Dunne Peter: Visiting Forces Bill — In Committee 
Dunne Peter: Visiting Forces Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:13752] 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 There was rather a tetchy exchange with Mr Mark a little while ago but there now seems to be a degree of bonhomie between us. I am grateful that he has waved me into the firing line at this stage. I may say with friends like that who needs enemies but that is for another day. 
Can I pick up the comments that Mr Power has made—and members will be getting a sense already that the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee operated on a multipartisan basis in dealing with what is a complicated issue behind a relatively simple facade. As I said during the debate on the earlier clause we all know the point that we want to end up at. It is a matter of how we get there. 
If I go to clause 8 which Mr Power has covered—and I should just advise members that there is no collusion between any of us speaking here in terms of who is covering what; it just happens to be the point of the argument—what we wanted to be clear on was that the procedures that were in place for dealing with offences committed by visiting forces in New Zealand were quite well spelt out in terms of where the authority lay and those cases where the authority would lie off shore were also spelt out. 
Mr Power raised I think what is one of the grey areas. I cannot remember his precise language but it was about “diplomatic-speak” and the niceties of quiet conversations about how one deals with particular problems. While the legislation to a large extent tries to delineate the categories there will always be those cases at the margins where a quiet word in someone’s ear and a rushed trip home at night are going to occur. I think we just have to be mindful of that in the whole process. This legislation seeks to I guess corral those opportunities to the maximum extent possible by being quite specific. 
I look particularly at new subclause (1A) that has been inserted into clause 8. But then one also has to look at subclause (1B) alongside that which states: “In the absence of an applicable agreement covering the matter New Zealand courts have the primary right to exercise jurisdiction in respect of any act or omission that—(a) is alleged to have been committed by a member of the visiting force a member of its civilian component or a dependant; and …”. That is an attempt to catch those difficult situations in a way that I think Mr Power was referring to. 
I want to move on from clause 8 and look if I can at some of the clauses that I alluded to a little earlier on particularly clauses 12 13 and 14. Clause 12 relates to the provisions of the Armed Forces Discipline Act and makes it clear that in respect of the Visiting Forces Act as it will be certain sections of the armed forces discipline legislation and presumably the accompanying regulations apply with respect to the activities of a service tribunal operating within New Zealand. 
One needs to look at that alongside the provisions of clause 14 which have the potential to be the most difficult. Clause 14 “Manner in which sentence of imprisonment or detention may be served” states: “(1) If a member of a visiting force a member of its civilian component or a dependant has been sentenced by a service tribunal of the visiting force to imprisonment or detention the sentence may be served in accordance with Part IX of the Armed Forces Discipline Act 1971.”One of the difficulties that we will have to address potentially in respect of that is the type of situation that we might encounter where actions take place that are extremely marginal to say the least and whether we have the capacity in terms of longer-term detention to hold people here for significant periods of time. We have always seen these offences I suspect as relatively short term in nature. The question will arise inevitably if the sentence is to be of some duration. How will that fit alongside the provisions of clause 14(1)? Let me give members a parallel but in some sense a totally unrelated example. 
Simon Power 
: Ha ha! 
Hon PETER DUNNE 
: No this is not as silly as it sounds. It is parallel in the sense of the dilemma; it is unrelated in the sense of the particular circumstance. I am thinking of the French terrorists. When we got these people we tried them according to New Zealand law. We then sentenced them—I think from memory—to 10 years’ imprisonment in New Zealand leaving aside the diplomatic flow that followed that sent them off to a tropical island for the balance of their sentence. The problem we actually faced was how in the civil prison system we coped with having to detain people convicted of an offence that was quite out of line with anything we had experienced here before. They were not murderers and thugs and everything else in the classic sense—they were terrorists. 
The point I am raising—and why I say it is similar but unrelated—is that potentially the same sort of thing can arise here. I am not saying that visiting forces will be terrorists—they certainly will not be covered by this legislation if they are—but people who have committed minor disciplinary breaches or minor offences who end up under military detention in New Zealand coming alongside people who may be caught for more severe situations. I do not think that is quite what we have been accustomed to dealing with but it is an issue that arises here in relation to clauses 12 and 14. 
I am conscious that the Committee has indulged me a little bit so I will not go on to comment on clause 13 at this stage. I may come back to that at a later point.