Brownlee GerryHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): Well Mr Speaker I think it's appropriate that you should have noted that the speech was read. It was obviously prepared in the—SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat. The member knows well that my having ruled on a matter he cannot now refer to it.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Well why would we ever have a point of order where we talk about Speakers' rulings? We must be able to refer to it.All I'm saying is—Mr Speaker if I may continue—that that was a dreadfully sanctimonious offering to the House that really just tells the House that the Greens think a wet bus ticket is all that's required to prevent a potential terrorist from committing some kind of atrocity in New Zealand. I can't understand why there are so many members in this House who have their heads in the sand about this sort of activity. Terrorists cause trouble all over the world. We are not immune because of our isolation and we found that out on 15 March. No one knew about that particular terrorist but if they did would anybody in New Zealand not want him to have been in some way confined in the activities that he could undertake on a daily basis? I don't think there would be.This bill is incredibly weak. It goes out to tell New Zealanders that there is now protection should a terrorist turn up on our borders enabling these control orders to be put in place. But the terrorists who come here are not the sort of people who are going to volunteer their position. They're not going in and declaring I am a terrorist and you need to do whatever you can to stop me doing what I'm going to do or want to do." The reality is that they will be known as they arrive at the border because we do have good intelligence relations through the Five Eyes network and other networks and so we should understand we should have a fair idea when someone is coming into the country from another part of the world. When they get here what the Green Party wants is for them to be given the total benefit of the doubt about apparently their sincerity to move into this country or to move to this country and become suddenly a good and law-abiding citizen. The fact is that most of them don't know what it is to be a good and law-abiding citizen. We have simply said that if we're going to have a bill that tells New Zealanders they are secure against these sorts of people coming into the country and freely practising their terror tactics it has to have some teeth. This bill doesn't.So let's be clear: someone has arrived at the border they've got a history of being part of terrorist organisations and they are trying to enter New Zealand—they come as a refugee or they come as someone who is displaced with no passport. There are international obligations on New Zealand to deal with them at that point but four hours is all this bill will allow for the case to be made to the High Court for the control order to be put in place. The control order doesn't stop them entering the country. It doesn't necessarily put them into some kind of detention situation. It may not even put them into any kind of electronic surveillance situation. They could just be under sort of a "report when you want to" - type regime. So into the country they come and if they're coming they'll have friends here. Do we assume that they won't be wanting to proselytise some of their terrorist-type views? All we are saying is that it might take a little longer than four hours to get the legal requirements in place.We're further saying that if we're going to have a regime that does not have mandatory reporting in it as a minimum then we're actually treating that potential terrorist—someone who has a known terrorist association history—better than we treat some people who are out on electronic remand from the courts. That I think is appalling. We're actually extending greater rights to someone who has effectively no right to enter the country than we do to our own citizens who are in criminal default of our law here. I can't understand why the New Zealand First Party have agreed to that. What I do think though is that there's been a bit of a conflab over on the Government side. The Greens have put out their suite of very very weak provisions in this bill and New Zealand First have said "OK well we'll agree with it this time. The Nats will support it. It'll look like the whole Parliament's in agreement and we'll just move on from there." Well we're not in agreement because we're not about to pull the wool over the eyes of New Zealanders.It was a young person 15 years of age who committed the terrorist act in Melbourne. Under this bill that person with their history of having been brought up in that environment having been radicalised by those organisations that want to commit those terrorist activities would suddenly fall under the care—and I say the word "care"—of Oranga Tamariki. Seriously do we believe that Oranga Tamariki has the capacity or should be required to have the capacity to deal with someone in that situation? It's just ridiculous and for us to say "Well it doesn't need to be in here because it might not happen etc. etc."—the whole bill is about stuff that might not happen. So we don't think that was an unreasonable sort of thing at all.So we want a longer period that someone can be detained at the border while the formalities of the legal process are gone through. We want 14 to be the age at which someone would fall under this regime and then we want the term of imprisonment which at the moment is ridiculous if they breach a control order—now how would you breach a control order? You don't have to report you're not isolated to one part of New Zealand and you don't really go about your business any old day. The way the control order will be breached is if someone starts to undertake terrorist activity—acquires weapons acquires explosives starts targeting various little parts of the country. So they've already done something pretty radical. They may not at that point have committed the terrorist act but they've breached the control order. So it's either a $2000 fine or up to two years in prison. That's a joke. That's an absolute joke and I can't understand why parties that go out there and say they're in favour of stronger laws to protect New Zealanders would support that.We want to have a bill that does give our authorities some teeth some power to actually do something should some of these people turn up. Make no mistake: how many people do we have on the terror watch list here in New Zealand? When we were in Government we made no secret of it. It was 69 people. The current Government hasn't mentioned the number; it's probably bigger. But if any of those people in New Zealand made contact with people outside of New Zealand got them in through a refugee camp to build their cell those people coming in are not under surveillance. They might have a control order put on them but it doesn't mean they can't live wherever they want in New Zealand it doesn't mean they have to report in to authorities at any given time and it places very few other restrictions on them. So they could happily just lose themselves in society for a short time reconnect with some of those ratbags that we know already exist in New Zealand and then make a big statement to the world with some kind of terrorist activity. If anyone in this House thinks it can't happen they've got an incredibly short memory; it doesn't even go all the way back to the late summer of 2019.This is a sham of a bill. It is I think deceptive in its title—Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill—and I think it leaves New Zealanders in a position of being told by the Government "Don't worry everything's under control." when in fact it is far from it. The hand of friendship the hand of helping people up etc. has been extended to potential terrorists. Remember that they're a potential terrorist only if they are known to have the past associations in other countries or have engaged in those activities in another country. They're not just any old person coming out of a refugee camp; they are known to be engaged with terrorist organisations or being terrorists themselves. It's weak it's sad and it is a deception that's being perpetrated on the Government with the agreement of New Zealand First because of the Greens."