Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I want to address Subpart 4 of Part 5 which is about the implications of giving approval to obtain business records. I want to explore an issue that has been raised with me by a journalist. A journalist phoned me to say: Well look at the time of the last election there was the controversy that arose from the emails that were disclosed by Nicky Hager and the emails that subsequently came into the public arena via Rawshark and we still do not know who that person is." The question that was posed to me by the journalist was: "Are we in some way in this legislation enabling the GCSB either for itself or on behalf of another agency of the State to investigate into a circumstance such as that to try to find the identity of Rawshark?".The journalist concerned did not need to make the point and indeed did not make the point to me but I make the observation that the response of the Prime Minister and others which was of course politically embarrassing to the Government was to say that those emails should not be given any credence because they were the consequence of an illegal hack of the Whale Oil Beef Hooked computer system. The hack brought to public attention the nefarious things that Cameron Slater Cactus Kate and various other people had been up to in league with at times Jason Ede in the Prime Minister's department and Judith Collins.All of that is now a matter of public record and I do not think it reflects well at all on the people who were participants in it. But I am not actually here to make that political point; I am here to make the point that that having come out would it be permissible for the GCSB to be trying to assist the authorities to find out who Rawshark was or to find out who Nicky Hager's source was?I looked at that and in respect of the ability of the GCSB for example to assist the police—which is in clause 16 of the bill which is a clause we have already done—I am satisfied that it could not do anything more than the police could do themselves anyway. If the police needed a warrant then the GCSB could only do what the police could do under a warrant and the authority for that comes under the search and surveillance legislation not under this bill. So I do not think this bill creates another route for that here.In respect of the last part that we looked at which is the warranted route under either clause 55A or clause 55B if the GCSB was attempting to find a New Zealander or an agent it would have to either prove or have some good evidence that the person or class of person was an agent of a foreign power. I do not think it could show that here. Maybe it could show that at the moment in America with the Russian interference with that election but there is no such suggestion of that here with Rawshark so I do not think it could go under clause 55B. Under clause 55A it would have to cross the threshold of national security and I do not think it could show that this was a matter of national security—the hacking of that toe-rag Whale Oil's website. I do not think it would get through under clause 55A.That then leads me to the only other route which might be if it could go to the telecommunication companies under Part 5 that we are now discussing. I would like a response on this from the Minister in the chair—whether the GCSB could obtain access to business records under this new Subpart 4 that we have inserted at the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee.I just want to discuss that a little bit. The background to this at the select committee again in part comes from the Nicky Hager experience. It eventually turned out that after Nicky Hager was raided—and I thought this again was an inappropriate response from the police to a complaint by the executive at the time of the election. I recall that what happened was that he who was the person who published the book was the person who ended up with the long arm of the law looking at him as if he had done something wrong. They exercised search warrants upon him. They grabbed his computer records. They grabbed other records. It was a matter of some controversy.They did not actually go after Cameron Slater and to this day no one has properly investigated the accusation as to whether—[Bell rung] Mr Chairman.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The Hon David Parker. Can you just come back on to the bill.Hon DAVID PARKER: This is absolutely relevant.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I know it is background but we need to tie it back into the bill.Hon DAVID PARKER: Well I am tying it back to business records because what happened was that in amongst all of that the police approached Westpac and without Westpac checking with Nicky Hager they gave across his business records. That is one of the reasons why the telecommunication companies and the banks came to the select committee—to say: "Look we're increasingly nervous about this being done in an unregulated way just on a request basis. We want some regulation around this so that in appropriate circumstances when we are required to cooperate that requirement is laid down in law and has the checks and balances that it needs to have at law." So this really is very very relevant to the bill.It is important to get these balances right. If we are going to maintain confidence in democracy in New Zealand it seems to me that the person who should have been investigated is Cameron Slater. The suggestion of some illegal conspiracy to undermine the Serious Fraud Office and the Financial Markets Authority which still has not been investigated was to a certain extent sidelined by the executive saying: "Look at the theft of emails from Cameron Slater and investigate that." Sure enough the police hopped to and did that and went to Westpac and got the business records.That brings my question to the Minister: is the power to seek business records something that this journalist should be concerned about or is it something at a superficial level which would go to the level of detail that is prescribed pursuant to Subpart 4 of Part 5 which is more general in detail? We have already heard from the Hon David Cunliffe that it does not go to the content of communications. But could the GCSB through that business record go so hard that it was looking at the sources of email links that had come from Rawshark going back to the overseas website link and the other website link in order to trace it back to the anonymous route that Rawshark had laid out so as to protect his anonymity—or her anonymity; I do not know who this person is. Is this a back route to that?I would hope not. I would suggest that some of the protections arise from the ministerial statements and the register that is required to be inspected by the director-general but I would not mind hearing some specific response from the Minister. I have already gone through the more Draconian routes—the warranted routes—that I do not think would be open to the GCSB and cooperation with the police does not add other routes to get that information. I think that in this sort of a situation it would be inappropriate to use the powers of the GCSB against Rawshark. I just want to check that this business records approach is not an avenue to that same end."