Faafoi KrisCOUNTER-TERRORISM LEGISLATION BILLThird ReadingHon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Justice): I present a legislative statement on the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill.DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon KRIS FAAFOI: I move That the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill be now read a third time. This is one of these unfortunately necessary pieces of legislation as we see the nature of terrorism change both unfortunately here at home and offshore. Weeks ago the United States unfortunately commemorated 20 years since the attacks on the Twin Towers and other notable sites in 2001. Back then terrorism in its guise then was very much the spectre of large organised terrorism groups as we saw back in September of 2001 in America. The nature of terrorist attacks is changing internationally and has obviously unfortunately reared its ugly head here in New Zealand. I do want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the victims of the more recent attack on 3 September in LynnMall and wish from this Parliament them all the best and to that community too; also to the family of the victims and those injured in the mosque attacks of Christchurch two or three years ago. Both of those events were horrible and tragic events that unfortunately let us know that New Zealand is not immune to hateful intentions from those who want to disrupt our peaceful and diverse way of life.This piece of legislation recommits that the Government is committed to mitigating the risk of future attacks as was mentioned in the committee stage yesterday. It's impossible to guarantee further attacks happening but the new measures within this piece of legislation mean that the authorities will have more powers in order to prevent the planning and the undertaking of further attacks.I do want to pre-empt something that I think will come in terms of criticism from a couple of other parties in Parliament around the thoroughness of the consideration of this piece of legislation. In doing so I want to acknowledge the work of all members of the Justice Committee led by Ginny Andersen. Despite the point that some parties got to try and find a point of difference around this piece of legislation I understand that the members of this Justice Committee worked extremely well and thoroughly and gave this piece of legislation a thorough going-over at select committee. I do want to acknowledge the Hon Simon Bridges who is in the House and I'm sure will be making a contribution soon and thank him for his contribution in the second reading where he reinforced that this piece of legislation did have a thorough going-over at select committee that submitters who had concerns about some aspects of this select committee process or the bill in general did have a fair hearing and the select committee reported back I believe on 5 September after the lion's share of the consideration and work on this piece of legislation had been done. We also made a commitment that weekend to ensure that this legislation would pass as soon as possible before the month of September was out because we do believe making sure that giving the authorities the power to prevent and stop attacks happening was important when the piece of legislation was going through the House. So any suggestion that this did not get a fair hearing and a considerate hearing at the select committee is entirely inaccurate.There were some concerns about consultation from the likes of Māori stakeholders through the select committee process. I would reiterate the message that I have given in other readings: that the nature of counter-terrorism legislation and the ability to pre-consult on these issues is a tricky balance. If you do that too widely you can open up gaps in the proposed new regime and we saw fit that the select committee was the appropriate place to undertake the consultation although there were concerns raised there.The most substantive change that we are making in this legislation is the introduction of a planning and preparation offence. As was mentioned in the House yesterday a High Court decision of last year where a High Court judge essentially said The case before me while maybe concerning I cannot bring or make a judgment on in terms of planning and preparation because there is a gap in the legislation where it might be an offence to carry out an attack but the statutes of this country do not include an offence in terms of the planning and preparation." This particular offence was one that was recommended very highly by the royal commission of inquiry into the mosque attacks. It brings us into line with similar countries which we compare ourselves too—the likes of Australia and the United Kingdom—to make sure that we do have offences where the authorities can bring about a case to show that there is the three pillars of a terrorist attack in terms of motivation and intent and purpose and where a number of elements have come together with that planning and preparation that now once this bill is passed the authorities will have the ability to bring charges in that respect.There were also concerns raised by a number of organisations and political parties in terms of the seriousness of the crimes and also the potential for the misuse of this legislation by the authorities given some of the past experiences of some groups here in New Zealand. There are protections within this legislation to ensure that lawful protest will not meet the threshold of a terrorist attack or terrorist intent if those three pillars are not met and then there's the added protection of making sure that the police or the Crown has to get approval of the Attorney-General in order for a prosecution for one of these offences to be brought to the inside of a courtroom.The other substantive change is around the introduction of control orders for people who are found guilty and imprisoned of a terrorist offence here in New Zealand. That is a big change off the back of the changes that were made by the Hon Andrew Little back in 2019 but do go to ensuring that again the authorities have the power to monitor in some way shape or form those who have been convicted of terrorist offences here in New Zealand if they do believe that they still pose a national security threat here in New Zealand. That again is an unfortunate reminder of the fact that terrorist threats do exist domestically and making sure that we give authorities the power to do that is again one of the substantive changes within this piece of legislation.Again just to conclude I'm thanking the Justice Committee for its work. Also thank you to the officials from the Ministry of Justice for the way that they supported the select committee which has been noted by a number of members on the Justice Committee. Also acknowledging again the victims and the families of victims in the two more recent incidents that have happened in the last two or three years. Again this piece of legislation is being put in place to give the authorities more powers to prevent those kinds of attacks happening. We hope that they use those wisely but that they are effective at preventing those attacks happening again.DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to."