Peters Winston: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members 
Peters Winston: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members 
[Volume:622;Page:17678] 
7.  
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: What steps if any is she prepared to take to ensure our national security is protected? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 Clearly Part 4A of the Immigration Act inserted in 1999 has not functioned effectively. The Government is now focused on drawing up law that can be effective in protecting New Zealand’s national security and we will work with other parties that share our concern about the evident flaws in the current law. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Will the Prime Minister give the same high priority she has accorded to other legislation rushed through before Christmas to my member’s bill which seeks to urgently amend the Immigration Act to close off the legal loophole that allowed the Supreme Court to free convicted Algerian Ahmed Zaoui; if not why not? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I do not think that it would be appropriate to support the member’s bill which is a simple piece of legislation that would see this Parliament passing law to put Mr Zaoui back in jail. I do not think that would be appropriate. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: What sort of welcome mat for terrorists is her Government rolling out with its totally incompetent handling of the Zaoui case in which a man with terrorist convictions who had been kicked out of three Western countries could flush his passport down an airplane toilet claim refugee status be showered in millions of dollars of legal aid and can now qualify for a weekly emergency welfare benefit? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: It would be a strange person who thought that 2 years in jail was a welcome mat. That particular welcome mat was provided for by legislation passed by the National Government in 1999. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I am warning members that I am having no interjections during questions. 
Keith Locke 
: Why is the Prime Minister in her proposed amendments to the security risk certificate procedure trying to take away or limit the longstanding right of judges to determine whether someone is unjustly detained and give that person bail and why does she think that Governments with political agendas should be able to use national security as an excuse to detain people without charge and without full recourse to courts to get bail? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: A balance has to be struck between the requirements of national security and individual liberties and there will be times when an individual’s liberties are constrained because the interests of national security override that. 
Dr Muriel Newman 
: Does the Prime Minister support her security officials’ view that Mr Zaoui is a security risk; if so what does she intend to do about it? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I have never offered a substantive opinion on the Zaoui case. What I would like is for the law to work effectively. The law operates with the Director of Security on his own judgment without direction from me as Minister issuing a security risk certificate. The procedure passed into law in 1999 says that decision should then be reviewed by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. Two years after this man arrived because this law created a litigator’s paradise that review has not been able to begin. That is what is wrong with the law and that is what I aim to fix and I trust I will have the cooperation of the member’s party New Zealand First and National for doing it. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: When? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: Next year. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I appreciate that the Prime Minister gave a long and quite interesting reply but it was not actually to the question that she was asked. She was in no way asked for her opinion on the security status of Mr Zaoui—members in this House know that that is not a matter for Ministers. What she was actually asked was a very exact question: “Does she support her officials in reaching the opinion that Mr Zaoui is a security risk?” and that question she did not actually answer. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I thought the Prime Minister did address the question. She gave a very long answer and made many points in her reply. 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: Is the Prime Minister able to give the House any assurance in view of the litany of events that she has just outlined that the Zaoui case can be brought to swift resolution and that he will not now spend his next 2 years on bail awaiting a decision? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: Because the law has created a litigator’s paradise I cannot guarantee that he will not spend the next 2 years on bail. The Crown has of course appealed the Court of Appeal decision. The Supreme Court has not decided whether to hear it. It is going to hold a hearing on that matter in February and it will then no doubt deliberate on whether it wants to hear it and if it does want to hear it then no doubt it will take some time to find the time to schedule it. It may or may not uphold the Court of Appeal decision and we still do not have the beginning of the review. That is why I say that this law clearly cannot work satisfactorily and this country is entitled to national security law that enables people about whom serious issues of security risk have been raised to have those issues speedily judged. 
Keith Locke 
: Why is the Prime Minister trying to toughen up the security risk certificate procedures when judicial and quasi-judicial bodies like the Refugee Status Appeals Authority can deal with classified evidence in confidence and deal with national security threats; and is that not a better approach than the security risk certificate procedure where the final say lies with a Minister of the Crown whose judgment will be distorted by political considerations? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: There are so many errors of fact in that question one does not know where to begin. In the first case the Refugee Status Appeals Authority did not see classified security information. I might also observe secondly that the Refugee Status Appeals Authority without hearing any evidence from the Governments of France or Belgium condemned their legal systems as somehow unworthy and improper in the decisions that they reached. It did not appear to take into account the fact that Mr Zaoui had appealed to the European Court and failed that he had been denied entry into the United Kingdom and that he was deported from Switzerland. 
Keith Locke 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I think the Prime Minister is misleading the House there because the Supreme Court— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member is trying to litigate an answer. He cannot do that.