Macindoe Tim: Search and Surveillance Bill — In Committee 
Macindoe Tim: Search and Surveillance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:678;Page:939] 
TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West) 
: 
 I am happy to assure the previous speaker David Clendon that the rights of law-abiding citizens are not infringed by the Search and Surveillance Bill. In fact on the contrary this represents a very elegant solution to a significant problem and one that is of considerable public interest. I too would like to join my colleague Dr Calder in commending our new Minister of Justice for the considerable body of work that she has done on this bill since she assumed her new portfolio and for the very detailed Supplementary Order Paper that she has produced to respond to some concerns that had been made apparent to the Justice and Electoral Committee when it looked at the earlier version of it. The important thing is to ensure that we get it right so that the provisions and the impact of the bill are appropriate in the modern context. 
I am very happy to speak on Part 1 of the bill. The previous speaker has just referred to clause 4A which is the purpose of the bill. It is important to have that purpose clearly understood—that the Search and Surveillance Bill will provide a comprehensive regime of search and surveillance powers under a single statute. Let us not underestimate how important that is because the many bills that have existed and have come together in a piecemeal fashion over five decades now have become as the Law Commission pointed out a bit of a jumbled mess. It was the Law Commission that recommended—in fact it urged in 2007 during the period of the previous Government—that there should be one bill “to bring order certainty clarity and consistency to the sprawling mass of statutory powers of search and surveillance scattered throughout the statute book.” And the Law Commission identified a need to address the glaring gaps where the law has failed to keep up with changes in modern society; we all know that it is a vastly different society even from 10 years ago with the rapid speed of technological development. It seems that every year there are new gadgets that open new possibilities for things that could be— 
Simon Bridges 
: Evil—evil-doing. 
TIM MACINDOE 
: —as Mr Bridges is pointing out in the wrong hands used to ill effect. So we need to ensure that our laws are relevant but also as Dr Calder has pointed out that we are mindful of the human rights provisions—the important human rights of all law-abiding citizens. I have to say I do not have a lot of interest in the human rights of those who are not interested in obeying the laws because quite often they threaten our safety our security our homes our elderly and the vulnerable in our society. Everything that we can do within lawful means to give our law enforcement agents the ability to apprehend them is vital. 
The Search and Surveillance Bill consolidates police powers from several different pieces of legislation as well as case law. There are also some new powers such as examination orders production orders surveillance device warrants and a warrantless power to preserve evidence of serious offences punishable by 14 years’ imprisonment or more. Those are very serious offences that we are considering here and we need to be mindful of just how important it is for us to deal with them to provide our law enforcement agents with the ability to apprehend such significant criminal offending. 
But these new powers are balanced by safeguards to protect human rights and the right to privacy. How does it do that? Well my colleague Dr Calder began to speak about that. The bill explicitly states that its purpose is to balance law enforcement and investigation powers with human rights values. There are a number of significant safeguards in the bill to deal with that and I am sure that those who are listening will be reassured by this. First the bill adheres to the basic concept that independent authorisation is needed before exercising search powers. Enforcement officers must justify the exercise of search powers to neutral issuing officers. Secondly there are detailed reporting requirements to the issuing officer to the chief executive of the relevant agency and to Parliament on the exercise of search and surveillance powers. These allow search powers to be monitored to ensure they are being used properly and not being abused. And as Dr Calder mentioned the Act will be reviewed in 2016 to ensure it is operating properly. So there are quite a number of reassurances and safeguards there. Thirdly the bill does not affect New Zealanders’ right under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act which was mentioned by Mr Clendon a few minutes ago to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. 
There are other safeguards in the bill which include the provisions that enforcement officers who make false search warrant or surveillance warrant applications can and will be penalised that more serious powers such as examination orders may be authorised only by judges not just by any issuing officer and that issuing officers from an agency cannot issue warrants to enforcement officers from the same agency to ensure neutrality and impartiality.