Clark David: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClark David: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 20 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12615. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North):This Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill undermines trust in our parliamentary democracy. It reduces the power the ministerial accountability and the oversight from what it could be. The lack of consensus around the bill which my colleague Mr Goff has drawn attention to places public trust on the line and puts it in jeopardy. That is not acceptable.This bill fails some simple tests of some simple management principles. I think that it could be renamed or more accurately named the “Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment (Failure to Apply Simple Management Principles) Bill”. This bill does not clarify sufficiently the lines of accountability. That is a simple management principle. When you have set yourobjectives—and we do not quite know whether those have been adequately set either—then you have some clear lines of accountability for delivering them you have transparency and you have sanctions and rewards. Those are four simple management principles: you have a clear goal you have lines of accountability you have transparency around reporting and you have sanctions and rewards. Those are simple management principles. This bill does not adequately address these principles. It does not provide for them.The way to get adequate provision for these simple principles would be to have a full and independent inquiry. We know that that has been ruled out by the Prime Minister. He does not want to see the 88 illegal spying incidents that the Kitteridge report gets into to be looked further into—the leaked report I might add. He does not want to answer more questions about the journalist’s emails that were released or were not released—we are not sure quite whether the email was recalled or who was looking at what and why. He does not want to get into the Henry inquiry. He does not want to front up on this issue any more because it has been an embarrassment from start to finish.Everything to do with the Government Communications Security Bureau has been an embarrassment from start to finish for a Prime Minister who does not have adequate oversight of his department. That is where these simple principles if they were outlined clearly would make it much clearer whether the Prime Minister was doing his job—were he to be doing his job. They would I have no doubt be the recommendations of a sensible independent report that looked at these agencies. These particular principles ought to be strengthened. We ought to have clear purposes and goals we ought to have lines of accountability we ought to have transparent reporting and we ought to have sanctions and rewards for a Minister as to whether they are doing their job correctly. That is the job of Parliament. But what we are increasingly seeing here is a Prime Minister who does not know—or does not want to know—what is going on under his watch. He cannot duck this ministerial responsibility and nor should we put through legislation that allows him to do that when we know that New Zealanders are losing their faith in this agency that he is responsible for.Instead we should have the opposite. That is why the call has been put out by the Labour Party for a full and independent inquiry—to restore trust in these agencies. The Labour Party believes that New Zealand needs adequate security arrangements. In fact it wants the best possible security arrangements with the best possible guarantees given to New Zealanders that the powers of our intelligence agencies are exercised and not misused and that the surveillance that is done is properly and appropriately targeted.New Zealanders as a whole accept the need for security agencies but they do not accept that they should be snooped on without due cause without warrant and without clear lines of accountability back to the Minister responsible for these. That Minister is John Key the one who was running for the hills when it came to press conferences yesterday—not running in to help but running for the hills. That is our Prime Minister running away from these responsibilities. The bill that is here in front of us enables the Prime Minister to run further so we repeat our call for a full inquiry into the intelligence services.This bill also snubs the experts and could also be titled more accurately I would suggest the “Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment (Snubbing the Experts) Bill”. We know that the Human Rights Commission exercised its powers and took the unusual step of exercising a statutory power to issue a report directly to the Prime Minister because of the seriousness of the issues raised in this bill. John Key rubbished it tried to downplay it and threatened the commission’s funding but the report stated clearly “that a full and independent inquiryinto New Zealand’s intelligence services [should] be undertaken as soon as possible.” That is the first expert.The next expert the Privacy Commissioner suggested that because of the complex and dynamic environment this topic needs to be considered in further detail. The commissioner said: “The effects on individuals are potentially very significant and it is important to get the legislation right.” That comment by the Privacy Commissioner is backed up by New Zealanders. They believe that too. Likewise the Law Society—