Mapp Wayne: Counter-Terrorism Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Counter-Terrorism Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
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Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 Members and the public would think that a bill entitled the Counter-Terrorism Bill would be an accurate description of its purpose. Indeed in part it is. National is supporting this bill and its implementation of the conventions on plastic explosives—chemical tracing thereof Semtex—and also the nuclear proliferation issue. Those are perfectly laudable things to do and one would expect them to be in a bill about counter-terrorism. The question I have for the Minister and I would like him to rise to speak to this because it is an issue that was dealt with at length by the— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Can I remind the member that we are dealing with the title. It is a very narrow debate and the member must stick to the title. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: Madam Chairperson if you had not interrupted me you would have perceived precisely the point I am about to make. One would think that a bill entitled the Counter-Terrorism Bill would be confined to that. 
The Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee raised the issue with the Minister as to why this bill had some much wider provisions relating to the Crimes Act and the Misuse of Drugs Act. Those provisions may be desirable in their own right and indeed as the Minister has said in the past some of them are related to counter-terrorism—the need for tracking devices and things of that nature. The concern however is this. The title should be accurate. It should direct members of Parliament and especially members of the public to the purpose of the bill—what it is actually about—and it does not. 
Certainly part of the bill is about counter-terrorism but part of it is about general amendments to the criminal law. Submissions were made by the Law Society in particular and by various specialists who presented to the select committee. Members in the Chamber who were at the select committee will know what I am talking about when I say that the broader issues had to be drawn to their attention. They received at best cursory attention except when they had to put in supplementary submissions. That is simply not good enough. The Minister should take on board the injunction from the select committee. 
I would like the Minister to speak on this point to assure the Committee that this kind of practice will not continue—that bills will be more accurately described—and that a bill that has general propositions about the criminal law as desirable as they might be is not nevertheless described only as the Counter-Terrorism Bill. Why for instance did we not get a title that said something like “Counter-Terrorism and Amendments to the Crimes Act Bill”? That would have been a more accurate description. 
Members may ask why I have not put in a Supplementary Order Paper to that effect. Well frankly it would be pointless. The time for that is at the introduction of the bill not at this stage of the process. I am not going to put in an amendment. It would be too late. This is about directing the information to the public and to members at the time of the bill’s introduction not about what we do in the Committee of the whole House and not about what the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper does which is to divide the bill into separate components. That is all necessary and desirable but it does not address this central concern. 
I am concentrating on this issue because I think an important point of parliamentary procedure is that it is the Government’s duty to properly inform the public what bills are about. National does support the measures. We broadly support not just the counter-terrorism measures but also amendments to the Crimes Act and the Misuse of Drugs Act. What we are concerned about however is this creeping habit—one born of arrogance—that says the Government does not have to inform the public and can do just what it likes. 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 My speech will probably help the previous speaker Wayne Mapp. He said that he did not move an amendment to the title but I have moved an amendment to the title which I think he will vote for because it does accommodate his concern. The amendment is to delete the words “Counter-Terrorism” in the title and replace them with the words “Crimes Amendment and Counter-Terrorism”. It is then clear to anyone reading the bill that it concerns both issues. As Wayne Mapp pointed out there are not only amendments to the Terrorism Suppression Act—that is amendments relating to terrorism or counter-terrorism—but there are also amendments to the Crimes Act the Summary Proceedings Act and the Misuse of Drugs Act. I hope that the title I have proposed will meet with the approval of the Committee because it is more appropriate. As indicated in the second reading speeches by Wayne Mapp and also by Peter Dunne there was concern in the select committee that the bill tried to incorporate two quite different things—namely an amendment to our criminal legislation and amendments to the Terrorism Suppression Act. 
Unfortunately I was not able to get the committee to agree to split the bill into two. There was a clear interest to split it into two and have one bill dealing specifically with amendments to the Terrorism Suppression Act and the other bill dealing with amendments to the other three criminal Acts that I referred to. It would have been important for the whole process of discussion because I do not think we got quite the number of submitters particularly on amendments to the criminal legislation that we might have had if the bill had been correctly titled. People may not have realised that there were so many general amendments to criminal legislation under a bill called the Counter-Terrorism Bill. 
An additional problem is that when general amendments are incorporated into the criminal law under the Counter-Terrorism Bill people are scared off a bit from critically examining them. One of the phenomena today in the post - September 11 environment is that people are scared of being seen as soft on terrorism. They are a bit more scared to look at any changes that come forward under that title for fear that they will be deemed to be soft on terrorism. The case of Ahmed Zaoui that is going on in New Zealand right now is an illustration of why an amendment should have been made to the title at the beginning as Wayne Mapp indicated. 
It is true that for a long time people were scared to look closely at the Ahmed Zaoui case and discuss it in the public arena because they might get linked up with that guy he might turn out to be a terrorist and then they would be labelled as supporting terrorists. It was only in the months after he was imprisoned last December and as the debate has proceeded that people have been a bit more confident in coming out into the open and saying perhaps it was wrong that the security risk certificate procedure could override and cancel the refugee status determination proceedings at the level of the refugee status branch. The Refugee Status Appeals Authority can be overridden by the secret procedure of the Minister of Immigration in her putting down the security risk certificate on Ahmed Zaoui and then the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security operating in secret and not even giving Mr Zaoui or his lawyers any information on what the accusations are against him can determine his future and perhaps send him back to torture and possible death under the Algerian regime that he fled from many years ago. 
I think that is an indication of the problem of putting things under a title like “Counter-Terrorism” We also see that in the United States. Generally its criminal law has a lot of checks and balances and a Bill of Rights to back it up but one can look at Guantanamo Bay and at the abuse of due process and civil liberties in that area under the guise of counter-terrorism. About 650 people are sitting in Guantanamo Bay and a lot of them have been there for a couple of years. They could be there indefinitely. I think it was US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who said that they might be there until the war against terrorism is over.