Mark Ron: Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMark Ron: Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee[Sitting date: 09 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1242. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RON MARK (NZ First):I am going to take only a short call at this point because I really want to carry on the discussion around the debate over the definition of a terrorist act or a terrorist or a freedom fighter. It has been a while actually since I stood in this Chamber and I have just been going back through the Hansard—not something you do lightly or voluntarily—of 2007 when I spoke on a number of bills such as the Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill and through the Crimes (Repeal of Seditious Offences) Amendment Bill the repeal of the seditious offences legislation. It is clear that every time we get into discussing these matters there is always the question of how we define a terrorist and how we define a terrorist act. How can we assure ourselves that we are not catching people in legislation that we have no intention of catching? I think it is pretty fair to say that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.Keith Locke was famous—or infamous depending on which side of the political divide you sat—for a very romantic article that he wrote about Pol Pot coming in to the capital of Cambodia waving his pistol in the air firing a shot and drawing the crowd’s attention to himself as he liberated—as he liberated—those poor sorry people. Of course Pol Pot proved not quite to be the freedom fighter that Mr Locke in his days when he was writing for Salient thought he was and he tried desperately in this Chamber on many occasions to stop us from referring to that article. In fact I used to keep a copy of it in my drawer here so that I could always remind him: “You know sometimes you get it wrong Keith.” Pol Pot was not a nice person. I would also point out that there was a chap by the name of Mugabe. The only person who had it right whom I can recall was Robbie Muldoon. He said: “He was a terrorist he always has been a terrorist and he always will be a terrorist.” History unfortunately—Hon Phil Goff: He said the same thing about Nelson Mandela.RON MARK: Well let us be careful not to go there because like I say one person’s freedom fighter Phil Goff—you know—is another person’s terrorist. Having seen photographs of men whom I served alongside in the Middle East who were part of the SAS and the Rhodesian fire force and having seen photographs of bodies used for bayonet practice by terrorists it leads one who was in uniform to a quick conclusion that the people who carried out those acts—complete with their necklaces and the petrol contained inside the tyre burning people to death with their hands and knees tied—could quite easily be defined as terrorists Phil. They were from the African National Congress.Hon Phil Goff: Have those who slaughtered people—RON MARK: Phil you have had about five calls. I am just going to say that some of us still look upon those acts as pure acts of terror designed to terrorise people into accepting a new political order and I do not care how fancy or how lauded the name is today—those necklaces were acts of terror. Bayoneting the workers of a farmer in the bush of Rhodesia was an act of terror.I come back to the debate that we will always have and I am going to say to the Minister in the chair Chris Finlayson and to the chair of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee: give us a sense because at some stage someone is going to be looking at Hansard when some poor unfortunate chap—he might be a guy who has served with the New Zealand SAS he might be on circuit having taken leave without pay or a discharge from the New Zealand army or he might have gone across to assist some family in Ukraine against the Russians or might have gone across to Oman. We actually had three mercenary battalions in Oman and Phil loves to get all passionate about mercenaries. We used mercenaries over there as paid employees of Sultan Qaboos to do the right thing for that nation and to act in defence against the wrong things being done to it. We had occasions on which some of those chaps from Balochistān would come to us and say that they had problems at home and that bandits and people were raiding their—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Can the member—it is interesting with your experience—RON MARK: I know it is.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I know but when we are in the Committee stage it is about what is drafted in the bill so I will ask the member to come back to that.RON MARK: What is drafted in the Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill is a continual referral to a definition of terrorism. What is confusing for some people and hence an amendment is on the Table today is that some people disagree. What I would like to see in the bill or even in Hansard today is some statement that says that these people are not included and that it is not the intention to capture under this legislation New Zealanders who are going to fight people who deserve to be and need to be fought whether it be in Ukraine or any other part of the world.