O'Rourke DenisDENIS O'ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First's objectives have always been firstly the protection of civil liberties freedoms and privacy—that first and foremost. But we also accept the need for protection from threats to our safety and to our essential interests thus fully recognising the need for effective intelligence. So we accept the need to conduct surveillance and collect intelligence about New Zealand citizens and residents as well as others provided there is a robust process for authorisations through the warrant system; provided the law is clear certain and effective; and provided that there are comprehensive review and oversight provisions giving the public confidence that security agencies are independently supervised and fully accountable.New Zealand First is pleased that this bill we believe actually achieves all of that. We think it is a good bill. It has come through a very long and very good process and we have a good result which will allow New Zealand First to continue to vote in favour of it.I want to go through some of the main changes the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee made to the bill. I may not get through all of them but I will try. I want to begin with the deletion of clause 5 relating to the definition of national security"—that was a pointless exercise. It would have only academic interest; it would have no practical use.Instead it is much better to rely on new clauses 55A relating to New Zealand citizens and permanent residents and 55B relating to others. These clauses define the circumstances in which the intelligence and security agencies may take action. The clauses have a closed list of things that are most important to national security and we think that is a much better approach. It achieves certainty and clarity and avoids very difficult—almost impossible sometimes—interpretations of the law to particular circumstances especially when there is urgency as there so often would be.But the clauses still preserve the necessity test and create two tests in fact for type 1 warrants relating to New Zealand citizens and permanent residents. The first of these is that the authorising Minister and the Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants must be satisfied of the necessity to contribute to the protection of national security generally. However the second is that the intelligence agencies' activity must be necessary to protect against one or more of a limited number of harms specifically listed in clause 55A. They include terrorism or violent extremism espionage other foreign intelligence agency activity sabotage proliferation of weapons of mass destruction serious crime interference with information or information infrastructure and the threats listed in clause 55A(2)(g)—and I want to read those. They are "threats to—(i) international security that have the potential to impact adversely on New Zealand's interest: (ii) the operations of the Government of New Zealand: (iii) the sovereignty of New Zealand including New Zealand's territorial and border integrity and its right to manage or control its natural resources."For those reasons we in New Zealand First believe that the balance needed in this sort of legislation—to protect personal privacy on the one hand but also to ensure an adequate system to protect New Zealand security on the other hand—is achieved. We think that the bill does in fact do that and does it very well.Part 3 of the bill would enable an employee of an intelligence and security agency to have an assumed identity for obvious reasons. Part 3 we think is very necessary. It provides for each of the agencies to keep a register of assumed identities and for that to be maintained so that they can be accessed at any time by the Minister responsible and by the Inspector-General. We think that is very important—particularly for the inspector-general to be able to do that to exercise his oversight function effectively.The amendment to clause 53(2) and (3) is very important too. That provides for applications for type 1 intelligence warrants which concern New Zealanders to be made jointly to the responsible Minister and also to the Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants instead of to the Attorney-General. For type 2 applications which relate to non-New Zealanders they would be made only to the responsible Minister rather than to the Attorney-General. I think that is a very important change because the Minister is aware of the day-to-day businesses of the agencies and knows what is happening whereas the Attorney-General would not be in such a good position. So I think that is actually a very positive and worthwhile change.I want to go on to the amendment to clause 51 because as you will know there will be many situations in which you might get a mix of people being involved—for example in a terrorist cell some may be New Zealand citizens some may not be. That amendment requires that where that happens a type 1 warrant has to be obtained as though everybody in that cell was a New Zealand citizen or permanent resident and that is just common sense.There are also good changes made to clause 53 for warrant applications to contain adequate information. It is very important that it does so. It now requires you to specify the type of intelligence warrant applied for the details of the activity to justify it and in particular the grounds on which the application is to be made thereby ensuring that the legal requirements which I have already mentioned would be satisfied. That will ensure that the Minister or the commissioner has the level of information that is necessary to make that judgment. It is very important that that information be there for that purpose and of course it will also enhance the ability of the inspector-general to carry out his or her functions for oversight.Moving on to clause 64 of the bill as introduced which provided for purpose-based warrants which would allow a warrant without specifying persons or places and that sort of detail—that was clearly not needed. The other warrants type 1 and type 2 were sufficient by themselves so we agree with the deletion of that clause.New Zealand First is also happy with all of the provisions relating to the destruction of information where it is no longer required where it has become irrelevant or where it has been obtained by regular means. Good changes have been made in that respect.Similarly we think that clause 109 has been properly deleted. It would have allowed the Governor-General to amend schedule 2 by Order in Council—clearly a "Henry VIII" power as it authorised the delegation of legislation to amend suspend or override primary legislation.We also agree with the new changes in Part 5 relating to business records—we think that is robust and satisfactory. We are satisfied that there would be rigorous control over access to banking and telecommunications records as well as greater oversight and transparency.Finally in the last few seconds New Zealand First is very happy with the provisions and also with the requirement in Part 7 for a framework requiring the Minister responsible to issue policy statements. There is a list there of a number of such subjects that would be covered by policy statements—for example providing information assurance and cyber-security activities by consents conducting surveillance in a public place and so on. Overall New Zealand First is very happy with the bill very happy with the process and will be happy to continue to support it."