Smith Lockwood: Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Smith Lockwood: Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:626;Page:21640] 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH (National—Rodney) 
: 
 In examining Part 2 the clause that is of particular interest is really clause 6 and clause 6 is all about section 22 of the principal Act. Section 22 established designated terrorist entities. In fact it established from memory 318 designations of terrorist entities. What the Labour Government rather foolishly did when it passed the principal Act back in 2002—which is why I am a bit critical—was to put into the law a provision that the High Court would have to review each of those 318 designations when they expired 3 years later. The end of those 3 years from the passage of that legislation in 2002 comes up in October this year. Of course that is a ridiculous situation. 
I told the Government at the time we were debating the legislation back in 2002 that other countries do not temporarily designate terrorist organisations. I pointed out that countries like Canada and the European Union do not impose such limitations on their designations. But no the Labour Government here in New Zealand decided—I guess it was a very politically correct move—to designate those terrorist organisations for just 3 years and to put into the law a requirement for the High Court to then review those designations. 
Members should think about it: imagine the evidential requirements on the High Court to go about reviewing 318 designations. How many months would that tie up the High Court for? I struggle to think how long reviewing the designations would tie up the High Court. One would imagine the High Court would have to do it carefully because I guess some of those designated entities are not that well known to New Zealanders and therefore a fair bit of evidence would have to be gathered to assess whether the designations should be extended. 
Although clause 6 extends the designations for a further period of 2 years from the passage of this legislation I would urge the Government to think through—National would be happy to help—a better way of handling the issue of designations. I would suggest that once an entity is designated the onus should be on the entity to prove that it should come off the list. Then we would have the reverse situation. 
There is a good reason why the United Nations designated those entities. They are not entities that New Zealanders designated willy-nilly; they are entities designated by the United Nations. Sure we can add some but if New Zealand adds additional ones there would have to be a good reason for it. I think a much more sensible approach would be that if an entity believes that it should no longer be designated or is improperly designated it would have to apply to the court to have itself removed from the schedule of designations. I would argue that that would make more sense than requiring the Crown to go through this ridiculous process of having to review 318 designations. 
National will support Part 2 because the Government has not brought forward decent amending legislation but as part of the review of this Act under section 70 I think the select committee should look very hard at a much more sensible approach to designation review. I think that such entities should be designated permanently although there should be a procedure for entities that feel they are incorrectly designated—that is if their activities are no longer terrorist activities. It is possible I suppose that a terrorist organisation could turn over a new leaf and in those circumstances there should be a mechanism for an entity to come to the High Court and make its case for removal from the list of designations. 
I stress that National will support clause 6. Clearly we have to because we cannot leave a situation whereby the High Court is facing from October this year onwards a shambles of having to reassess 318 designations. What is more if the High Court cannot do it rapidly enough some of those designations will lapse and that would be very unfortunate.