SpeechSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): It's always excellent to have the likes of Hobbes and Locke being quoted in this House and the member who's just resumed her seat Vanushi Walters will know just how excited I am about that. Fortunately for this House—and for you Mr Speaker—I will not be engaging in that. I'm going to stick to the bill the Counter-Terrorism Acts (Designations and Control Orders) Amendment Bill. The member who has resumed her seat has outlined I think very well—as she said this is a very complex area of law. It's one of those classic cases where we are balancing various rights. At one degree this is trying to balance the rights of the group of the community—the safety particularly of the community—with the particular freedoms of an individual and those in particular that we call terrorists. And it's quite a balance.I think it really is important to acknowledge that the Justice Committee—and again other speakers not only in this reading but in others have talked about it—has worked incredibly hard importantly alongside officials advisers the public the Parliamentary Counsel Office and others to tease out areas which did trouble us. I want to make it clear to the House that it wasn't that anything was felt to be particularly bad in the legislation; it was just trying to think through how this might manifest in different scenarios because ultimately we are giving enormous powers in this counter-terrorism Act. And I want to make the next comment clear: it's not about any particular individual but we're giving enormous powers to the Prime Minister and that in itself at one level is not a wrong thing. And again I want to stress that it's not about whoever is the Prime Minister at the time but ultimately one person gets quite a lot of powers; naturally with a caveat—there are lots of conditions within the bill; there's lots of advice and so forth. But it's quite substantial power.I suppose I'm wanting to say for those who are listening at home—or of course the Hansard into the future—that the select committee spent a lot of time we as the House have spent a lot of time considering this and I think we've landed in the right place. You might hear the slight hesitation in my voice. That's not because I have any particular issues or problems—I think we have landed in a good space—but I'm always nervous when you're dealing with something this substantial; that we may have missed something or overcooked or undercooked something. Who knows? But to quote another philosopher—Voltaire—the enemy is the perfect of the good." So let's give it a crack—Hon Michael Woodhouse: "The perfect is the enemy of the good."SIMON O'CONNOR: "The perfect is the enemy of the good"—sorry. OK I'm being well corrected here which is possibly illustrating the point between perfection and good! But anyway—[Interruption] Oh Lord! OK we were doing so well until that point. As has been traversed—I'm not going to go too long into it now because I'm getting concerned—there are two sorts of pillars to this: one is around designations; one is around control orders. I'll start with the latter.Control orders are effectively those measures those controls which can be put around those people who are deemed to be terrorists. One of the elements—I raised it yesterday in the committee of the whole House—was particularly around the nature of objectionable materials. There were concerns put forward by the likes of the Free Speech Union and others that this bill would see the notion of terrorism—or those objects those points of media which we deem at this time to be objectionable could now be seen as terroristic. That understandably is a problem. I certainly sit on the side that first and foremost doesn't want more violence. I don't like it. I don't like a lot of these video games and other things which are out there glorifying violence. But I am also someone who is quite nervous about expanding who gets to decide what is and isn't appropriate.However those objections valid as they were fault if you will or don't fully understand what this law is doing. In effect for a control order to be in place you've got to be already identified to be a terrorist having been involved in terrorist activities.As a consequence of that this piece of legislation is expanding—well it's expanding what the State can do but it is limiting what access an individual can have to in this case objectionable material. I struggled with it yesterday trying to articulate it which in itself is an indication that I haven't fully grasped it in my head. But ultimately we are not restricting the rights of ordinary New Zealanders to various materials—objectionable offensive extreme as they may be. What we are saying is that if you are the subject of a control order then that can be more widely interpreted now and I think that is appropriate.The second is around designations and that again falls to the prerogative of the Prime Minister on advice to make sure that they are able to designate entities and individuals as terrorists. By the way this is an amendment bill so again for those at home this is not new; we're amending an existing piece of legislation. But we're just ensuring that those designations can remain. Put really really simply we'd found unfortunately through experience that someone being in prison for terrorist activities was finding that the designation could expire. So just one example of what this amendment bill does is ensure that that designation does not expire while they're in prison and there's a whole lot of other elements with that as well.So as we're saying overall it's a good bill. Again I'll just put on the record I've just got a slight nervousness not for any particular reason and I suppose it's just a reflection of something that is so substantial. But I will make one last little plea because that's what I do because designations of course as it says here the scheme will allow the Prime Minister to designate terrorist entities be they individuals or groups. I've spoken about it in the House before but I do call on the Prime Minister and this Government or any future Governments that the likes of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps should be in this country designated a terrorist organisation and also—and it won't surprise some members of the House—I see the likes of Hezbollah and Hamas; they should also be designated terrorist organisations. I just want to make that call here today but in particular with all that's happening at the moment particularly with the movement around Mahsa Amini around women life and freedom it is well beyond time that this Government this Parliament makes sure that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is aptly made a terrorist entity in this country. Thank you Mr Speaker."