Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Mr Speaker and it's my pleasure to speak on the second reading of the Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill which the National Party is supporting and indeed I understand the entire House has supported to this point. As Ginny Andersen the previous member indicated it has been something that has come out in response to a royal commission's report back in 2015.If we cast our minds back to 2015 we can think of in many respects a different era. Yes terrorism was still of course a major issue globally particularly following 9/11 but had been around sadly for longer than that but we in New Zealand hadn't experienced it firsthand to the same degree. We of course have subsequently very sadly but also the global situation has changed in relation to national security quite substantially with a major invasion within Europe for the first time since the Second World War. Of course there was the situation in Crimea before which people in hindsight didn't pay enough attention to. We are now living in a very different world sadly in the last few years and of course there are ongoing tensions in our part of the world that we are concerned with but it seems like a very distant time when the previous Prime Minister Helen Clark talked of the benign security environment in which we lived. That certainly doesn't feel the case any more so it's absolutely appropriate that we should be always thinking about how we as a country prepare ourselves and ensure that our laws are appropriate just as we do so in the broader context in terms of ensuring that our economy is strong so that we can best defend ourselves and that our relationships are strong so that we can best defend ourselves. In that context this bill is part of the tidying-up work that we need to ensure that our courts system has an appropriate framework in place to deal with national security information when it comes to the court or in administrative decisions. These rules and approaches and frameworks have developed in an ad hoc manner over the years before and there was a certain lack of clarity and some inconsistency both in regard to individuals and in regard to national security. So this bill sets out to address some of those issues in terms of an overarching legal framework to address these issues.Previous speakers have dealt with the details of the bill and there probably doesn't appear to be a great advantage in my going on in great detail. But just briefly if I were to make the point that the bill establishes a new legislative framework to cover the disclosure and management of security information. First in civil proceedings where an application is made by any party—and it most probably will be the Crown—for information to be treated as security information the court will be required to use a closed-court process and in the preliminary hearing closing the court proceedings to the public and the media and non-Crown parties. Now of course we don't want to be doing this as a general rule and there needs to be a high threshold for this and so that's obviously the underlying situation in all these cases. The judge must be security-cleared and the special advocate can have full access to the security information. There are two different approaches: there's the general track and then what's called the national security information (NSI) certificate track which gives the ability for the Attorney-General and the Minister of Foreign Affairs to jointly issue an NSI certificate in cases as an alternative to the general track. When it comes to administrative decisions there's another set of proceedings and also in the criminal side again there are other things.So the issues that we dealt with as a committee—and I want to acknowledge the work of the chair of the committee who worked hard in this area. There has been a general comity across the committee on some aspects and to be honest there weren't a huge number of submitters on this bill. I mean three came and gave oral submissions. There were a few more written submissions but it wasn't controversial particularly in that sense. But there were one or two who were concerned with balancing the protection of security interests against our fundamental principles of open justice being a very important element. There were some who thought it didn't strike that balance correctly but most of us in the House—I think almost all—conclude that it does. There was some discussion about the role of the special advocate and I don't need to go into the details there other than to say that quite often people look at Parliament and conclude that there is nothing but discord and conflict but there are actually many times when we in the House come together across the aisle in the spirit of bipartisanship to deal with some broader issues—particularly in relation to our national security—and this is one of them. That happens surprisingly often. So it's with those thoughts that I conclude.