Shirley Ken: Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Shirley Ken: Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:12276] 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 The ACT party will be supporting the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Bill but it is a qualified support. There are many aspects of this bill that are not desirable and in an ideal world they certainly would not be our preference because they do impinge on civil liberties and freedoms. But we have come to the conclusion that in the troubled world we are now in with the international terrorism we face these measures are on balance necessary and therefore we support them. However in supporting them we always want to be assured—and we seek assurance—that adequate checks and balances are in place so that our freedoms and individual liberty can be upheld to the greatest extent possible. 
Mr Locke from the Green Party who has just resumed his seat made some very interesting points. He raised the issue of the bombing at Wellington Trades Hall that killed Ernie Abbott many years ago. It was a tragedy and a murderous act but it was probably undertaken by a deranged individual or by someone who was acting individually with malice. What we have in the world today is warfare. It is no longer conducted by State nation against State nation but rather by determined terrorists who are highly organised and well funded and who are deliberately attacking what they perceive as Western values and the concepts of international free trade. 
The interception of telecommunications in our modern high-tech world is important. All nations of the Western World do such interceptions and it is important that we have cooperation and the exchange of information. If anything I regret that this country is out of the intelligence loop and is on the fringe of it. We are out of the main intelligence loop because of this Government’s position on foreign affairs matters and security issues. That is regrettable because it does expose us to threats that we may not otherwise be exposed to. While our Prime Minister may think we live in a strategically benign region that is not the case. There has been the Bali bombing and there is an unstable situation throughout Melanesia and now in Polynesia. 
I believe the measure of screening phone calls the work that is done at Waihopai with the Echelon programme and other actions that cause so much angst to Mr Locke are on balance required and there are appropriate and proper checks and balances in place for that. We know that Osama bin Laden does not carry a cellphone any more. He is probably holed up somewhere on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and time is running out for him. But if it were not for the level of monitoring of cellphone information and traffic he would still be running his operation freely and using his cellphone to talk to his operatives around the world. So that is just one rather graphic example of the need for these forms of monitoring. 
Again Mr Locke raised the issue of the 10 July 1985 tragedy of the  
Rainbow Warrior 
. Yes that was an act of terrorism. It was an act of terrorism committed against the sovereign State of New Zealand by another Government in fact. But we should bear in mind that we caught the two General Directorate for External Security operatives—from memory I think that Prieur and Mafart were their names. Four people got away. If we had had proper cellphone monitoring—if cellphones had been used to the same extent in those days as they are now—would we possibly have caught the other four? That is the mirror image of the argument that Mr Locke put to us. Yes the bombing of the  
Rainbow Warrior 
 was a tragedy and yes it was an unlawful act. I think that France deeply regrets that act; it was caught and exposed for doing it. That was a criminal act by France back in 1985. 
Since that time the stakes have grown. We have had the Manhattan bombings of the World Trade Center and bombings in Bali Madrid and Baghdad. Just this week in the UK seven people I think were arrested with—I forget how many—tonnes of ammonia nitrate obviously for a very major bombing operation in the UK. My understanding is that they were caught substantially through the monitoring of cellphone traffic. In our modern high-tech world we have to weigh up on the one hand the question of an impingement on civil liberties against the fact on the other hand that without security we cannot have freedom. We have the incredible irony that we cannot have security without freedom and we cannot have freedom without security. That is the exact situation we are facing. It is really on considering that balance that the ACT party lends its support to this bill.