Dunne Peter: Crimes and Misconduct (Overseas Operations) Bill — Second Reading 
Dunne Peter: Crimes and Misconduct (Overseas Operations) Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:615;Page:11063] 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I want to speak briefly in support of the Crimes and Misconduct (Overseas Operations) Bill which was the subject of reasonable consideration by the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee. As I begin I want to pay tribute to the joint submission we received from Alberto Costi Fran Wright and Naresh Perinpanayagam of Victoria University Law School which helped guide us through some of the issues that are relevant to this bill. Despite what some members have said I think this bill is relatively straightforward legislation and I think the danger in a matter like this is to try to make it more complex than it need be. It arises from the fact that we now have deployed on an increasing basis overseas people representing New Zealand who would not come under the normal rubric of the relevant armed forces disciplinary procedures that have been in place for many years and consequently a new category of operation has in effect been created by the description of this bill. 
I listened to some of the comments regarding the scope of the jurisdiction and in that respect I would draw members’ attention to the relevant sections of the select committee’s report which set out quite clearly what those limits are. I would further draw the House’s attention to clause 5(2)(a) and (b) and clause 5(3) of the bill as reported back. The concern is that situations might arise that require a degree of flexibility in determining whether a prosecution should proceed although I do not really believe that the Okinawa-type example is one that I could imagine New Zealand wishing to cede jurisdiction on to another country. But that concern is dealt with in clause 5(3) which says in effect that no information can be laid against a person unless the consent of the Attorney-General has been obtained. So there is a regulating procedure involved in that. 
As to the point that the occupational safety and health legislation the—dare I say it—new anti-smoking legislation and various other pieces of our domestic law could suddenly be applied on an extraterritorial basis I think that that is simply a matter where commons ense would dictate otherwise. This bill is focused not on those silly items but on criminal offences and in fact that I suspect is why the bill is called a crimes and misconduct bill. I think that the scorn that would apply to any New Zealand Attorney-General or any set of New Zealand officials who sought to employ all sorts of pieces of New Zealand domestic legislation that could be deemed to carry offences to people employed on overseas operations would be such as to render the exercise of the power unnecessary. It would simply be too much of a farce. 
So in reality this bill deals with a limited set of circumstances and as such it mirrors parallel provisions in our existing legislation in terms of forces overseas and a bill that we actually still have before the select committee relating to forces who may be resident in New Zealand. It is important to see this as part of a trilogy of measures rather than an isolated case. The fact that it attracted only one submission albeit a quality submission demonstrates that there is not a huge concern in the wider community. There is some interest but not a huge concern. The fact is that the committee has reported that we dealt with a range of the issues that we imagined might be at the heart of some of the concerns about the bill and have spelt them out in our narrative report reasonably fully. We had a situation where I gather there was near unanimous if not total unanimous support for the bill and that demonstrates that the balance is about right. So I think that the House simply ought to proceed certainly to pass the bill through this stage and hopefully before too much longer pass it through its remaining stages. We will be supporting that.