Graham Kennedy: Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGraham Kennedy: Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 25 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:790. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green):The Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill is another example of the arrogance of this Government something the Prime Minister swore on election night that he would ensure in his third term he would not display. This is not the first time the Government has raised an issue softened the public with vague statements of putative concern paused tantalisingly with the drafting of the legislation and then rushed the product through under urgency as if the world were suddenly teetering on the brink of disaster. For those bewildered by current New Zealand politics the key to a broad understanding is Crosby/Textor.The Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service just advised the House that he was cooperating with what he called the two large beasts of New Zealand politics—National and Labour. He appears to have provided copies of the bill to the New Zealand Law Society and other organisations in the course of last week but not to two Opposition parties—New Zealand First and the Green Party. In doing so he impugns the constitutional system he spoke so eloquently about respecting in the urgent debate that he finished less than an hour ago. He owes New Zealand First and the Green Party an apology. What he thinks or what his party might think of our parties is irrelevant to the integrity of the constitutional system. The Government having claimed that there are about 40 citizens on the Government’s watch list some of whom the Minister dismisses as juvenile fantasists having upgraded the threat of terrorism in the country from very low to low feels the need to extend the powers of surveillance over potentially all of us—a whole new take on the nanny State.On a quick read while the Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service was introducing the bill which had just been put on the Table the bill appears to change a number of provisions governing State surveillance. It includes the following: an increased ability for the SIS to conduct surveillance including under warrant on private premises or for 48 hours with no warrant. Secondly the SIS and police will have direct access to the Customs Service database. Thirdly passports can be suspended for up to 3 years I think if the Minister thinks the targeted person is a danger to New Zealand or other countries. They can be suspended by the Minister for up to 10 days without having a briefing of the situation provided. They can be suspended with no notice being provided for 30 days if the Minister is satisfied that giving notice to the targeted person would put an investigation at risk. They can be suspended when the targeted person is outside the country. On these bases the bill may well be seen as breaching fundamental human rights and seriously restricting access to justice for targeted people who are overseas. The bill could potentially see an innocent person trapped outside New Zealand and living illegally in another country. Challenging its findings will be difficult given that national security interests are competing—catch-22. No information has been provided on how evidence gathered would be used in courts. Is warrantless surveillance admissible in court if a subsequent warrant is not sought?The bill is fundamentally a matter of balancing national security interests and individual privacy rights. We are aware of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and what the Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service describes as the rapid evolution of the threat. I say to the Prime Minister that the case for national security overriding individual privacy has not been sufficiently made. I invite the Prime Minister to recall the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 3 stipulates that “Everyone has the right to life liberty and security of person.” Article 13 states that “(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement … (2) … and the right to leave any country including his own and return to his country.” Article 15 says that “Everyone has the right to a nationality. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.”—or her nationality. I invite the Prime Minister to recall Ben Franklin’s observation that those who are prepared to give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. I invite him to reflect on a modern theorist John Rawls who in his A Theory of Justice argues that “Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. … the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.” We shall have more to say on these issues as the bill progresses in haste over the next short while.For this first reading probably the most appropriate thing to do is to complement the observations of the political theorists with a practical letter from a member of the New Zealand public. The writer who lives in Hamilton is not as he put it a serial writer. In fact it is the first letter he has written to Parliament in his entire life which gives it more authenticity and indeed poignancy when you listen to what he has to say: “New Zealand is in my view descending into an irreversible state of surveillance verging on soft totalitarianism. It sounds like an overstatement but I don’t think it is and I am becoming increasingly astonished by the speed with which it’s happening. New Zealand is relaxed verging on laissez-faire on the subject of surveillance. New Zealand it seems is equally relaxed about accepting smokescreen politics from the Prime Minister in regard to the reasons for that surveillance. There is unquestionably barbarity of a nature and on a scale the average New Zealander cannot comprehend currently taking place in the Middle East but that barbarity shouldn’t be used and spun into justification to treat New Zealanders like enemies of the State in their own country while going about their own lawful business. People don’t seem to realise”—he says—“that once their basic rights to privacy are removed by the State they will never know them again. Indeed our children and their children will never know privacy and selective anonymity in the way you and I did when we were kids.”The writer focuses on one issue in particular. “One of the things I find most difficult to fathom”—he says—“is the argument that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. Do those who use that line realise they are quoting Hermann Goebbels?” The writer goes on to say: “The way the Government managed so easily to spin opposition to surveillance as an act of criminality or an irrational left-wing conspiracy theory through the media prior to the election was astounding. I have no faith in the Government to protect the people of this country in regard to this matter. There is no doubt in my mind that it will act in the interests of foreign administrations before it will give consideration to the long-held freedoms our forebears enjoyed and defended. Once they are gone they are gone for good.” He concludes by asking Opposition parties to show due diligence in Parliament to defend the rights of New Zealanders when the topic of surveillance in all its manifestations is raised: “I think this is one of those situations where possibly the public do not understand what is happening due to the specialist technical knowledge required to grasp modern surveillance. By the time a critical mass gets it their rights will have long-since disappeared.”Let me assure our compatriot from Hamilton—a true patriot; a patriot to New Zealand’s adherence to universal human rights—that the Green Opposition will show due diligence in this Parliament in critiquing this bill.