Ghahraman GolrizCOUNTER-TERRORISM ACTS (DESIGNATIONS AND CONTROL ORDERS) AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingDebate resumed from 30 March.GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. This is a bill that addresses I think we all agree a very significant issue which is the way that our nation responds to the very present threat and now we have learnt since March 15th 2019 of the present threat of very real violence on our soil posed by extremism and terrorism globally and domestically.The Green Party of Aotearoa initially supported this bill to select committee because we were interested in the way that the Justice Committee's engagement would inform and benefit the drafting. It was important to us to say that actually if a Government does realise that counter-terrorism law is not working to both uphold people's rights but also to respond effectively to new and changing threats of counter-terrorism we do in fact bring changes to the House.This bill and our approach to counter-terrorism comes to us in the context of the decades-long war on terror—the so-called war on terror—where we saw New Zealand follow our so-called allies and security partners into more and more opaque and far-reaching amorphous counter-terrorism policy and law that wasn't necessarily effective and as we learnt on March 15th had in fact such gaping holes in both operation and policy as to be impotent in the face of very real threat that was in fact foreseeable.So we were interested to see what the select committee would do and there have been some changes. What has happened is the provision defining imprisonment" in this bill seeks to change the control orders regime to include application to those in prison to include home detention. So that's an expansion but it also excludes youth in Oranga Tamariki residencies and it amends the security proceedings Act to provide the same right to a designated person to request a summary of the information that's been used in the designation.Some of the types of concerns that the Green Party has had throughout time and in particular around the application of the control orders regime have been about that ability to challenge effectively and fairly when these quite restrictive orders are being applied to an individual. And we know that throughout that kind of era of the war on terror we've had security agencies withholding information to such a degree as to result in people being held in criminal detention without charge or trial or even access to the information upon which their detention was based. I note prominently the asylum seeker Ahmed Zaoui who was then freed through court proceedings that had to initiate totally new novel rights and pierce that veil of the security agencies within the safe context of judges and lawyers who could handle that material that was held against him and find that in fact there was no threat. So that's a real concern for us when we talk about control orders. I note that the expansion of application didn't come with an alleviation of what we saw as a potential problem.I just want to focus on some of the civil society and human rights - based submitters and some of the issues that they raised that we share. So for example Amnesty International New Zealand had a real problem—as do we—with the retrospective application of the provisions here. We know that as a House and a legislative body we have an obligation to uphold the principle of legality which says that the law has to be knowable and transparent if it is to sanction conduct of anyone that it applies to. So to retrospectively sanction breaches that principle.There was a lack of Crown-Māori consultation which the Law Society raised and that is always important as a Te Tiriti issue. But in the forum of counter-terrorism it becomes galling to say that we're changing counter-terrorism laws again without that partnership consultation because we know—and because the royal commission into the Christchurch terror attack told us—very clearly as communities had been telling us and as courts had been telling us that actually our security agencies when it comes to counter-terrorism do focus on and unduly prejudice certain communities who are not in fact engaged in terror activities or pose a threat in that way. In applying restrictive burdens to those communities in fact our security agencies become less effective and less able to respond to see the real threat in our systems and in terms of the royal commission's report of course that was the threat of white nationalism that they had missed. Māori have been—and we know through the history of the application of our surveillance laws both by police and our national security agencies—the target of that unfair application. So that consultation would have been in fact both very timely and would have contributed to the efficacy of what this bill seeks to do.The other issue that doesn't seem to be addressed properly here by the Minister or in the context of this bill is that in fact—and this was something that the Green Party actually negotiated last term in the initial control orders regime—next year there is to be a proper review of the regime with recommendations of what legislative and policy changes it may need. So this was really important to us as I said at the start of my contribution because we want Governments to be ready to review and respond appropriately to the different and evolving threat of terrorism and be willing to say "Actually we didn't do it quite right. Maybe we breached some very fundamental rights." or "Maybe we weren't looking carefully enough at the pervasive threats of our time." That was really important for us but that needs to be done in the context of a proper review so that when changes come to this House they are comprehensive and they are reflective of what in fact needs to be done in the counter-terrorism space.So to have a piecemeal approach to that review process in legislative terms seems odd and of course given in this year our precious legislative time that this House has left it seems odd to bring this bill especially not addressing some of the really significant civil society concerns ahead of that proper comprehensive review. Again things like recommendations around having an independent body that would make those recommendations—as the United Kingdom has—and how to better actually approach counter-terrorism and modern extremism as a threat is kind of undermined by the bringing of this bill in an untimely and rushed way because it proceeds that proper review that the Government has promised and has built into the control orders regime.So we have concerns about the designation framework. We have concerns that the provisions around those in prison and now on home detention are not subject to a judicial process within the secure confines of a court or with appointment of a judicial officer the person can effectively challenge control orders that are again very restrictive in nature in some cases. We are concerned that there wasn't proper consultation with communities that are most impacted by counter-terrorism and in particular the application of restrictive measures surveillance and other measures that Governments say are to do with counter-terrorism but often are prejudice based.We are concerned that this piece of legislation falls outside of a comprehensive process that would better inform our work as a Parliament passing counter-terrorism legislation. I don't commend it to the House."