Robertson GrantGRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I rise as other speakers in the Labour Party have done to support the Intelligence and Security Bill on its third reading. I want to do as others have also and express my thanks to the Minister who has shepherded the bill—although it is not in his name—the Attorney-General Chris Finlayson who is clearly showing off his holiday snaps as we speak. Mr Finlayson has done an excellent job in shepherding this legislation through. All of us on this side of the House over the years have grown to respect the Attorney-General for his sharp legal mind and kind words that he has expressed on many occasions to the Opposition.It is true to say that the work he has done on this bill has been exactly what I would hope Ministers would do on every piece of legislation: engaging with all political parties in Parliament—and indeed with members of the public—around the justification for the bill; listening to concerns and suggestions adopting some of them and being prepared to negotiate those through; and then when the bill returned to the House actively engaging in the committee of the whole House stage in what I think was actually a debate which is precisely what we should do more often on pieces of legislation. I join with the Minister in thanking other colleagues in the House who participated in that and in particular Kennedy Graham who gave an alternative view but from a very reasoned perspective and I think that was important for the quality of the debate.I also want to acknowledge the officials who have worked extremely hard on this legislation. This is a big moment because this has been a big piece of work but more than that I think it is—and the officials could never say this—bringing some order to what has been frankly disorder when it comes to the way that security agencies have operated in New Zealand. The officials deserve an enormous amount of credit for the work that they have done in putting this together.How we came to this legislation is important. We came to this legislation in part as a result of a number of incidents that lowered the confidence of New Zealanders in their security and intelligence agencies. That confidence is essential because the powers that we give as this Parliament to the security agencies are vast. If anyone wants to look at the bill—in particular I was looking at clause 65 where you read the Powers of New Zealand Security Intelligence Service acting under intelligence warrant"—those are intrusive and invasive powers. They are powers that I as a parliamentarian reluctantly grant to agencies of the State because they are such intrusive powers. But we must grant them because we live in a world where we need to ensure that we protect the security of New Zealanders and of our country. So in granting those powers we have to set up a balance in our legislation—a balance between protecting the security of New Zealanders and protecting their privacy and their basic rights. I do believe the legislation does a good job of that balance.But the confidence that New Zealanders have had in the agencies has diminished. The Warren Tucker - Phil Goff incident has been mentioned and there was the situation around the Kim Dotcom raid and all that followed from that. There was the situation around the appointment of Ian Fletcher outside of normal processes to run the GSCB and the news that the GCSB had in fact been illegally spying on various New Zealanders over various periods of time. All of these contributed to New Zealanders losing some of their faith and trust in these agencies—agencies in which we had entrusted such intrusive powers. It was incumbent on not only the Government but also this Parliament to rebuild that trust and confidence and my view is this legislation goes a very long way towards that and that is why I am prepared to support it today.In particular whilst granting those very intrusive powers what this legislation does is it puts in place a series of checks and balances—one of which from the 2013 legislation I think I can acknowledge I was wrong about and that was the role of the inspector-general. I do want to put on record as I have earlier in this debate that I do think the beefed-up powers of the inspector-general and the appointment of a deputy have actually made that office much stronger and a much better part of it. But we needed to do much more after the 2013 legislation. In particular—and other colleagues have spoken about this—we now have a much stronger process around warrants. The triple-lock process for the granting of warrants gives the confidence to me and I think to this House that where warrants are going to be put in place we have not only the Minister but also the Chief Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants and then the inspector-general as the third lock on those warrants—that is important.As an aside—and this is no reflection on the Attorney-General whatsoever—it is my view that the powers that we are granting to these agencies are such that I would rather the Minister in charge was the Prime Minister. I think that it is actually akin to some of the decisions that we make in this House around sending people to war and putting people into danger. I actually believe that this should be the role of the Prime Minister. I think the Attorney-General has fulfilled the role admirably in the time that he has held it but for New Zealanders to maintain the level of trust and confidence we want from them in these agencies my preference would be that the Prime Minister is that Minister. As a result I am very supportive of the changes that were made to clauses 53(2)(a) and 52(3) that actually take the Attorney-General out and put in the Minister responsible because I believe one day that will no longer be the Attorney-General of any administration but will actually be the Prime Minister.The definition of "national security" is absolutely critical in here and in my view clause 55 of the bill is indeed probably the most important clause that we are passing today. We are now making absolutely clear the specific situations in which the powers of the security intelligence service are to be given warrants for the protection of national security. We are specific about terrorism about espionage about sabotage about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and indeed about serious crime which we redefined during the Committee stage in a way that again I think gives more confidence to New Zealanders that we are being absolutely clear that when such warrants are being granted they are being granted for the right reasons. Many of us have had fears in other parts of our lives—going back to the 1970s for some members of the House and for others going into the 1990s—about the way that these powers are going to be used but those powers are now proscribed in such a way here that I believe we now understand what national security is and the limitations upon that.The only other area I really want to spend any time on is around the question of oversight. I have already mentioned the importance of the role of the inspector-general and how well I think that is working and there are one or two tweaks around that in this piece of legislation. The bit that I still feel that we have missed a trick on here is around the role of the parliamentary committee that has oversight. I think in time—and the Minister has made the reference several times to the review process—we will as a Parliament decide to strengthen that. I would encourage the Minister—and indeed hopefully we will be in a position to do this after 23 September—to look around the world at the other ways that oversight is undertaken.The Australians in their work ensure that they have non-Ministers involved. We will do that here but we need as an MMP Parliament to be aware of the voices in this Parliament. As I said in the Committee stage as long as people on the committee are prepared to obey by the rules and to undertake to keep the secret information secret I do not think that we should have any fear whatsoever of people who have a different view of the scope of how security agencies work being on those committees. In other parts of the world—if we go into Scandinavia and into Norway—they have in fact non-politicians who are part of the oversight regime. Obviously we could not have non-politicians on a parliamentary committee but we could build into our processes some kind of public oversight that would again help to strengthen New Zealanders' confidence in these agencies.Today I am happy to support this bill because we are giving the powers that are needed to the security agencies with the balance of the confidence that we have oversight regimes that will not be misused. New Zealanders can only have that confidence if they believe that the oversight mechanisms involve them and involve their elected politicians. Our oversight of the security and intelligence agencies does not stop today. The price of freedom as they say is eternal vigilance. We have to ensure that we continuously and constantly monitor this legislation and allow New Zealanders to believe that their security intelligence agencies are working in their interest and will be monitored closely. That is our obligation."