Foster-Bell Paul: Urgent Debates — Diplomatic Incident Malaysian Official—Negotiations Regarding Waiver of Diplomatic ImmunityText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFoster-Bell Paul: Urgent Debates — Diplomatic Incident Malaysian Official—Negotiations Regarding Waiver of Diplomatic Immunity[Sitting date: 02 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19142. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National):It is a pleasure to take a call on this very serious matter that is before the House today. Firstly I have to say that listening earlier to one of the speeches from the Green Party I felt that we were being dished up a very large serving of sanctimony and I repudiate and utterly reject any suggestion that this Government buys into is party to or supports in any way the sort of rape culture that the member Jan Logie referred to. The very suggestion is not only absurd it is obscene and I think members on this side of the House were utterly disgusted by that suggestion.I spent a year working as deputy chief of protocol in our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade so I am reasonably familiar with the technical matters and I will get to those shortly. But first I want to say that I along with other members of the Government stand utterly behind the young woman who was allegedly attacked in her own home. New Zealanders have a right to feel safe in their own homes in particular and in our communities in general. I think that this Government has done a number of things to improve for instance the access by victims to the different support services that they can benefit from and also thanks to the work of the Minister of Police Anne Tolley and others to make sure that we are preventing crime and domestic and violent crime and sexual assaults in particular.There has been a little bit of misunderstanding I think in the media on some of the technical matters. Minister Groser was absolutely correct when he referred to the centuries of hard-won experience that are the reason why we have diplomatic immunity and all of the other different protections that are afforded by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The Vienna convention as it is currently codified came into place in 1961—the same year that the New Zealand Crimes Act 1961 came into effect in this country and which provides for the current offences under which Mr Rizalman bin Ismail would have been charged had immunity not been invoked.But I think it is important to point out that aside from the issue of immunity from prosecution there is also an additional issue. It is addressed in the note that was sent by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade—its note verbale or its third person note No. 125 of this year—in which it also asked the Malaysian Government to consider revoking personal inviolability which is provided under article 31 of the Vienna convention. This refers to whether the gentleman could be arrested detained held in custody or prevented from leaving this country. He was not expelled from New Zealand. He was not declared persona non grata. And in their third person note the Malaysians decided to invoke inviolability as well as immunity—response No. BP04 of 2014—which is available for members of the public who may be interested in the media. It is available on the New Zealand Herald website. It does outline exactly that—that they chose not to drop immunity or inviolability. That means that unfortunately that person is not able to be kept in New Zealand and not able to be tried in New Zealand. But like others I too hope that the person who is at this stage only alleged to have committed those offences does face the full force of the Malaysian justice system and the Malaysian military authority should that person be found to have committed those offences should they be found to be guilty.Lastly I just refer briefly to some comments that were flung across the House and that alleged ministerial responsibility in this matter. There was a press statement put out by the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I want to put on the record that I am proud to have worked in that ministry but I also have the utmost regard for New Zealand officials who are doing a very good job for this country both offshore and back in Wellington. However the statement of the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade makes it very clear that in this case there were failings.There were two failings in particular that Mr Allen refers to. He says that he is initiating a review process within the ministry “to reassess our policy and procedures for handling similar situations”. The ministry is likely to appoint an independent reviewer to do this work. The review will focus on two areas in particular: firstly whether informal communications with the Malaysian High Commissioner left open the possibility of a different course of action to be expected from the New Zealand Government; and secondly that the Minister was not sufficiently informed of events. So although it is true that we need to back up our officials it seems that there were failings and these need to be investigated and hopefully resolved.