. I shall put the question now. 
Keith Locke 
: In the bill the bolded section Part 1—the amendments 21A etc.—are under the bolded section headed Part 10. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: It is part of this part of the bill; the part that will be inserted into the Act. 
Keith Locke 
: Surely if sections— 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I think the member is confused. The amendments he is putting forward are part of Part 1. 
Keith Locke 
: If you look at the title page of the bill pages 1 and 2 the amendments to the principal Act 20-24 are under the bolded “Part 10” and not under the bolded “Part 1”. I bring up this point because I was assuming that my amendments would come up under that bolded “Part 10” and I was going to address them to the Committee under that. There is no indication from that table of contents that they come under Part 1. They are at the end of the bill. If you look at the order of them as they are described in the bill they are at the end of the bill that is after the other— 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I refer the member to the fact that a new part is to be inserted into the Act. However it is being inserted by this part of the bill. I now wish to put the question. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Keith Lock to clauses 21A 21B 21C 21D 21E 21F 21G 21H 21I and 21J be agreed to: 
to omit these clauses. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 8 
Green Party 8. 
Noes 107 
Labour 52; New Zealand National 26; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8; United Party 8. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Keith Locke to clause 21M be agreed to: 
to amend subclause (2) by omitting from new section 312Q(k)(iv) the word “and” and inserting the following new subparagraph: 
(v)the average duration of interceptions carried out under these powers; and 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 55 
New Zealand National 26; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8; Green Party 8. 
Noes 60 
Labour 52; United Future 8. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Keith Locke to insert new clause 21N be agreed to: 
to insert after clause 21M the following clause: 
21NNew section 312R inserted 
The 
principal Act is amended by inserting after section 312Q the following section: 
312R Ombudsman to audit 
The Ombudsman is to conduct an annual audit of all telecommunications’ interceptions carried out by police in the previous year. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to 
Ayes 55 
New Zealand National 26; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8; Green Party 8. 
Noes 60 
Labour 52; United Future 8. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Keith Locke to insert new clause 21O be agreed to: 
to insert after clause 21M the following clause: 
21ONew section 312S inserted 
The principal Act is amended by inserting after section 312Q the following section: 
312S 
Notification of innocent subjects 
Those persons who have been the subject of an interception warrant will be notified by the police of this fact if: 
(a)the interception warrant is no longer active because – 
(i)the interception warrant has expired and no application has been lodged for renewal; or 
(ii)police determine that they have no further intention to use the interception warrant; and 
(b)the police no longer have an active investigation on those persons; and 
(c)no charges have been laid against those persons. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to 
. 
Ayes 8 
Green Party 8. 
Noes 107 
Labour 52; New Zealand National 26; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8; United Future 8. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 84 in the name of the Hon Phil Goff to clause 21 be agreed to. 
Amendments agreed to. 
Part 1 as amended agreed to. 
Part 2 Other matters 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I am about to admit a failure and the failure is my not having realised Mr Chairperson as you were racing through Part 1 with the obvious approval of most of the Committee that it covers matters on which I wanted to record a position in the Committee stage for the ACT party. I believe that the same issues arise under Part 2. 
Some of these new definitions and some of the parts that are recorded as having been replaced in the schedules or repealed in this part appear to me to be matters that require further attention. In particular I am concerned about the definition of “dishonestly”. The term is used both in titles of things that are to be repealed and in the operative sections of a number of these provisions where previously the word “fraudulently” was used. It concerns me that the new term “dishonestly” appears to assume that anything that is not expressly or impliedly authorised is not honest. I believe that it should be put on the record that that is not the intention of the Committee in passing the bill. There is a huge range of activity in any free society that does not require anyone’s consent and that certainly is not dishonest just because there is no express or implied consent. The existing law the common law definition which is replaced by this part may have been a better definition in terms of what we are doing. 
I have some hesitation in raising this point because I was not on the Law and Order Committee. I have not had the benefit of hearing the submissions. I believe that it would be unfair to expect the Minister to get up to speak to this immediately but it does concern me that the words we have used in that definition do not go far enough to recognise that a lot of conduct—many things that can be done or not done—does not need to relate to anyone’s consent or authority and is not dishonest merely because there is no express or implied authority. 
The second point which is also a belated acknowledgment is that in new section 237 in clause 19 the term “blackmail” is extended to include to “disclose something about any person (whether living or dead)” instead of it being confined to the previous grounds of criminal or sexual conduct. That seems to me to leave it far too wide and to allow threats to be made of blackmail offences in relation to ordinary communication of information to ordinary conditional descriptions of things that people do in their everyday lives. It is perfectly proper for an employer for example to come to someone whom he believes to have been doing something wrong and say: “If you don’t do X if you don’t make this right if you don’t do something I will go to the police. I will disclose.” That was covered in the previous law as potential disclosure of criminal conduct. It may be covered by subsection (2) of section 237 which states “unless … a reasonable and proper means for effecting [the] purpose.” but given that Parliament will not look at this again for a very long time and given that we are now repealing the existing law and making the definition of “blackmail” even wider than it was I think we are doing the wrong thing. We are giving a weapon for the potential suppression of information a weapon for people to connive or collude in conduct they should not connive or collude in simply because they will be fearful of the very broad terms of the blackmail offence that is now being placed into law. 
I thank the Chair for his tolerance in allowing me to put these comments on the record in relation to a part of the bill to which they are not strictly relevant. 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 Part 2 discusses consequential repeals and amendments relating to the matters that we have discussed. It summarises and implements many of the issues that have been traversed so far. 
One thing I want to talk about particularly is the provision to allow access to computers. I want to bring in the matter of the Privacy Commissioner’s concerns. The Privacy Commissioner presented a number of submissions to the Law and Order Committee on various matters in this bill and he was particularly concerned about our granting the law and intelligence authorities the right to access computers remotely—to hack into computers. His argument and I agree with it and it has motivated one of my amendments is that the police already have the power to look at the contents of a computer when they search a premises under a warrant so why do they need to go further and have remote access or hacking powers which are very hard for us to oversee in any serious way? It is very hard for the police to be fully publicly accountable for the exercise of those powers compared with the exercise of their powers under a search warrant to look directly at a computer and its contents. I support the Privacy Commissioner’s concern that that power should not be granted. 
He had other concerns. For example he did not want interception warrants to apply by way of the police just going to a judge and getting a warrant on a one-off basis. Different judges will be dealing with those warrants and he thought there should be an additional control as there is in Australia where the federal ombudsman does an annual audit of interception warrants granted to the police. I think we should have implemented that provision. It was one of the things that one of my amendments dealt with. It would have meant that we do what is done in Australia and have an extra layer of accountability—that is an ombudsman auditing those warrants. 
A concern expressed by the Privacy Commissioner and most of the submitters to the select committee was that we should try to protect innocent people as much as possible. There are two ways of doing that. One is to discard the information acquired from intercepts and that is covered by amendments in this bill that provide that when information is no longer needed it should be discarded. I put forward an additional provision in one of my amendments. My amendment would have meant that an innocent subject was notified once the police investigation was over and it was quite clear that the police no longer had any interest in that person. Where an innocent person had been accidentally caught up in the interception system and no charges were laid my amendment would have meant that that person was notified that an interception had taken place. 
That is what the FBI does in America. The Law and Order Committee received a submission from a person who lives here in Wellington that one of her emails to a friend in the United States had been intercepted by the FBI and the FBI had reported that fact to the recipient of her email. That is a good provision and it could have been added to this bill. Sometimes in later life in relation to later events people are affected by an interception because it resulted in their names ending up on a database. There is a looseness and a capacity for error in any bureaucratic system. If the agency—the FBI in the American case or the police in the New Zealand case—notifies a person that he or she was subject to an interception order then that person at a later point if his or her credit rating or travel or something else is being affected at least will know that he or she was subject to that interception warrant and might be able to get to the bottom of the disadvantage that he or she is suffering. I think it is consistent with the general privacy themes that operate in our law that people should be notified of what information about them appears in public databases. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 84 in the name of the Hon Phil Goff to Part 2 be agreed to. 
Amendments agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That Part 2 as amended be agreed to. 
Ayes 107 
Labour 52; New Zealand National 26; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8; United Future 8. 
Noes 8 
Green Party 8. 
Part 2 as amended agreed to. 
Schedules 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 84 in the name of the Hon Phil Goff to the schedules be agreed to. 
Amendments agreed to and schedules as amended agreed to. 
Bill reported with amendment. 
Third Reading 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Justice) 
: 
 I move  
That the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) be now read a third time 
. I thank members of the House for their strong support for this bill. I think that apart from opposition from one quarter to one aspect of the bill everybody realises that this is legislation that needs to be introduced and will have a positive effect. 
I will comment very briefly on what happened during the Committee stage. Judith Collins was concerned that somehow this legislation had overlooked the repeal of some legislation on home invasion. Unfortunately Ms Collins a relatively new member had not seen the Supplementary Order Paper but I can assure her that the Supplementary Order Paper covered that. However I will comment a little bit in response to Mr Ryall’s comments on it. In 1999 he was the architect of home invasion legislation that was roundly panned by the Court of Appeal as being rushed politically inspired and totally inappropriate. I am proud that we now have legislation before the House that treats home invasion as an aggravating factor that starts murder sentences at 17 years and that does not single out home invasion as the only aggravating factor which is what that failed Minister of Justice did in the previous legislation. This legislation is totally appropriate and has been supported widely across the country. 
The second issue that came up during the Committee stage was interception warrants. Interception warrants now will be legally required in order to tap into emails or faxes. Any person who does that without the legal authority to do so will be committing a crime so this bill largely creates a protection for privacy. But of course we allow certain law enforcement agencies to have the power to tap into emails and faxes—just as they have always had the power to tap into telephone calls—with proper safeguards for individual privacy and with the involvement of the judiciary in allowing that to happen. It is clear to 99 percent of the country that our law enforcement agencies which are fighting against crime and transnational crime—and they now have the additional concern of international terrorism—must have the exact same ability where appropriate and where a member of the judiciary has verified that it is appropriate to tap into emails and faxes as they have always had to tap into telephone calls. 
This bill updates most of the property offences in the Crimes Act many of which have not been updated since the Act was passed in 1961. Updating is needed to have many of the property offence provisions reflect changes in technology crime and law enforcement since the Act was passed 40 years ago. 
Central to the bill’s reforms is plugging the gaps and areas of uncertainty in the Crimes Act’s application to computer-related crime. The bill will ensure that offending involving computer technology is adequately covered. 
 Amendments to Parts 9A and 11A of the Crimes Act which respectively contain interception offences and provisions relating to police interception warrants will ensure that the interception of emails and faxes by people who are not parties to the communication is illegal. Currently only oral communication is covered by the Crimes Act. The amendments relating to police interception warrants will help the police deal with organised crime. Currently the police when acting under an interception warrant can intercept only oral communications and cannot use any written communications such as text messages emails or faxes that are intercepted. Criminals are taking advantage of technologies that we all now take for granted and it is clearly important that the police have the necessary powers to deal with that. 
There was criticism by one party of the qualified exemptions for some State agencies from the offences relating to interception and unauthorised access to computers. The Law and Order Committee carefully considered those concerns against the necessity for the exemptions to allow effective investigations of for example organised crime or potential terrorist threats. The committee concluded that the safeguards provided in the bill together with existing statutory safeguards are adequate to ensure that personal privacy is balanced appropriately with the duty of the State to protect its citizens. I believe that the bill will strengthen privacy interests by criminalising some activity that is not currently criminal such as the interception of non-oral private communication and accessing computers without authorisation. 
A particular criticism of the bill was that the qualified exemption for law enforcement agencies from the unauthorised computer access offence gives police the power to hack into computers. It does not do that. The Crown Law Office provided a legal opinion to the select committee on the effect of those sections. In its opinion the effect is to put beyond doubt that a law enforcement agency accessing a computer system under some existing authority does not have unauthorised access. In other words it is not committing an offence if it already has some legal basis such as a search warrant for accessing the computer. This measure is a matter of clarification not a free licence for those agencies to hack into computers without legal justification. 
Aside from the computer and interception offences there are other important amendments that the bill makes to the criminal law. As well as the new computer offences the bill contains another new offence that of taking obtaining or copying trade secrets. The essence of the offence is wrongly acquiring something such as a document plan model or diagram of commercial value with the intention of obtaining financial gain. The offence of burglary is amended. The phrase “breaking and entering” is replaced with “entering without authority” which will remove technical arguments as to what constitutes a break. Effectively it means that burglary and unlawful entry offences are combined and that should assist the police in their efforts against burglary. The offence of blackmail is broadened from the current offence of extortion by certain threats. The new offence will apply to any threat of disclosure. The scope of the threat has also been widened to cover a threat to cause serious damage to property or to endanger the safety of any person. The offence of obtaining by deception or causing loss by deception replaces the current offence of false pretences. It will cover a broader range of financial benefits than the current offence does and the element of causing loss is also new. A number of new offences have also been broadened to include liability for reckless as well as intentional conduct. 
This bill is a very important update of New Zealand’s property offences regime. It will strengthen the criminal law and will give the police and the Serious Fraud Office more effective laws to deal with offending ranging from burglary through to organised crime. I thank members and officials who have worked on this legislation which I believe represents an important advance in the law. 
Hon TONY RYALL (NZ National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 In speaking to the third reading of the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) and the associated amendments I want to say that on listening to the speech of the Minister of Justice I think it is clear that he has lost interest in the justice portfolio. He has very big responsibilities in foreign affairs which is his passion and it is clear that he has lost interest in the justice portfolio. I will tell members the reason for saying that. When he was Opposition justice spokesperson on the introduction of this bill in 1999 he railed against the Government for taking so long to bring this piece of legislation to Parliament. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: 40 years! 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: Oh 40 years! It is so pathetic. It would be sad if it were not so pathetic. He railed against the previous Government for not bringing this bill forward earlier. In one of Phil Goff’s vein-popping speeches where his forehead goes p-pump p-pump p-pump and he goes all red he said: “This Government should realise this is a priority I’ve said to this Government time and time again that this is a priority and it should be doing something about it and I know why it should be doing something about it—because everyone says it should.” That is what Phil Goff said but it has taken him 4 years even to have this bill passed. He stood up in the House—it is the “Maharey principle”; it is one of the things one says when one is in Opposition and does not say when one is in Government—and said that this bill was priority legislation that would be fast-tracked by Labour. I remember that because I was sitting in that chair there when he gave one of his vein-popping speeches about how he would act. Mr Goff has lost interest in the justice portfolio. It takes him so long to do anything. 
I heard his comments about the Court of Appeal—as though we should be embarrassed that the Court of Appeal thinks Parliament is taking a view on criminal offending! If he wants to quote the Court of Appeal I will table the opinions of District Court judge after District Court judge and High Court judge after High Court judge who have criticised his pathetic sentencing and parole legislation. High Court judge after High Court judge has criticised his bill. He can give whatever vein-popping speeches he wants to give; the fact is he is embarrassed about how long it has taken him to get this bill here. This is the guy who stood up in Parliament in 1999 and criticised the Government for taking too long. He is so embarrassed about it that he interjected that we had had 40 years to do something and had not done anything. I am not even 40 and the fact is this Minister—[ 
Interruption 
] I know I have got that gravitas that may make members think I am older. 
The fact is this Minister has been pathetic. It takes him so long to do anything. What about this legislation? In January 2000 Phil Goff said that he would pass legislation to remove sex discrimination in the law with regard to women dealing with children. Six months later he said he would have it passed by Christmas 2000. Then in January 2001 he said he would have it passed by Christmas 2001. Then in election year he said he would have it passed by Christmas 2002. When Mr Peter Dunne raises the issue what does Mr Goff say? He says: “We’ve had a meeting with Mr Peter Dunne and we agree and we’re going to pass that legislation by Christmas.” So we have had four Christmases and he still has not passed the legislation. He takes far too long to do anything. 
The fact is the Minister has lost interest in the justice portfolio and this bill shows that. The Minister has made no substantive amendments to what was proposed when I introduced this bill 4 years ago. 
Stephen Franks 
: Except killing home invasion. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: I have to say just while we are talking about that sentencing bill that I understand that the Minister’s officials advised him that amendments should be made to the Act but Mr Goff is too embarrassed to bring them to the House. My understanding is that he said he could not do that and he wanted to give it a while to settle down. So let us get real about how long it takes Mr Goff to do anything. It takes him far too long. There is urgent stuff that needs to be done. It has taken him 4 years to bring to this point a bill the serious content of which he has hardly changed; he has hardly changed any of the matters in it that are important. I remember his comrade Mr Swain standing up in front of the computer security industry at a meeting in Auckland in 1999 and saying that this was vitally important legislation as well. He agreed with Mr Goff that it should be passed as a matter of priority. Well if it takes the Government 4 years to pass as a matter of priority a bill that it has hardly changed then that is an embarrassment. 
For goodness’ sake the Government should work more intensely with the Opposition parties and we will tidy up foolish proposals that this Government brings in as bills. We will fix them up and we will get them passed. And they are foolish. This Government has passed a law that someone sentenced to prison for 9 years can qualify for parole in 3 years. An offender sentenced to 9 years’ imprisonment for serious sexual offending for rape can be out in 3 years. That is what this Government is doing to the justice system in New Zealand. 
This is a Government that time and time again says it is going to get tough on crims. What is the record? The propensity to imprison is dropping because the sentencing law requires the judges to use sentencing as the very last possible option. The judges are to give crims everything else but they are not to send them to jail. They can be very serious offenders but the judges should not send them to jail. That is what this Government is doing. That is what it supports. 
This Government has overseen the complete collapse of the credibility of the home detention scheme. An Associate Minister of Justice stood up and praised his department for being robust in running home detention but these are the very same people who recommended that a wife-basher go on home detention in the home of the woman he bashed. The department said that she agreed to it. Well of course she is going to agree; for her it is a case of whether she is bashed again now or bashed later. That is what this Government does. It has overseen wife-bashers being detained in the homes of the very women they bashed. We have a woman Prime Minister. She lets that happen. She lets her Ministers stand up and say that is robust. That is not the sort of legislation or approach that we on this side of the House want to see. 
This Government is not taking seriously crime in this country. We have violent crime at record levels on the basis of per head of population and on a total basis. The Minister should be embarrassed by that. There is record crime in this country. We have more car burglary than we have had for years and it is getting worse. We have more serious sexual crimes than we have had before and it is getting worse. Auckland is now one of the most crime-ridden cities in the Pacific. People are leaving Auckland because they are worried about the level of crime there. What does this Government propose? Nothing absolutely nothing! The Commissioner of Police said he needed 170 extra police in Auckland. How many did he get? He got 50 over 4 years. That is not the sort of approach we need to law and order in this country. Crime is going up. This Government has no respect for the victims. 
LYNNE PILLAY (NZ Labour—Waitakere) 
: 
 This is a common-sense bill from a common-sense Minister and a common-sense Government. I commend it to the House. 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 My question to the member who just sat down is what is the title of this bill? She does not know. It is a shocker is it not? This Government is so keen to drive through this very important legislation but puts up speakers who do not even know the title of the bill. All the rest of those members are so keen so devoted and so dedicated towards passing— 
Jill Pettis 
: She won her seat. 
RON MARK 
: There goes the parrot. Who let this green parrot into the House? Can anyone hear it? She is squawking over there on the sidelines but at least she has made a contribution. I do not know whether the  
Hansard 
 writers will be able to write “Screech!” but at least the member is in  
Hansard 
. Those Labour Party members seem to be holding a coffee session on their benches this morning. They are sitting around screeching and reading every other piece of paper except anything that has to with the legislation before the House. I watched them having a little bit of a huddle over there. I do not know whether they were organising the next knitting competition or what. For the benefit of those members who do not know the Labour Government is currently considering the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) and Supplementary Order Paper 85. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Can I remind the members on my right of Speaker’s ruling 51/5(3) which states that running commentaries are out of order. If members wish to make a speech they can—later on. [ 
Interruption 
] Members are getting close to being disorderly. 
RON MARK 
: It is very disorderly. I seem to have hurt Labour members terribly this morning. If the bill were not dealing with such a serious matter we could spend the whole morning heckling and debating with those members. But this is a serious bill and that is why New Zealand First supports it. 
We hear the Government telling everybody what a wonderful job it is doing in putting the bill through given that it came to the House in 1999. It is interesting to look at the select committee’s report back. The bill was referred to the Justice and Law Reform Committee on 5 October 1999 and submissions closed on 3 March 2000. The hearing of evidence took 5 hours and 30 minutes and consideration 9 hours and 7 minutes. That is 14 hours and 37 minutes of work by the select committee but it has taken this Government 4 years to get the bill back to the House. What does that say? It says a lot about disorganisation. Regretfully it probably says a lot about a lack of commitment to the serious issue of law and order in this country. There were 16 oral submissions and 27 written submissions and 14-odd hours of work by the select committee and the Government takes 4 years to get to this point. 
I acknowledge the work of Mr Keith Locke. Is that not a surprise? Ron Mark would probably be described by many as right of Attila the Hun and one who feels that Attila the Hun was a poor student but I compliment Keith Locke. Some serious issues were canvassed in this bill and they all pertained to privacy. I look at the types of people who operate in transnational crime organised crime and terrorism—drug-runners gun-runners and those sorts of people—and I consider them to be dangerous lowlifes. One has only to consider September 11 and everything that has happened from then on to realise how much more focused we need to be on countering terrorism. There are those of us who will look for what might be considered very draconian legislation in order to protect ourselves and our communities but there is always a balance to be struck and that balance revolves around privacy and the protection of people’s rights. Throughout the 14 hours we heard evidence on this bill Mr Locke was always consistently concerned about—[ 
Interruption 
] 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Would members please be seated. 
RON MARK 
: They are quite shocking are they not? That is the Labour Party being called to order. Its members are so rude. 
Mr Locke consistently worked hard to make sure that the legislation was as balanced as possible. I oppose some of the things he said but this morning he brought to this House an amendment that read: “312R Ombudsman to audit.” All Mr Locke wanted was for the ombudsman to conduct an annual audit of all telecommunications interceptions carried out by the police in the previous year. Being the sort of guy who for obvious reasons would welcome police interceptions I could not disagree with that. The people who surprised and stunned me were United Future Jim Anderton and Matt Robson—the paragon of virtue when it comes to human rights. Matt Robson and Jim Anderton campaign the whole of their lifetimes about protecting the rights of citizens so how could they possibly object to the ombudsman in secret in private without public disclosure doing an annual audit to ensure that the interceptions done by the police had been done lawfully? How can United Future members sit there and vote against such a simple request—a simple little mechanism to ensure that the democratic rights of people not to have their privacy invaded is in some measure audited? How can United Future vote against Mr Locke’s amendment or how can Matt Robson? How can people on the Labour benches who have campaigned for years on human rights and privacy issues vote against that? 
Judy Turner 
: You voted for it. 
RON MARK 
: Yes Judy Turner. New Zealand First voted for it—so did ACT so did National. I am appalled but once again I say that it is another silver bullet in my gunbelt because come the election I will certainly be reminding everybody on the hustings. [ 
Interruption 
]—There goes the parrot Jill Pettis. Will someone let the parrot out of its cage? Crikey heck! I do not want to hear any more speeches from Labour Party people about protecting the rights and privacy of ordinary citizens because there would be a word that I cannot use in this House but will use on the hustings and we all know what that word is. Members should not preach to me about their concerns when they do not support a simple amendment like Mr Locke’s. Mr Locke did some very good work. I do not agree with everything he says but it is important to have a voice in the House that is consistent about such issues. 
I want to talk about my concerns about terrorism and drug-running and particularly about the importance of such legislation when we are dealing with methamphetamines. This legislation is about dealing with organised crime and transnational crime which are impacting on our shores every day. I have to agree with Tony Ryall when he says that we can measure people’s commitment to legislation and to law enforcement by their actions not by their words. This Government’s actions in respect of tidying up the holes in the Sentencing Act and the Parole Act—for example deferred sentencing—is appalling. It took New Zealand First to expose the shortfalls in deferred sentencing by which a person who is sent to jail for having bashed someone is then let out on to the streets pending a home detention application. 
We now find that there are also holes—Labour calls them back-end detentions but I do not know what the hell that means—whereby individuals have killed with a motor vehicle raped a woman under 16 bashed people and been charged with grievous bodily harm threatened to kill and tried to kill two policemen and this Government through its Sentencing Act and Parole Act is now letting those people out on home detention. We now find that they are going to the gym going shopping going to watch the Crusaders going out to meet their friends and participating in the community. More important they are using their telephones to do their unlawful business because their telephones are not monitored. This bill will hopefully give the police some teeth to monitor more closely the telephone calls of people enjoying home detention who have proven to be violent criminals and people associated with gangs and organised crime. It is about time that this Government got off its lazy butt and started amending the Sentencing Act and the Parole Act as we all know it needs to do. 
MITA RIRINUI (NZ Labour—Waiariki) 
: 
 I do not think that my speech will be longer than your pronunciation of my name. 
Lindsay Tisch 
: I like your hairstyle. 
MITA RIRINUI 
: There is a gentleman over there who is giving me hand signals. Naturally I speak in support of this bill. I congratulate the Minister and the Government on introducing long-awaited measures for dealing with property crime in terms of technology. 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Greens will be voting against this bill because although it has many good provisions in it at the same time it seriously undermines our civil liberties by giving the police the Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Security Bureau the right to intercept our emails and hack into our computers without our even knowing that they have been there. 
In the Committee stage I put forward an amendment to give effect to a concern of the Privacy Commissioner. He could not see the need to allow the police hacking powers when they can already look at the contents of a computer while searching premises under warrant. That amendment failed. I moved other amendments in the Committee stage to try to make the interception process a little more accountable and transparent. I took up the Privacy Commissioner’s suggestion that we have a person to audit electronic interceptions as they do in Australia in the person of the federal ombudsman. That amendment failed. I moved another amendment to get the police to report on the average duration of interceptions as the Security Intelligence Service currently does. That amendment failed. I moved another amendment to have subjects of interceptions notified by the police when there were no longer active investigations into them and charges had not been laid. That is the sort of notification conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States. That amendment failed. 
In this third reading I now want to concentrate on the dangers of allowing intelligence services to intercept our emails or hack into our computers. The debate over the failure of the United States to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is a good case study. Members will remember how the US Secretary of State Colin Powell got up in the UN Security Council and provided information from alleged intelligence intercepts about how the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction. There were all these intelligence photographs of mobile laboratories and intelligence information about the link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda and the British had their own forged documents from the State of Niger about supposed components for an Iraqi nuclear capacity being smuggled into Iraq. All the allegations turned out to be barefaced lies but for a while many people believed Powell Bush and Blair. 
One of the fundamental problems with the United States and British intelligence agencies is that they are serving political masters and political agendas. Because those agencies operate without any real public accountability it is hard to stop the intelligence from them being distorted to serve political agendas. We saw that in the Nixon White House and we see it in the Bush White House today. Under Nixon and earlier Presidents all sorts of dissenters from Martin Luther King to anti-war leaders were spied on by intelligence agencies so I do not think that we should give the New Zealand intelligence agencies such intrusive powers as exist in the bill in a light manner. We might say that our intelligence services are not like those in the United States and nor would our politicians misuse intelligence in that way. Even if we hold that we currently have a better bunch of politicians laws have to be written to constrain the most manipulative anti-democratic governments that we might get in the future. In that respect New Zealanders sometimes refer back to the Muldoon Government. 
But there is a second important factor and that is that our intelligence services are closely linked with those of the United States. The main interception facility of our Government Communications Security Bureau is the Waihopai satellite communications interception station near Blenheim. It pulls down millions of phone email and fax communications going through to international communications satellites located over the Pacific equator. The main destination for the information collected from Waihopai and from similar stations in Australia Canada Britain and the United States is the US National Security Agency headquarters and it will often be used for purposes that most New Zealanders would not like—if they knew of them. Occasionally we get a glimpse of that misuse such as during an incident a few months back when a section head of the US National Security Agency Frank Koza issued a memo to his security people asking them to “mount a surge” of interceptions against wavering nations on the UN Security Council to work out what he called their “dependencies”. I presume that meant how those nations could most effectively be bribed. 
The other problem is that our intelligence services rely to a large extent on information provided by US and British intelligence services. That is certainly true in Bush’s so-called war against terrorism which is resulting in many innocent parties getting caught up and certainly in ethnic and religious groups being targeted and harassed. I want to show how that US influence on our intelligence services takes place here in New Zealand with an example from our Sri Lankan Tamil community. This community was very worried last year about the Terrorism Suppression Act and organised big public meetings against it. Their fear is based on the fact that the American Government has designated the Tamil Tigers the main organisation of Tamils in Sri Lanka a terrorist organisation. Of course there has been a tragic civil war in Sri Lanka with both sides guilty of inexcusable military actions against civilians which we would all condemn. However Amnesty International reports show clearly that the Sri Lankan Government is responsible for the great majority of the atrocities committed against civilians yet the Sri Lankan Government was not designated a terrorist organisation by the American Government—only the Tamil Tigers were. 
That bias is unfortunate because a successful peace process between the Government and the Tamil Tigers is now under way in Sri Lanka. The Bush administration has seriously undermined that peace process by for example denying Tamil Tiger representatives the right to attend an international donors conference held in the United States in the aftermath of the civil war. That created a big hiccup in the peace process. Thankfully the New Zealand Government has not followed the British and Australian example in imitating the United States and designating the Tamil Tigers a terrorist organisation—an act that could criminalise much of the Tamil community in New Zealand because they overwhelmingly support the Tamil Tigers as the main force in what they see as their national struggle back home. 
But the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service is still implementing the United States submissions and agendas against the Tamil community here despite the fact that this community is the most law-abiding one could find. Last Friday a Security Intelligence Service officer visited an organiser of a big public meeting supporting the peace process in Sri Lanka which was to be held the next day and asked all sorts of intrusive questions about Tamil organisations. I attended and spoke at that meeting alongside a Minister of this Government and another MP. It is inexcusable that this sort of intervention is taking place with the Security Intelligence Service harassing a community in our country on a US-inspired agenda. 
I have another example that shows why we should be against giving these intrusive powers to the Security Intelligence Service and having such a link-up with foreign intelligence agencies. An asylum seeker in Paremoremo prison is currently trying to win an appeal to the Refugee Status Appeals Authority but the Security Intelligence Service has put into effect a security risk certificate that means that even if he wins in the legal sense he will still be deported. The service is basing its case on secret intelligence information—presumably information from foreign intelligence agencies be they in America France or Algeria which are very biased against the political organisation he is from. He was an elected MP in Algeria back in 1990. Again it is a case of the Security Intelligence Service implementing a political agenda from overseas. 
We have other cases. I get complaints from Muslim people in New Zealand that mosques are being visited by the Security Intelligence Service and they feel intimidated by that. They say they do not want to put their heads up too much and do not want to involve themselves in New Zealand politics too much. 
STEVE CHADWICK (NZ Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 I am pleased to support the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6). I was really interested to hear the Hon Tony Ryall raging about how long it has taken for the bill to come to the House. We are facing issues about world security and powers of interception and the bill has provisions about computer technology and new techniques that we needed to consider for inclusion. It is absolutely timely that the bill has come before the House today and I am pleased to support it. 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in this third reading the final debate on the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) which was introduced by the then National Government in 1999. It was introduced as No. 6 out of I understand 10 or 11 bills on criminal matters introduced that year by the National Minister the Hon Tony Ryall and the bill reflects that. We only just removed from this bill about half an hour ago the provisions that reflected the great debate in 1999 on home invasion. So sitting here in front of us today we have had a whole series of amendments required to take out references to home invasion from parts of the Crimes Act where they have been sitting for a number of years. 
Mr Goff began his speech commending himself for finally getting this bill through by gloating over the removal of the home invasion provisions. What were his reasons? According to him people all over the country had criticised them. What were their criticisms? They were that they had been politically inspired. He told us proudly that the Court of Appeal had criticised the home invasion provisions and criticised Parliament for putting them in. I think that that says a lot about the agenda this Government has been running in the area of crime. 
It says an awful lot that he should think the people of New Zealand will be glad to hear that about politicians who responded to the concern about serious violent crime which has more than quadrupled in the time I have been a lawyer—that people should think it was wrong for politicians to respond to that and to pass a law that had such widespread public demand. For the Minister to think that anyone outside the tight little circles and cabals of politically correct feminists and other academics that he moves in will be glad to hear that we have responded to the— 
Hon Paul Swain 
: What’s this? As opposed to your 3.2 percent? 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Minister Swain has arrived. That is handy because we will have a few comments about Minister Swain later as well. We will be commenting on the enormous amount of action that he has involved himself in in his corrections portfolio and the answers he has been able to give to the concerns of people who are quite rightly asking why he is letting out convicted paedophiles rapists and robbers into their communities hiding them in their communities without any warning or without even letting people know when they ask who is coming to live next door. Mr Swain watches the news and he buries his head in the newspaper but he will not be burying his head in the newspaper deep enough when people finally get to the bottom of what his department has been doing to hide criminals amongst innocent people. 
But let me get back to the speech from Mr Goff. He told us in withering tones that the Court of Appeal had complained that the home invasion law was political. Of course it is political. What does he want—a court that stands above the requirement of representative democracy? Does he like law being made by judges who cannot be removed by the people when they are sick of a lack of response to legitimate concern about where crime and justice have got to in this country? Is it a recipe for good law to respond to those who despise democracy and who regard the word “political” as the ultimate insult? That is the sense of what we got from Mr Goff’s speech welcoming his own inaction for 4 years on the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6). 
What does this bill do? As we heard from the Labour member who interjected earlier this bill does not address anything that was not raised by a Government 4 years ago. It does bring up to date a few provisions that can now reflect the most current forms of computer crime but if we were to wait until we knew all about computer crime before passing legislation it would never be passed. Computer crime will evolve. It was quite proper to bring this law in. It should have been passed 4 years ago and it should have annual attention if necessary to bring it up to date instead of the Government using as a justification for it having done nothing for 4 years the fact that computer crime is fast moving. 
 The bill delaying of the bill was criticised. But the delay was justified by Mrs Steve Chadwick on the grounds that it deals with very serious topics. Just so Mrs Chadwick—the entire area of property crime is updated in this bill. I can only surmise that the Government actually put it aside from a resurgence of that old ideological hostility to property. Government members look at the bills on the plate that they inherit when they become the Government go through the list and say: “Here is one that is all to do with property; let’s drop it.” It has probably taken the Ministers 3 or 4 years to realise that burglary and property crimes are among the best indicators of the likelihood of other forms of offending that in fact we get a better prediction of the risk of violence from offenders by looking at their burglary record than by looking at their violence or sex-crime record strangely enough. 
The Minister who tried to justify the delay in pushing this bill along had a complete own goal in getting Mrs Chadwick to get up and commend the Government for having delayed getting it right when property crime should have been amongst the Government’s highest priorities. If Government members really want to tackle violent crime they should go first to the precursor crimes the crimes that accustom young people to thinking that the law does not mean what it says—the crimes that accustom young people to feeling that penalties do not mean anything the crimes that accustom young people to feeling that other people’s space and other people’s castles are their own. 
I also want to have a quick look at just what this law does in relation to the other priorities this Government has had. We now have a maximum sentence of 7 years for reckless damage to a computer 5 years for taking trade secrets and 2 years for hacking. Let us compare that with some of the other offences. Changing it would have caused too much uproar I guess but without changing it we have blackmail at 14 years. Blackmail can be simply disclosing something about a person to cause him or her to act in accordance with the will of the person making the threat. What is wrong with saying: “You’ve been lying to me and unless you resign I will have to report you to the police. Go and don’t come back.”? Why should that justify a 14-year sentence when reckless damage gets only 7 years or taking a trade secret—it could be the genetic code to kiwifruit—gets only 5 years? 
The bill actually maintains a lie. It states that these maximum sentences are 7 years when the public and the court know that 7 years actually converts to 2 years 4 months unless a non-parole period is set. Five years converts to 1 year 8 months unless a non-parole period is set. Two years automatically converts to 1 year and there is nothing the court can do about that. Anything under 2 years means 1 year or half the period of the sentence and the court has no power to set a non-parole period. So the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) is fraudulent and deceptive on its face. 
If the Minister had been truly wanting to deal with priorities in crime he would have been dealing with the series of promises he has made in relation to the Sentencing Act and the Parole Act to deal with what he likes to call loopholes and unintended gaps that are actually a reflection of the Government’s deliberate policy to treat criminals as victims of the class struggle and as unhappy products of a cruel upbringing and not responsible for their actions. He would have whipped through the bill that had been done by National. It would not have sat for 4 years. The Government would not have put the Prostitution Reform Bill in a higher place or the Local Government Reform Bill which set up racial constituencies for local authorities in a higher place. Of course the Government would think that that had far higher priority than a bill to amend crime. I am glad to be able to support this bill to a conclusion; I am just sorry that it has taken so long. 
MARK PECK (NZ Labour—Invercargill) 
: 
 Why let the facts get in the way of a good story right? That is the best thing that can be said about that speech. 
Hon Paul Swain 
: What about 3.2 percent? 
MARK PECK 
: Or 3.2 percent and things like that. This bill is intended to modernise and update penalties for property offences. I notice that the leader and the deputy leader of the Opposition—who is colloquially known as “Mr Bouncer”—were sitting in the back row of the Chamber worrying about their own property offences that are going on at this particular point in time. I hope the numbers stack up for them because not many other people in this House will. I support the bill. 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (NZ National) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call on the third reading of the bill. I address my remarks to the general background and the environment in which the bill was introduced. I do want to comment on the Hon Phil Goff the Minister of Justice. I think we should be very grateful indeed that he found time to come to the House in between flying between international destinations to introduce the third reading. I just do not know how the Minister does it. He so busy in his foreign affairs portfolio: holding hands with foreign leaders with Yasser Arafat. My goodness is that not such a wonderful thing for him! It just underscores his burning ambition to be the leader. I guess he thinks that making more visits and holding more hands will eventually get him there. 
He is absolutely mistaken is he not! Because he is not even allowed to run his own portfolio. Instead it is done by that person whom we shall not name but we know who she is. She has her nose and her hands in every portfolio and she certainly has her hands in this one. The Minister of Justice the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade is reduced to making trips all over the world looking busy holding hands with foreign dignitaries pretending he is— 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Who with? 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU 
: Who? One might think that maybe he would go and hold Bush’s hand maybe he would go and hold Tony Blair’s hand. But no he went and held the hand of Yasser Arafat. My goodness did not our country’s reputation soar when he did that! As I say I am amazed that he has the time to come into the House and attend to the unimportant justice portfolio. That is the way he treats the issue of crime and the real concerns of New Zealanders. As I say he has this other big job to do—being seen on all the international stages because he has a burning desire to be the leader. No doubt having made his speech he is now on his way to some other foreign destination to find some other hand to hold. 
Lindsay Tisch 
: Pyongyang. 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU 
: We will see. We await the photographs in the papers and the image on television—on CNN. We wait in anticipation to see whose hand he will hold next. We really do need our reputation enhanced some more! 
Having said all that I want to say that National supports the bill. It covers issues of absolute importance to New Zealand and to New Zealanders. I was quite amazed at Steve Chadwick the member for Rotorua thinking that she had to stand up and try to find an excuse as to why the bill has taken 4 years to wend its way through the process. She babbled on about advances in computer technology and that we had to wait and see what those were so that the law could be drafted accordingly. What a load of crock! What a load of hogwash quite frankly. 
The Minister made excuses about why the bill has taken 4 years to reach this stage but the public should be aware that the bill we will pass into law today is no great advance on the bill that was already there which was introduced by my eminent colleague the Hon Tony Ryall who was a very good Minister of Justice when we were in power. He reacted very swiftly to issues. He was on top of his job and gave the justice portfolio the due focus that it requires. The provisions contained in the bill today were introduced by Tony Ryall 4 years ago. The Minister came down to the House and made some lame excuse for why it has taken so long. 
 He was followed up by the member for Rotorua Steve Chadwick making some more lame excuses as to why it has taken so long but it will not wash. They might think they can use those excuses in this forum but those sorts of excuses do not wash out in the real land where New Zealanders live. 
The whole thing is symbolised in a  
Dominion Post  
byline from earlier this year that states: “Hacking bill gets dusted off”. It has been sitting there for 4 years gathering dust. Phil Goff comes down to the Chamber and pretends he had a good reason for it sitting around but he did not. 
I also comment on something I find to be a real anomaly with the Government. It talks the talk but does not walk the walk. It is interesting is it not that a number of women in the Labour Government are prepared to stand up and support the Minister and pretend that he is doing a great job in that area yet they do that against a background of this Government allowing paedophiles and rapists out into the community to rape abuse and violate women and children. Those women just sit there and let it happen. That is an indictment on the women in the Government who sit there and let that happen. They yell out across the Chamber and try to make negative aspersions about us when we were in Government yet they sit there in 2003 and let these awful awful people back out on to the street. 
There is also the issue around the cervical-screening proposals. Not a lot has been done on that. This Government has a significant number of women who sit there and pretend that they are walking the talk. They are not. It is a scandal when they come down to the Chamber to support a Minister of Justice who is not addressing that area in any comprehensive way at all and who probably cannot address it because he is so busy travelling overseas. In any event if he cannot address the issue they should be advocating on behalf of women and children in this country. But do we hear them doing that? No. The most that we see them do is to come down the House rise to their feet and say: “I support this bill. It is a good bill.” and sit down. In the meantime paedophiles and rapists are out in the community doing what they do best because raping abusing and violating women and children is all they know. The women in the Government should be ashamed of themselves. 
The environment in which we live requires that we address those matters seriously in a considered way and in a timely fashion. The passage of this bill into law today does not have any of those features. But the substance of it is serious and that is why the National Party supports it. 
JILL PETTIS (NZ Labour—Whanganui) 
: 
 That was a tragic speech and I do not use the word lightly from a tragic party that sat there for 9 long years and did very little—I am being generous by saying very little—did nothing to address the causes of crime in this country. In fact its legislation increased the incidence of crime. There are those of us on this side of the House who make the connection between social policy and what happens in the criminal world. I remind that member that she stuck her hand up for the introduction of market rents for the poorest group in society in this country. That was punishing the poor for being poor. That member has had the privilege of leading a very privileged life. That member has never had to grub around looking for bread to put on her table— 
Hon Georgina te Heuheu 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That is an aspersion against me and my family of whom the speaker has no knowledge whatsoever. I ask you to ask her to withdraw and apologise. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member has taken offence at a personal reflection under Standing Order 117. The member will now stand withdraw and apologise. 
JILL PETTIS 
: I will withdraw and apologise. Every person in this House is privileged. I am a privileged member of society. As a child I led a privileged life because I have a wonderful mother. That is a privilege. If that member does not think that that is a privilege I pity her judgment on the important things in life. I might have lived on the poor side of town in a State house but I am still very privileged because I had a strong and resourceful mother. That is privilege. 
Lindsay Tisch 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. We are straying very much off the bill and the debate is getting personal. We support this bill and I would have thought that the Government member would be saying something to support her own Government bill and to stay on the topic so it can be expedited. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Thank you very much. Can the member come to the point please. 
JILL PETTIS 
: The first few comments are always in rebuttal just as the previous member strayed from the topic and spoke about Mr Goff shaking hands with Mr Arafat. I do not know what that has to do with the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6). I say that I am proud of what this Government has done to address the causes of crime in this country. New Zealand is one of the few countries that does not have legislation about computer offences with particular reference to this type of legislation. This Government is addressing the inadequacies of the previous Government and I am proud to support this bill. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) be now read a third time. 
Ayes 107 
Labour 52; New Zealand National 26; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8; United Future 8. 
Noes 8 
Green Party 8. 
Bill read a third time.