Cunliffe DavidHon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): May I join with other speakers firstly in acknowledging the work of the Minister for National Security and Intelligence the two Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee chairs Mark Mitchell and Todd Muller and join with my colleague Annette King in recognising in our team the work of David Shearer now departed and David Parker who played a leading role in the work on the select committee on which I have sat for only the last few meetings and therefore will caveat my comments with that proviso.I want to reaffirm Labour's support for the bill and the quality of the process that has led us to this reading today and in doing so I want to stress a number of points. Firstly is the importance of there being public confidence in the agencies and the protections that lie around them and in doing so to note briefly some exceptions in the past that gave us reason to want to look very closely at the content of the bill.Secondly I want to affirm the legitimate reasons why there is a need to modernise and in some cases with proper protections extend the role of our intelligence oversight agencies. Thirdly I want to emphasise the importance of proper protections of privacy and civil liberty which as history said can be the first or second casualties of an improper approach to these issues. Finally I want to note the need for ongoing vigilance in these matters as they are applied and implemented because the intent of Parliament must of course be followed through in the practices of the agencies. In saying that of course I wish to acknowledge the support that was given to the select committee by officials from all the relevant agencies including the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) whose work was of a very high standard indeed.The intelligence and security agencies have had a good but not unblemished record in recent New Zealand history. As my colleague David Parker said there were the Dotcom fiasco; the Tucker-Goff incident where records were released inappropriately for hostile political purposes; the issues around offshore developments that give the New Zealand public cause for concern—of course WikiLeaks in the last week underscoring some of the reasons for that. And indeed in the previous form of the legislation there was the need for a personal assurance from the then Prime Minister that a potential legal loophole that could have allowed warrantless surveillance of New Zealand citizens in respect of the need to protect information infrastructure—the importance of codifying those verbal assurances in the law as we have them.To recall the process it started as others have said with Attorney-General Finlayson being appointed the Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Services; the Cullen-Reddy review which was widely applauded by parties around the House and they brought a lot of experience to their analysis; the work of the DPMC and of external stakeholders such as the Law Society civil liberties groups the Privacy Commissioner etc.; and the considered way in which the select committee under its various chairs has worked through submissions and the material provided to it.With all of that the bill crosses several important Rubicons—lines that previous legislation did not. There is no doubt that in its desire and its legitimate aim to modernise and make more efficient and effective the agencies concerned there are a number of innovative steps that require the House's careful consideration. The first is: this is a single legislative framework. It is integrated between the work hitherto domestically of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and the hitherto external offshore or by specific authorisation only work of the Government Communications Security Bureau the GCSB.This legislation for the first time provides a legal mechanism for the warrantless surveillance of New Zealand citizens and that is a significant step. I am going to come back to the ways in which the privacy issues that that raises have been dealt with. So those are some of the Rubicons that have been crossed and some of the reasons why the select committees had a very close scrutiny of the issues. What are the reasons for that? Well it does not make a lot of sense on the face of it for the two agencies to have completely separate legislative frameworks to not be able to routinely talk to each other subject to the provisions of the legal protections to be outside some of the important provisions of the State Sector Act and in other words to have some artificial barriers that prevent them doing their legitimate work. However—and this is where the select committee has done a lot of good work I think—that has to be balanced by a tight definition of security" and that has been narrowed and tightened by the select committee to imply that economic security issues economic well-being issues have a more proscribed and limited action within the bill.The select committee has emphasised the importance of triple-lock mechanisms of authorisation mechanisms around warrants and has reaffirmed that in all cases bar very limited exceptions both the signature of the Minister and the Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants who must be a former or retired High Court judge or similar are required to authorise those warrants. Of course it has proscribed the accessing of information on New Zealand citizens which would otherwise be required by warrant which is obtained from third party providers such as other friendly countries.The bill has removed the power as drafted in clause 109 that would allow the Government of the day by Order in Council—that is the Minister's signature ratified by Cabinet provided to the Governor-General as an executive act—to add new source databases or information resources to the list of matters that may be legitimately accessed by the agencies. In that way any such future amendment must come back to this House and must be subject to proper public debate and scrutiny.The information of someone around an adoption has been excluded and requires ongoing proper protection given the sensitivity to families of that matter. Stricter restrictions have been imposed on access to business records although I have to say the definition of "business records" in the bill remains reasonably broad.So far we have noted the bipartisan support of the bill and the balance it achieves. We note the legitimate reasons why modernisation of the law was required. We have noted the work of the select committee in ensuring proper protections of human rights and privacy issues and that those have been tightened in the drafting of the bill. Of course all of this requires proper vigilance in implementation. The Labour Party is much heartened by the strengthening of the powers of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security so that the inspector-general may inquire into any matter including sensitive operational matters and may now be tasked by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament which is expanded in this bill.It will be important to ensure vigilance in implementation because at the end of the day the effective operation of the bill according to the mutually expressed will of Parliament across both sides of the aisle—and I am sure it is the intent of those who supported the drafting—is that proper human rights privacy rights and the rule of law be upheld at all times because those are things that are too precious in our democracy to trade away. They have been hard fought for and they have been fought for by New Zealanders who are recognised in the wreaths that adorn the walls of this Chamber. We will not trade those protections away in seeking to guarantee the ongoing security of New Zealand citizens. We will uphold the proper principles of the rule of law the protection of civil rights and those traditions that make our democracy strong and sound.These are important matters and MPs are always mindful of the fact that we are generalists who are brought to bear on issues that require deep specialisation and we therefore approach this with a seriousness of purpose and a commitment to ongoing vigilance which I hope will provide some further assurance to New Zealanders that a proper balance has been struck."