O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. If I might just acknowledge obviously the tragedy that has happened on White Island and continues to unfold. Obviously this is my first opportunity to acknowledge somewhat personally in the House those who have died and those who are still waiting for knowledge of their loved ones. And thanks to all the first responders. I'll take a few moments to address this bill primarily as the chair of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee. And thank you for the kind words from members. It's always worrying when a member of National gets praised by the Labour Party. It probably causes me trouble. But I would like to start as the chair of the committee and then add some more personal thoughts. In one way I do thank the Minister for bringing the bill to the House. It's an important intention but I stand along with Mark Mitchell and others on this side who feel it's too weak. I would say for the record as well that the time—effectively two and a half three weeks—to consider the bill was far too short. So I'd like in this small speech in the House to acknowledge the many New Zealanders who wanted to submit and didn't find they had time or those who were able to quickly write some thoughts but would have liked to consider it further and to express my disappointment that we didn't have that time. But equally it's not the power of the committee to make changes to that. We were given the report-back date. So to that end I do thank all the members of the committee across the House who worked extra-long hours on sitting days and pretty much every non-sitting day to make sure we could report this back in some shape or form and that is a bill that has some minor changes—three of them. Actually that's not quite fair. There are three changes; all of them are important. But I think you're hearing Mr Speaker already a flavour particularly from this side of the House that there was a sense there should have been a lot lot more. It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge—and I won't do it by name for a variety of reasons mainly because we're dealing with terrorism intelligence and security matters. But we were well served by some excellent officials across a range of ministries and agencies and I just want to acknowledge them and their hard work and again the time pressure that we were under.The bill fundamentally is about a small but real number of New Zealanders who have gone overseas to fight primarily if not almost exclusively in jihadist activity. The bill of course is setting up for the future. We don't know what other forms of terrorism may develop but there is a real possibility of these New Zealanders desiring wanting or having to return to the country. Until this law is passed we don't have the ability to actually control or put some structure around their return; be that where they're going to be living who they can visit whether they should have internet access and so forth. And why that's not possible is that because they've been involved in terrorist activities overseas we don't have the domestic evidence. Put it this way: we're not going to be sending New Zealand police officers to Syria to work out what crimes they've committed. So it is a fairly serious bill and it's one of the reasons why this is a bill that sits within the civil not criminal jurisdiction. It was put to the committee many times Why are we not structuring this as a criminal piece of law?" And the advice that we've got and we've somewhat articulated in the report is that fundamentally there is no New Zealand criminal evidence to present. If there is we can deal with that. This is for those people returning where there isn't that evidence.The Minister's touched on several of the changes; the one that I felt was particularly important and we have recommended if the House continues to proceed with this bill is around name suppression. The bill as originally drafted would allow the let's say suspected accused noted terrorist to ask the court to have their name made public. The court can suppress it but it was basically in the hands of the accused the terrorist for want of a better word to say "Oh no I want my name out there." The committee thought that there was the risk of notoriety that someone may actually just choose: "Yeah I want my name out there. I want to be known." We thought it was much more prudent that the court have the ability to make a judgment on that to say "Yes that's OK" or "Actually in this case we're not."So importantly the committee has not recommended that the bill proceed. We were not able to come to agreement but we have made three suggested changes. But I would stress now speaking more personally that the bill doesn't go far enough. And it's fundamentally—and I think Mark Mitchell in his contribution is right—that the Green Party was required in order to get this through the House. I think the Green Party and I have very different views when it comes to notions of due process natural justice and human rights. Where this bill is headed and where it currently sits presumes far too many rights to the terrorist—if you will—and not enough for the public safety and welfare of New Zealand. So I might just touch on a few of those.Mark Mitchell touched on the detention capacities. The New Zealand Police were abundantly clear to us that they would like to have the ability—the word they used was "tools"—to be able to detain someone at the border. Again I'm not going to go through all of the security arrangements at the moment but there is a limited time that someone can currently be detained at the border and that is not enough time to go and get the interim court orders for what would be an unusual circumstance but we are trying as a Parliament to pre-empt all problems as best we can so that the Police have the ability to detain someone at the border. That's been declined despite—I again want to stress—it being not just simply National Party MPs wanting that but it was something that the Police spoke to.I have concerns about the potential compromising of some of our intelligence operations. Again the push primarily from the very left and the Green side is that the person coming back into the country needs to fully understand what they're accused of and why. That's not unreasonable to a point but if it ultimately means that intelligence operations are being compromised in open court that's a problem and in fact it continues—if you will—the terroristic action.The age: the bill only applies to people over 18 years of age. It should be no surprise to anyone in this House that terrorists aren't defined by being 18 years and older. There are a number of examples including in the Commonwealth Realms where terrorists are under 18 years of age—and this bill strictly doesn't cover them. Oranga Tamariki provided good advice to us but I will say that there were two issues: they said they could cope with it and to the extent that I think they'll be able to deal with children who've got serious issues—including being terrorists—that is one thing. But the fundamental problem is that for Oranga Tamariki to—if you will—kick in they need to have the requisite evidence for the act to occur. The gnawing concern in my head is that that evidence may not be present to do with that under-18-year-old. They're not really in one way the appropriate agency. They were at pains to say that they'd work with Police and so forth but now you're creating gaps—and that's no disrespect to Police or Oranga Tamariki or any groups; it's just when you are doing that multi-agency you're running into problems.Look the other issue is around the length of the control orders themselves. Unlike many other jurisdictions in similar countries these control orders only last for six years. Members might think—particularly on the Government side—that that's OK. But a week or so ago a man ran out on to London Bridge and killed two Cambridge ex-students; he knifed them in the Fishmongers' Hall in London and then ran out on to London Bridge. A jihadist committed terrorism. He had been effectively under a control order for six years; he'd been going through a reintegration programme. I'm sure that for some it works jolly well but clearly for this fellow the de-escalation programme didn't work—and it was six years. I think members should be very cautious and not naive to think that somehow a returning terrorist with their zealotry will necessarily change. I think it's really important to stress that we're not saying that if someone comes back we slap a control order on for life; it's just that the court should have the ability to continue to extend it if needed. I for one do not want to see what happened in London happen here.So there are a range of issues. The National Party will be putting forward Supplementary Order Papers. It's absolutely our intention to make this be world-class legislation. We are absolutely unapologetic that we want it to be as tough and strong as possible because fundamentally Parliament has one duty and one duty only and that is to serve the public and to ensure its safety. Thank you Mr Speaker."