Franks Stephen: Identity (Citizenship and Travel Documents) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Franks Stephen: Identity (Citizenship and Travel Documents) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:625;Page:20127] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I have been looking in vain for provisions that deal with the question Mr Locke has just raised. The procedures set out in new sections 29AA and 29AB inserted by clause 40 to my alarm treat all three categories of restricted or withdrawn travel document the same. I believed and I fully expected that there would be a distinction. I consider the withdrawing of a New Zealander’s freedom of travel the passport—thereby turning New Zealand into a little personal Berlin for a New Zealander—as a very different matter from withdrawing the right of a privileged foreigner to live here or to demand a New Zealand travel document. 
So I am very concerned when I look at the amendments proposed by Mr Locke and Mr Robson. As far as I can see they have not dealt with the extraordinary powers that are given in new sections 29AA and 29AB. I am not sure that I have time to try to draft an amendment but it seems to me a very bad principle indeed that a New Zealander could effectively be locked behind our borders on the basis of information that not even the person’s own lawyers let alone the person could see and that the summary prepared by the court is of that untested information. If I am reading the amendments correctly we will not even know how many times that has happened. 
There is one safeguard I guess. The threshold standard that the Minister must satisfy is very high indeed. The test of risk to national security is I think of an extraordinarily high standard. I am really puzzled as to why this legislation is not crafted in a way that makes the standard for a New Zealander—the right to leave and re-enter one’s own country—very very strictly protected. But why should someone who has a privilege in coming here who does not have the rights of a New Zealander have the same kind of protection in the first place? When it gets to procedure and the processes a court follows—the requirement on the court that it not disclose the classified security information supplied by the Attorney-General—why should the New Zealander suffer the same kind of offensive process? I am really astounded that this provision got through the Government Administration Committee without the committee saying: “Hang on a minute. It is OK if some foreigner has come here and perhaps abused our hospitality but it is certainly not OK for a New Zealander to face secret evidence that not even his or her own lawyers can see to never get access to it and to be trapped in New Zealand on the whim of a politician.” 
I have to agree with Mr Locke in so far as the legislation extends to a New Zealand citizen. I think it is poor that we are treating all three categories the same. It is poor that they are all being treated the same in terms of the test for the national security breach and it is even poorer that they are all being treated the same in terms of a very offensive procedure. Although I had thought that this was something we ought to be voting for having been through the legislation and heard this part of the debate in this Committee stage I now believe that we should be considering voting against this one. 
The reasons for that are very different from those of Mr Robson and Mr Locke in most respects but are similar in one respect. The freedoms of New Zealand citizens should not be infringed upon simply because we have a Government that is too wimpish and too scared of international opinion to draw a proper distinction between the rights and privileges of a New Zealand citizen and the privileges of people who come here as guests and should recognise that they are here on sufferance until they become New Zealand citizens themselves after which time they must be treated in every respect the same as every other New Zealand citizen. I think it is a disappointment that there is not a set of amendments. I do not know whether I will get a chance but I will try to draft some.