Harawira Hone: Search and Surveillance Bill — Third Reading 
Harawira Hone: Search and Surveillance Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:678;Page:1262] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Leader—Mana) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch. Kia ora tatou katoa e te Whare. Yesterday I spoke about the devastation visited upon the people of Tuhoe by the police terrorism raids of 2007. Today I speak to a bill the Search and Surveillance Bill that may make the Tuhoe experience the norm for many other New Zealanders.  
Last year Parliament rushed through the Video Camera Surveillance (Temporary Measures) Bill which gave extraordinary powers to State agencies to invade the privacy of citizens without having to prove a good reason for doing so. The only submission received in support of it was—surprise surprise—from the police. Everyone else including the Law Society Criminal Bar Association civil rights groups and hundreds of ordinary citizens opposed it seeing it as an overreaction and expansion of the State a breach of human rights an assault on the right to privacy a breach of the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure and a move to legalise illegal police activity.  
This bill is even worse. It is meant to streamline search and surveillance by redefining the powers of more than 70 separate Government agencies but what it actually does is give police powers to those agencies to gather information without a search warrant. Under this bill your right to silence will effectively no longer exist. Police can make you report for questioning not because they have any evidence but simply because they suspect you of being involved in a range of offences—even minor ones like trespass or disorderly behaviour. Under this bill you can be made to tell a judge why if you said anything you might incriminate yourself—heads you lose; tails you lose. Under this bill the police do not have to prove anything to find you guilty. Now they just have to order you to produce papers you are suspected of having or may have in the future. And if you refuse to supply those papers even if you do not have them you can be sent to jail for 12 months. Under this bill police will not need to get a search warrant to bug your phone put a camera in your house or put a tracking device on your car. Now all they will need is a surveillance device warrant which can be obtained by any officer of 70 different agencies based on their suspicion that what they find might be used in the prosecution of a crime.  
This bill goes way beyond what they have in Europe in Canada and even in the US. Under this bill there will be no restriction on the use of anything the police find during a search and surveillance operation. If the surveillance data shows evidence of a different offence than that for which the warrant was originally obtained then that material can still be used in court. Under this bill once you are detained enforcement officers can search your home your workplace your car your friend’s home or any place with which you are associated without a warrant if they believe they can find material related to an offence. You do not have to be guilty of anything you do not even have to be arrested; you only have to be detained.  
Mana opposes this bill because it leads to a police State where the liberties and freedoms that most of us now enjoy will disappear where the powers of the police will be extended without the approval of the judiciary where the powers of Government agencies will assume more authority than the rights of ordinary New Zealanders where there will be an assumption of guilt not only on an alleged offender but on anybody who knows that person and where enforcement officers can bug your granddaughter’s phone install a hidden camera in your daughter’s bathroom download the files from your wife’s computer and steal your files without even having to prove that a crime has been or will be committed. Mana opposes this bill because it justifies the trauma and the damage inflicted unnecessarily on the people of Tuhoe in 2007. If that is what search and surveillance is meant to be in the future then woe betide Tuhoe woe betide Maoridom woe betide people who dare to stand up for the things they believe in. Indeed woe betide New Zealanders at large because this bill will signal the end of free thinking free association and freedom itself. This bill is Draconian and dangerous and Mana stands alongside all New Zealanders who support freedom in opposing this bill. Kia ora tatou.