Parker David: Private Security Personnel and Private Investigators Bill — Third Reading 
Parker David: Private Security Personnel and Private Investigators Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:666;Page:14027] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I endorse the comments from the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee Chester Borrows and I am happy to say again that I respect the way in which he chairs that committee. It has a lot of work and he does that task very effectively. I think there was a slip of the tongue when he said that the genesis of this bill the Private Security Personnel and Private Investigators Bill was with National. Actually that was not correct. The bill was introduced by the Hon Clayton Cosgrove during the term of the previous Labour Government; he was the Minister in charge of the bill. 
I am happy to record as did the previous Labour speaker that Labour will be supporting this bill. The bill updates the legislation covering private security personnel and private investigators. That is important. There have been changes since the original private security legislation of the 1970s. A lot more quasi-police functions are now conducted by private security agents. In the 1970s the people who provided security at public sporting events for example were the police. These days the police generally are not the main providers of security services at big public functions be they sporting matches or cultural events. It is generally contracted out to private security people and there is a need for legislation to catch up with that reality. 
The only area where I disagree with the Government in respect of this bill is the granting of the right for security personnel to take photographs and to conduct other surveillance operations. Everyone on both sides of the House agrees that it is somewhat nonsensical at the moment that a private person can take a photograph in circumstances that under the status quo of the existing legislation a private security person cannot. That seems a nonsense and it should be fixed. But the more fundamental problem we have is that there is a bit of a gap in the New Zealand law at the moment. 
We have controls on how State agencies conduct surveillance operations including taking photographs of people yet we do not have constraints on non-State agencies. We have powers in favour of the police being able to go about the things they need to do when investigating crimes. But there are constraints on the police. In certain situations they have to get warrants before they can conduct search and surveillance operations. We have no such constraints in respect of non-State agency search and surveillance. The Law Commission has identified this as a gap in the New Zealand law. 
When the Law Commission was involved in the submissions process or in the development—I am not sure which—of the Private Security Personnel and Private Investigators Bill it stated that we ought not to confer on private investigators the right to take photographs until we have tidied up the underlying law relating to photographs surveillance and searches by non-State agencies. It is a nonsense that the State agencies that we confer these special powers on face some controls at law that are not applied to non-State agencies. 
In an earlier debate I gave the example of the Minister of Finance the Hon Bill English suffering the intrusion of people on the street taking photographs of the inside of his children’s bedrooms. There were problems in the underlying dispute that I do not think Bill English was free from fault in but in my view Bill English and his family ought not to have suffered the intrusion of people on the street taking photographs of the inside of the children’s bedrooms. That is an infringement of his civil liberties that is not justified. 
In my time as a Minister I suffered a similar action. In my case it was carried out by private investigators who were stupid enough to out themselves on TV. There is no doubt that those private investigators were being paid by the Exclusive Brethren. They were following and investigating me Michael Cullen and David Benson-Pope as well as probably Peter Davis and the Prime Minister. This was admitted by a private investigator who forgot the word “private” and did a public interview which was a silly acknowledgment. However it did show there are intrusions into the civil liberties of me every other member of Parliament and every member of the public in New Zealand and that they are not properly controlled by our current laws. 
Private investigators as a general rule should have no greater power than any other private individual. They should have the same powers as private individuals and I agree it is a nonsense that they cannot take photos but they should not have any more powers than private individuals have. I agreed with the logic that was used by the Law Commission when it recommended that we stick with the status quo in respect of private investigators not being able to take photographs and do other surveillance work until we properly control search and surveillance by non-State agencies. 
The problem that we risk creating with this legislation is that when the Law Commission comes up with its final recommendations as to the appropriate controls on search and surveillance by non-governmental agencies—that is by private people and by private investigators—private investigators will stick up their hands and say: “We’re special. We need more rights than the general public.” or they will come along and say: “The general public needs these rights too.” I disagree with that. 
I do not think it was right that anyone a private investigator or someone out on the street can use a camera to take photos from a distance. These are new issues that come to us as a consequence of new technologies. Those new technologies include not just cameras that are powerful from a distance but directional microphones tracking devices that can be put on cars and heat detection equipment that shows where people are. New technologies allow significant intrusions into the private lives of people and they ought not to be freely able to be used by busybodies. 
I think it is an absolute outrage that the privacy of Bill English and his children was infringed by the taking of photographs from the public street through his children’s bedroom windows. That is something that is properly controlled to protect the civil liberties of all of us so we can live private lives and not have them intruded upon unduly. Legislation will eventually come to this House at the recommendation of the Minister of Justice and the Law Commission to put some controls against inappropriate intrusions into our private lives. But private investigators because we are giving them these powers in the meantime in this legislation will come along and say: “We’re special. Don’t include us.” That is the point of principle that I think is wrong in this version of the bill. 
The original bill which was referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee was a bill that stuck with the status quo and put up with the nonsensical part of the law that says private investigators cannot take photographs and do surveillance without the consent of the occupant of the property. We all agree that that is imperfect legislation but it is imperfect legislation that we have had for 36 years. Another couple of years of that imperfection would not have done much harm but it would have sent the signal that we do not think private investigators should have any more powers than private people because they are effectively just agents of private people. 
If we think about what private investigators do we realise that they stand in the shoes of the people who employ them. They are doing things on behalf of private people and they should not have any more powers than private people have if they do those things themselves. If we need any more powers than that to investigate a crime it should be done through the police. Then there are the constraints around getting a warrant convincing a judge that it is the appropriate thing to do the evidential requirements that are enforced by the courts as to the appropriate use of police powers and indeed the political accountability of the Minister of Police if the police overstep the mark. 
None of those constraints is in play in respect of private investigators. That is why private investigators ought not to have more powers than ordinary people and that is why in my opinion we are creating a rod for our own backs in respect of that provision. Having said that it is good legislation overall. I hope that in this debate we have appropriately highlighted the risk we create in respect of the non-governmental search and surveillance powers and that in the future we tidy that up for everyone including private investigators. Thank you.