Delahunty Catherine: Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 25 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:805. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):The Green Party opposes the truncated select committee process for every reason. One is that it is a ridiculous idea. It is an abuse of democracy and it is a tokenistic approach to what people in this House are claiming is an incredibly serious issue. They are so concerned about civil liberties but we are going to have 3 days to talk about it? Get real. This is not OK with us this is not acceptable and it is not a real exploration of the issues. Just because the Law Society and some other bunch of very valuable people—the New Zealand Legislation Advisory Committee—got a heads-up what about everyone else? What about the non-elite? What about the people—the non-lawyers—who are actually going to be affected by this bill? When are they going to get to have a say? They are going to find out that they have got 3 days. There is absolutely no way that we could support this truncated position and there is no terrible urgency if the House is serious about doing this properly which we should be.We have listened to the debate on the substantive issues in the bill and a lot of very serious important issues around a consensus on national security have been raised so what are we going to do with it? We are going to talk about it for 2 days then we are going to rubber-stamp it and we are going to ram it through by Christmas. Very very unimpressive even if we supported the bill which we completely do not. It is a very very unimpressive way to approach serious issues of human rights civil liberties and national security. It is not surprising because the Government does this sort of thing quite a lot but it is not good enough either.We will support Labour’s amendment but we would like to go further than that. We think there should be a proper full process that takes its due time not necessarily just reporting back in February. It should actually give a proper process for a decent select committee hearing so that all of the range of people who have views on this issue such as the experts on civil liberties who are often people who have experienced that loss the communities that are going to be affected and the people who are potentially stigmatised by this legislation—all of those people actually get heard. We agree that there should be a national consensus on national security issues but it is not going to be achieved by this kind of railroading abuse of process. It is a tiny tiny little tick-box attempt at democracy.We all know that the select committee process is not perfect but what we also know is that the select committee process does actually teach MPs things. We learn which is a good thing rather than having us just talking to each other. Actually what we learn from the select committee process is that some of the things that we have drafted are wrong and stupid and that they have unforeseen consequences for people whom we do not normally think about. So it is a really good idea for the widest possible group of people to have input into any law that potentially reduces our human and civil rights.We will not be voting for this bill because we cannot imagine that it is ever going to look like something we could support but we would be a lot happier if the select committee process actually was a proper select committee process.Ian McKelvie: You won’t be happy whatever happens.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: When the member of the House tells me to get real it does not get any more real than this. Today in the House the SIS was heard to apologise. There is a smear campaign being run out of the Prime Minister’s office. We are supposed to be happy about the state of democracy in this country and extend powers to those in the SIS who have been a bunch of incompetents so far in my 61 years of life. We deserve a whole lot better than that we need a whole lot better than that and we will not support this kind of axing of the core democratic things that this Parliament is supposed to be about.So the Green Party is going to oppose this motion. We will support Labour’s amendment because it is better than not extending the period at all but it is not adequate and we are pretty ashamed to even have to hear about this. It is just not good enough. Thank you.