Goff Phil: Ministerial Statements — Islamic State Conflict—Government ResponseText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Ministerial Statements — Islamic State Conflict—Government Response[Sitting date: 05 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:631. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):In some ways this is the sort of debate that is the most important debate that we ever have in the House of Representatives and that is because we deal with fundamental responsibilities that we in this place have: first to safeguard our citizens against real or potential risks and second to make a decision about how a nation like New Zealand should respond to the risks and the threats created by the wider situation in the Middle East. I say the wider situation in the Middle East because you cannot differentiate the threat that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) poses from the factors that have led to its creation which are the appalling humanitarian conditions that emanated from the oppression by Bashar al-Assad in Syria on the one hand and the appalling things that were happening in Iraq not only Sunni against Shi’a but also Shi’a against Sunni.So when we start to talk about the threats and the appalling brutality in the Middle East let us not pretend for a moment that we are talking about only one organisation ISIS. Yes it is brutal. Yes it is disgusting. Yes it poses a potential threat. But I have to say that it has killed nothing like the 200000 people in Syria who have died because of the actions of Bashar al-Assad. Equally if you look at the problem in Iraq it is not as the Minister of Foreign Affairs stated before simply something that resulted from the al-Maliki prime ministership. It is something that goes back to the misguided decision in 2003 to invade Iraq without proper preparation and without any examination of the unintended consequences of that action.I want to come back and divide my comments up into two parts. One is the question of what threat might exist in New Zealand and how we respond to it and the second is how we should respond to that broader situation in the Middle East. The first thing I have to say is that I welcome the fact that the Government has been more forthcoming in terms of its proposals and sharing them with other political parties but I do express my regret that this legislation will be passed in the 2 weeks after we come back to the House. That in my view is insufficient time for this House to give proper scrutiny to the fundamental issues that are involved whenever you extend the powers of a security intelligence organisation. I think that offsetting that is the fact that there will be a sunset clause so the Government has limited what it intends to put into that legislation and that at the insistence of the Labour Party there will be a truncated select committee process at least so we can allow public and specialist input into the legislation.I want to say that it is important that we are vigilant about the threats posed by terrorism but that we should also be proportionate and balanced. I lived in the United Kingdom at the time of the IRA terrorist attacks. That threat was far more extensive than anything that we have seen from ISIS. That is just a fact. I was working in the Parliament buildings in the House of Commons and there was a real and present threat to the lives of people living in the United Kingdom because of the actions of the IRA. We did not however brand it with an ideology such as calling it Islamic and the British Government dealt with it.I have to say to the Prime Minister as well that I read his speech carefully and there were things that I agreed with in the speech and things that I disagreed with. One was the impression given that the international environment has become much less benign over time. I was Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time of 9/11. I can tell you that when we had a synchronised and coordinated attack that killed thousands of people in the United States it was bigger than anything I have felt from ISIS in New Zealand and internationally. When the biggest country in the world closes its borders it is not benign. So let us see this in context. Yes we should take ISIS seriously but no we should not blow it out of proportion into something that it is not. I am also old enough to remember the dark days of the Cold War when we had multiple nuclear weapons on high alert and civilisation as we know it could have come to an end at any particular occasion. So yes let us take the threats seriously but let us keep it proportionate.It is also important domestically not to go too far in the legislation because we know that what causes radicalising of a minority part of the population is when you create conditions where they feel alienated and where they feel that they are being discriminated against. I have got a significant Muslim population in my electorate of Mt Roskill. I have known them for years. I have worked with them for years. I can say that this is a group in my community that is hard working peaceful and law abiding. But if we start to create the impression that Islamic equals terrorism and we start to see New Zealanders being abusive of Muslim people in this country then we will create the very conditions that we are setting out to avoid.I have to say from talking to many of my Muslim friends that they are subject in the street to increasing abuse because of their appearance or their dress. So more important than this legislation might be dealing with that situation. I acknowledge that John Key said in his speech that our Muslim community is overwhelmingly positive and law abiding. More important might be how we ensure that that community does not feel so alienated from the community that it is part of that we create the conditions for action by people with personality disorders.I think that the moves that are made in the proposed legislation are not extreme moves. We have the Search and Surveillance Act and I cannot see why powers that are available to the police might not be available to the SIS when confronting similar situations but naturally we want to be clear about the safeguards to prevent the abuse of that power. The reason we do not have visual surveillance provisions in the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Act is that I think it dates back to 1969.I acknowledge that there might be some occasions when Attorney-General is not available to sign a warrant but we do live in the 21st century and I do not think it ever takes 48 hours to get in touch with the Attorney-General. If it does we would have to wonder what he was up to and why. I think that in the select committee we need to say yes there may be a provision where in an emergency situation the action takes place but no we are not going to leave it for 48 hours before we regularise that warrant. That is something that I hope we can look at in good faith in the select committee consideration.I want to come finally to the question of passports. The right to travel freely is a precious right but it is not an absolute right. If we know somebody in New Zealand is about to head off and join an organisation that the UN regards as committing crimes against humanity and war crimes—and it does not matter whether it is for ISIS or for any other UN-designated terrorist organisation—then of course we have a responsibility to stop that person. We should not however render people stateless who are currently travelling on passports. It is critical that if a person overseas loses their passport—if it is taken away from them—then we have an immediate availability of travel documents to allow them to return to New Zealand. I hope that is what the Government is proposing.What I want to say finally about the contribution of the campaign against ISIS is that there is a lot we can do on a humanitarian basis. We can make a difference. There are millions of refugees. That is where we should be focusing. We can make a difference in our role on the United Nations Security Council. When we sit down in Washington with other countries like Saudi Arabia Qatar and Turkey who are part of the coalition of the willing and find out that the resources that ISIS is receiving—the money the people and the weapons—are coming from those very countries then that is the place to start to isolate ISIS and to defeat it. I am not at all convinced that military action is appropriate in these circumstances. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Yes there might have been good intentions to remove Saddam or to remove Gaddafi but as a result of misguided efforts by the West hundreds of thousands of innocent people lost their lives and we ended up with a situation much worse than it was even under those oppressive regimes. We should be very wary of entering in a military capacity in any sense into that conflict in the Middle East.