Clark David: Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClark David: Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:14068. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): I welcome the support from my colleagues. The Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill seeks to protect individual rights and freedoms. Some of the principles outlined in this bill are ones that we could support on this side of the Chamber but as soon as we get into the detail we find that it fails to strike the appropriate balance between privacy and security as far we can tell. It is a permissive sloppy piece of legislation that will see New Zealanders able to be spied on in their homes without the checks and balances one would expect of this kind of major legislation going through the House. It is the partner bill to the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) legislation but it adds the powers that make this bill able to be carried out in a fuller way. The bill does not meet the needs of ordinary New Zealanders. It has not passed the test of legislation that should be in this House. It gives Ministers extraordinary powers and it should not pass.It is not clear in many aspects of the bill what is actually meant by the bill. The definitions are poor. We are told that “national security” has been added. “Security” has been added to the title of the bill. We find the word “security” there and yet “national security” is not defined in the bill other than to say that it relates to economic interest. When it comes to economic interest we are not told how that is defined and indeed debates on matters of economic interest were not allowed to happen in the Law and Order Committee. So we can see that the intention of the Government is to shut down the debate to not define the terms to grant extra powers to the Government to spy on New Zealanders in their homes and to fail to provide the checks and balances that would bring this inin a way that is acceptable for New Zealanders.New Zealanders do value their security. Do not get me wrong—New Zealanders do value their security but they value their privacy also. Ordinary New Zealanders want checks and balances in the system so that they can know that when they conduct their activities online when they conduct their activities on the telephone and when they go about their ordinary business relating to their families and relating to their business contacts they are not being spied on unnecessarily and in a way that they cannot respond to nor defend themselves against.This is a terrible piece of legislation. We find that the Ministers receiving Draconian powers are referred to in clause 13. They are the Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service—Mr Key whom we have found to perhaps be a little untrustworthy in this legislation’s arena—the Minister responsible for the GCSB andthe Minister of Police. Any one of these Ministers without any real check or balance can enact this legislation to spy on just about anyone.We have heard in the broader debate the questions raised about what constitutes a network provision and who can be spied on and who cannot. That is poorly defined in the legislation. It seems that any school network any classroom network can be spied upon at the whim of a Minister without any recourse to those involved defending themselves or raising legitimate questions before an independent panel.We have already seen with the GCSB legislation a range of activities take place that were just beyond the pale for ordinary New Zealanders. The spying on Kim Dotcom was legalised by this Government. The appointment process around the head of the GCSB contained a number of anomalies that have not made for comfortable exchanges in this House and the person overseeing all of these and the many memory lapses is the Prime Minister John Key who is responsible for the GCSB and the intelligence services.We know in this Committee that these powers that we are enacting here ought to come with accountability. This Parliament here has the responsibility of enacting legislation that has appropriate accountabilities in it. We carry that burden. Members on this side of the Chamber have made the argument over and over and over again that this legislation needs to be tidied up so that it can be passed in a way that looks out for the security interests of New Zealanders without crossing that bridge into being an unnecessary breach of their right to privacy in their own homes.We cannot support this legislation in its current form. We cannot see that this Government is doing due diligence nor that it is actually caring about the concerns of ordinary New Zealanders. It is typical of a Government that is increasingly out of touch with ordinary New Zealanders. We saw Government members today in the House trying to say that things were getting better for ordinary New Zealanders at the same time as they were saying that tax had gone down for the very wealthiest Zealanders whilst overall the tax take was going down.