Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you Madam Speaker. Look it's my pleasure to stand and take a call today on the first reading of the Counter-Terrorism Acts (Designations and Control Orders) Amendment Bill.Can I firstly acknowledge the Minister who on this side of the House we feel that when it comes to matters of national security the default setting should always be trying to work in a bipartisan way certainly amongst the two major parties because there is fundamentally nothing more important than the safety and protection of our country. So I want to thank and acknowledge the Minister because she did involve us she did provide a briefing to myself Paul Goldsmith and Chris Penk on the draft copy of the bill and there was a good conversation had with the Minister and her advisers. We made one recommendation that we felt should be made to strengthen the bill and in a later meeting that change was made. I want to acknowledge the Minister and thank her for doing that; it makes it much easier for us to support this bill. We want to support the bill because it's important that we do work together on this.I just want to come back to a time only five or six years ago when we saw the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria and Iraq and the tragedy that that caused. I want to acknowledge our New Zealand Defence Force—we have the defence Minister in the House tonight—and the incredible work that they did in making sure that we did our bit and supported the defeat of that corrupted and extremist ideology.I want to support the Minister's comments that although we're a small nation down the bottom of the world sadly we lost our innocence when we had the horrific attacks at the mosques. I was in Christchurch today our beautiful garden city on a beautiful summer's day and a gorgeous place to be but do you know what? There's very deep scars that will run through there for a very long time because of what we had to face as a nation with those attacks.Then of course we saw the attack at the New Lynn mall. It reminded us that actually these terror attacks can come from anywhere. They're obviously twisted ideologies and they can appear through very sophisticated attacks involving explosives and firearms right through to very low-tech attacks where they may just pick up a knife or use a vehicle. We have to be vigilant.I want to acknowledge our security and intelligence agencies that work very hard to make sure they try and keep us safe but we all know and it's no secret that we have people on the watch-list. So we have to continue to be vigilant and do what we can to be able to move and make the changes necessary.So I acknowledge the Minister as the incoming Minister that she's taking this seriously she's looking at the royal commission recommendations and she's prepared to take the action to start to work through those. So it's very easy for us to come into the House tonight acknowledge her and acknowledge the importance of this legislation.It does have to go to select committee because I think that we do have to hear from submitters we do have to hear from our agencies and we are going to want to make sure that we return this bill in the best possible shape to make sure that we do maximise the protections and the changes and the amendments that are contained within it.I just wanted to make a very brief acknowledgment of—I went back to a time when as a country we were having to focus and deal with the threat of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and ISIL which although it was long way away from our borders Kiwis like to travel and we felt that it was probably inevitable at some point that a Kiwi would get tied up in that. But one of the things that we had to respond to very quickly was returning foreign fighters. At the time I was chairing the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee in which two very senior members of the Labour Party were on that committee: David Shearer and Phil Goff. I want to acknowledge them because again it was a bipartisan approach and the three of us worked very hard over the period of about two weeks to get legislation in place and through the House quickly so that we could respond to that threat of anyone wanting to return from overseas as a foreign fighter to our country.The legislation amends the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002. The Minister spoke about the designation. We feel very strongly that these are a good pragmatic and practical response to the designation. I can't think of a loophole that's more important to close than one that would allow the designation to expire with someone convicted of a terrorist act whilst they're in jail or in prison. So that's one of the loopholes that is closed with this piece of legislation.Very quickly I do want to touch on these and go through them. I know the Minister's already touched on them but I did want to go through them myself if I've got time. There are a couple especially around the control orders that I wanted to talk through.But while the entity is imprisoned no application for revocation of the designation can be made (by the entity or by a third party with a special interest) on the ground that the entity is no longer involved in any way in acts of the kind that made or that would make the entity eligible for designation". I think the Minister used a very good example that although someone may be in prison and incarcerated there's still a possibility that any funds offshore or any funds sitting in an account could be accessed could be used to help facilitate promote or help acts of terrorism.The "expiry of the designation is paused while the entity is imprisoned". This is just good pragmatic common sense—that that designation is actually paused while the person is in prison. I believe that the backstop is still there because the Prime Minister has to still review that periodically or every three years to actually reapply that designation.If I come very quickly to the control orders which amends the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Act 2019. Again these are good practical changes. "The Bill—expands the eligibility criteria to include a terrorism-related New Zealand offence involving a broader definition of specified objectionable material". I think in this modern age we do have to move quickly and we do have to acknowledge that the world is changing rapidly. I think that this is a good change that recognises that. The bill "expands the eligibility criteria to include people sentenced to home detention and community sentences (it is currently limited to people sentenced to imprisonment) and allow sentence conditions and control orders to exist concurrently for those offenders to ensure consistency of risk management". This is a massive loophole that someone that has a community sentence or is on electronic bail can't have a control order applied to them. So this is a good one. I'm amazed that we've had to go back and actually do this and that it wasn't already dealt with in the original legislation.The bill "allows for greater judicial discretion in the setting of control order requirements to ensure that they can be more closely tailored to risk". Again being able to move quickly have some flexibility and be agile in terms of applying these control orders. That's another very good recommendation.The bill "provides for requirements of the following kinds in more detail: requirements that the relevant person reside at and remain at a specified address; and electronic monitoring requirements". I think the electronic monitoring requirements one at the moment is very relevant because we've seen a big increase in sentencing that now involves electronic monitoring. So we've got a lot more people now in the community that have a bracelet on that are being electronically monitored. The reality of it is that we also have got a large number that are absconding that aren't actually adhering to the sentencing rules around the electronic monitoring. So I think this is a really important loophole to close so that the police have actually got the ability to be able to track and monitor and respond far more quickly.Hon Scott Simpson: They take the bracelets off.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Yeah that's right they take the bracelets off.So I just finish by saying that we do support the bill. We are looking forward to it coming to select committee. I think there's still some work that we can do to strengthen it. But fundamentally we acknowledge the Minister. We acknowledge the fact that she is responding to the royal commission and is taking some positive steps forward in starting to work through those recommendations. They are important—they are important for the safety of our country and they are important in terms of sending a very clear message that New Zealand is not a place to come and that you'll easily get away with trying to perpetrate some type of terrorist attack. It's important that we continue to support and make sure that our agencies that are there to protect and look after us have got the legislation that's usable and that they can use. Thank you very much Madam Speaker."