Delahunty Catherine: Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee[Sitting date: 09 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1237. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):I would just like to take a brief call on the parts of the bill that have been a particular concern to many submitters. I do want to refer to some of the submissions that I did not get to hear personally but did get to read at the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee.There seems to be considerable doubt and debate around some of the issues for example the definition of terrorism and it is interesting just to note that there have been no convictions under the Terrorism Suppression Act so far. Section 5 of the Terrorism Suppression Act which has been referred to a lot in relation to this bill is defined in such a way that the Prime Minister may add organisations to the list of designated terrorist entities and if he is satisfied that they have carried out a terrorist act they can go on a list. So that is quite a broad definition and if you look at for example what happened in the 1980s with the African National Congress when they were fighting against apartheid and they bombed South African military buildings—I would never advocate violence but are those people terrorists? So it is kind of interesting to see how broad these definitions can be and who will be captured. A lot of the submitters did not have confidence that the definitions and the way that these two Acts interrelate would actually target people who are genuine terrorists. They felt that there was real risk of it being broader.It is an interesting debate as to whether we should support anyone leaving this country to participate in foreign war. We certainly support soldiers doing it in some wars where many of us do not see why. So we are not consistent here about who is a good killer and who is a bad killer. I think it is really important to talk about that as a society rather than just identify some people who might go and fight for their country’s independence as being bad and other people who are fighting on behalf of the New Zealand Government as automatically being good. I think these things are superficial which is why we would much rather have a far deeper examination of this whole topic than this rushed legislation.Also the Human Rights Lawyers Association made important points about Part 2 when it talked about visual surveillance. It described it as particularly “ … highly intrusive and [impacting] heavily on the right to privacy afforded under domestic law and international convention.” So it believes that before such powers are enacted the SIS must show the need for them—i.e. the capability to perform existing duties is impaired by an inability to carry out such surveillance. I think that is quite an interesting phrase—the capability to perform existing duties is impaired by an inability. We have not seen the proof of that. I do not know whether it was described at the select committee but certainly these submitters feel that it was not addressed and that there is a whole issue around creating a law for something when actually the SIS already has the capability to do a great deal of things although “capability” is an interesting word. After many years of having been surveilled by the SIS and having read many reports about the SIS I am not sure what it has ever done that seems particularly effective in this country. Maybe there is a whole seething mass of 60 years or so of dissenter behaviour that desperately needed to be followed but a lot of it seems to have been fairly bizarre to put it bluntly.Not only the Human Rights Lawyers Association but also Amnesty International talked about the issues that are covered in Part 2 around surveillance and it had some real concerns about those. It also had concerns about Part 1 in terms of amendments to the Passports Act. Its statement which I wish to quote is that “Compliance with all human rights while countering terrorism represents a best practice because not only is this a legal obligation of States but it is also an indispensable part of a successful medium- and long-term strategy to combat terrorism.” So compliance with human rights with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and with all forms of international conventions should be absolutely fundamental and we do not think that this bill has addressed those issues. We think that it is incredibly serious.When Amnesty International talks about the special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights Martin “Scheinin-einin”—I have probably pronounced that wrong.Hon Phil Goff: Martin Sheen? Isn’t he an actor?CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: Scheinin—the special rapporteur—talks about the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms as being really vital to actually preventing terrorism because we model and we stand up for human rights and we acknowledge the human rights of people who could potentially become our enemies. That is why it is so important that this bill is not pushed through with such a hurry when these groups—these very very committed groups with civil liberty expertise—actually raise really serious issues about the tests and about the conventions.