Bridges Simon: Search and Surveillance Bill — First Reading 
Bridges Simon: Search and Surveillance Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:656;Page:5414] 
SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga) 
: 
 Mr Assistant Speaker— 
Chris Hipkins 
: This’ll be good! 
SIMON BRIDGES 
: It will be. It is good to take a call on this bill. [ 
Interruption 
] Members opposite are excited already. It is good to take a call on the Search and Surveillance Bill and make what I hope will be a few salient and pertinent points in relation to it. But first can I just dwell for a moment on this afternoon when we also had the Limitation Bill for its first reading before this House and now as I say we have the Search and Surveillance Bill. [ 
Interruption 
] I do not want to dwell on the Leader of the Opposition’s limitation period of 3 years; we have already been there done that— 
Chris Hipkins 
: Because he will be Prime Minister after that. 
SIMON BRIDGES 
: That is unlikely. The member Chris Hipkins says that the Leader of the Opposition will be Prime Minister after 3 years. I am sure he will not be putting money on that. In all seriousness I will dwell on some of the similarities and the differences between the two— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Will you resign if that happens? 
SIMON BRIDGES 
: Will I resign if that happens? I suppose anything is possible at a theoretical level. It is highly unlikely but possible. 
I will say that both bills have really benefited from some significant work from the Law Commission: some weighty tomes by the commission in the case of the Limitation Bill three reports and in this case as I understand it one fairly hefty tome. I agree really with what Charles Chauvel has said on the Limitation Bill and with what Mr Parker said just now about the Law Commission and I commend its members for the good work they have done. I emphasise something Sir Geoffrey Palmer I think said to the Justice and Electoral Committee earlier this year—that the benefit of the Law Commission the substantial benefit is the research it does. The heavy workload of research that it has really aids our Parliament and our society. We have the Search and Surveillance Bill which is a product of that work as the Limitation Bill which was debated before it was. 
Of course there are other similarities between these bills. They are very significant in their own way one in the area of civil procedure and one in the area of criminal procedure. They both deal with—I suppose we could say—a rubbing against of principles. In the case of the Limitation Bill it is the principles of finality against the search for truth and justice. In the case of this bill—and to echo something the previous speaker said—the rights and liberties of an individual to be free from unnecessary and illegal searches and surveillance against the other really very important need for the State to fulfil its duty to keep citizens safe and to enforce laws and solve crime. Both are significant bills one in the civil area and one in the criminal area. This bill like the Limitation Bill is one where there are important principles at stake. 
I went over and asked my colleagues from both the ACT Party and the Maori Party about them and I think I have it right. Anyone who has gone through law school will remember the case of  
Entick v Carrington 
. It is a case going back several hundred years and it really goes to the principle that a man’s—I suppose these days we should say a person’s—home is his castle. It was an initial piece of case law in the search and surveillance area. It established a very important principle as I recall going back now about 15 years to my law school year one class that a man’s home is his castle and people should be free from unnecessary searches on their own property. I suppose today we would also say in a general sense on their person and in all sorts of ways as I think Nathan Guy said earlier in the realm of computers email and the Internet. The limits on it are essentially endless. 
Of course I have had quite substantial experience arguing search and surveillance cases in court and arguing the admissibility of evidence. I suppose the most common search cases to come before the courts every single day in the District Courts in this country are to do with drugs and searches of cars real property the bush out the back of someone’s property and the legality or otherwise of what the police have done. Again to emphasise the significance of this bill and the need to give it close examination at select committee its purview—and the purview of this bill is much broader than that—extends to any crime one can envisage: any kind of property crime pornography child pornography computers obviously a whole range of sexual offences frauds—you name it this bill will have application to it. 
 In starting to talk about  
Entick v Carrington 
 where it all started and the heavy workload that search and surveillance puts before the courts the point I make is that a lot of ink has been spilled in this area of law and a lot of trees have been killed. I do not think we will ever do away with that entirely. Often these cases turn on the facts: do we believe the policeman or do we believe the accused as to what actually happened when the search took place or in relation to the surveillance and the evidence? Nevertheless my point is that it is entirely possible that this bill will free up some court resource and streamline the process by codifying the laws in relation to search and surveillance in one essentially omnibus bill that runs to 197 pages and has 316 clauses. We will not see the to-ing and fro-ing that we saw certainly in the District Court but also in the High Court and the Court of Appeal with numerous cases such as  
Grayson v Taylor 
  
R v Shaheed 
 and more recently the case of  
R v Williams 
. Those are cases that will be very familiar to criminal lawyers in this country. Hopefully under this bill things will settle down as a result of the codification of the law in one place. 
If anyone is in any doubt that that is what this bill does it is instructive and interesting to look at the explanatory note of the bill where it lists the dozens and dozens of bills that are amended by this new bill. If I deal with just the As there is the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act the Animal Products Act the Animal Welfare Act the Antarctic Marine Living Resources Act the Antarctica (Environmental Protection) Act and the Aviation Crimes Act. My hope is that this bill will lead to more certainty and to a less movable feast in relation to search and surveillance. As the explanatory note states the bill I hope will provide a coherent consistent and certain approach in balancing the complementary values of law enforcement and human rights.