Mitchell Mark: Passports Amendment Bill Customs and Excise Amendment Bill New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Amendment Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Mark: Passports Amendment Bill Customs and Excise Amendment Bill New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Amendment Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 09 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1258. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney):This is my final call on this legislation. Firstly I want to acknowledge our Attorney-General. It is quite extraordinary the process that we actually went through with this legislation. Most of our hearings were live-streamed so people were actually able to sit at home and watch them. I think the only hearing that was not live-streamed was the secret evidence of the director of the SIS which was appropriate; you were able to watch everybody else. People at home tonight can watch this debate live and see our Attorney-General and see how quickly he can respond and say he has already identified a couple of things that can be folded into the review.I want to reiterate the fact that this legislation as he said has a sunset clause. We did move that sunset clause from April 2018 to April 2017. That was a significant change which means we are getting the process started a lot earlier. We have included more reporting. We have wrapped more reporting around the legislation so that now there is a requirement for the director of the SIS to report every 6 months on how many times the SIS has actually had to use this warrantless visual surveillance power. We have changed the time in terms of actually getting a warrant issued from 48 hours to 24 hours—another significant change wrapping more control around the use of this power. We have a much tighter reporting regime so that now the Commissioner of Security Warrants and the Minister have immediate visibility over it. They have to approve the warrant but it also now gets forwarded through to the inspector-general and as I think the Minister alluded to—actually it might have been Mr Shearer who explained that—the inspector-general and her staff have the ability to go down to the offices of the SIS and check the files and go through the files and have full visibility. You cannot get much more transparent than that in terms of having our inspector-general have access to SIS files and the work in the operations that it is currently working on.We are responding to UN Resolution 2178 which means that it is incumbent on us as a nation to take measures to prevent Kiwis from leaving New Zealand to go and take up arms and start fighting with groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The Middle East has gone through a radical change. It has been changing a lot in the last 10 years and unfortunately the needle seems to have moved in the wrong direction. But what we are seeing at the moment with ISIS is unprecedented. It is a genuine real threat to global security. We have to be able to respond to that too. I can tell you right now that terrorist groups out there will be looking to see how we respond and they will be looking for weaknesses. If they sense that New Zealand is an easy target then we will become an easy target. I will tell you one thing: I would rather keep the gate locked and the bull inside the cage than have it open and have the bull come charging out and all of us looking at each other and pointing fingers and asking: “What went wrong?”.Our threat level has changed. It has changed from “very low” to “low”. It is still low and that is good but it means that we do have to respond. Actually it is incumbent on this Parliament to be able to respond quickly and that is what we have done because as the Attorney-General explained that is how circumstances led us to what we have done. We have tried to run the best most robust process that we could. We have given everyone who wanted to come and make an oral submission access to the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee. Dr Shane Reti made a very good point when he highlighted the number of submissions that we actually heard—and that was through the dedication and the hard work of the select committee. I want to acknowledge everyone on the committee.I am disappointed with New Zealand First. I want to acknowledge Dr Kennedy Graham. Although his position was obvious to us all right from the start—and he was straight up and honest and said: “Look the Green Party is not going to support this bill.”—he had some very good lines of questioning. In fact sometimes I thought that he was a National MP given some of his lines of questioning. [Interruption] Well Andrew had a go at mine so I guess it is only fair. I have to say that with New Zealand First I acknowledge Mr Mark’s experience and background—but look I do not know what the briefing was that Fletcher Tabuteau gave to you but as Mr Shearer pointed out it was way off base. There have been some big changes made to this bill and there has been some great work done in terms of wrapping more reporting around it and making it much tighter in terms of definitions and making sure that it is actually still fit for purpose so that our SIS is still able to respond to a change in threat level.Finally I just want to say that for me it was actually an honour coming back into the service of my country as a member of our House of Representatives. Although it was a very truncated process it was a real honour to be part of it and to be working with other members across the House in the spirit of making sure that our national security remains a priority to us all. Thank you.