Locke Keith: Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Locke Keith: Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 October 2007. Volume:643;Page:12675. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 This debate is important because for the first time the police are considering laying charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act against several New Zealanders. This issue has brought home the debate. No longer are we talking about al-Qaeda and the like. 
The fundamental problem with domestic anti-terrorism laws is that all serious violent offending is covered by our Crimes Act. We do not need a parallel set of laws called anti-terrorism laws where higher penalties are imposed simply because the offender has a political motive. That political motive may be shared by many ordinary peaceful New Zealanders. It might be protecting Tuhoe land rights or saving a block of native forests. Why should we penalise it with a higher penalty? Why should someone trying to save some dolphins or some native snails if the person ever happened to turn violent be subject to more years in jail than a violent gang member with no social conscience would be? Also those with a social conscience are designated as “terrorists” into the bargain. 
Most environmentalists or supporters of Maori rights would never in a million years think of resorting to violence and they would be in favour of any violent people being brought to justice but by using the criminal law not anti-terrorist laws that smear only their own political cause. The Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill sets up a new offence of engaging in a terrorist act with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. If this is passed someone could potentially get a life sentence for even engaging in peaceful civil disobedience where one does not intend to harm anyone. 
A terrorist act can be one where undue pressure is put on a Government by “serious interference with or serious disruption to an infrastructure facility if likely to endanger human life:”. Greenpeace tried to get the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee to narrow that definition so that it would catch only those people in Greenpeace’s words “with the intention of endangering human life”. But the Greens were the only supporters of Greenpeace in the select committee on that amendment. As things stand if this bill passes those organising a hospital strike or a disruptive protest on the scale of the 1981 Springbok Tour demonstrations could be up for a life sentence for serious disruption of an infrastructure facility in a way likely to endanger human life even if they in no way intended to endanger human life. 
 Many submitters to the select committee were also worried about the removal of the “avoidance of doubt” clause whereby one would not be in trouble if one’s donation to an organisation was “for the purpose of advocating democratic government or the protection of human rights.” even if the organisation one was donating to had engaged in some terrorist activity as broadly defined in the Terrorism Suppression Act—that is if one donated to an anti-apartheid cause yesterday or for a democratic Palestinian state today then one would not necessarily fall foul of the Act even if some African National Congress or Hamas members had been engaged in violent acts. The “avoidance of doubt” clause also recognises that we are in politically fraught territory and that one person’s terrorist can be another person’s freedom fighter. It all depends on where one stands politically. 
For example earlier this year a self-confessed State terrorist visited New Zealand and an Auckland judge ordered him to be arrested for war crimes under the Geneva Conventions Act. His name was Moshe Ya’alon who is a former Israeli defence chief who admitted ordering the bombing of a civilian neighbourhood in Gaza killing many people. The police to their shame point-blank refused to obey the judge and arrest him. Instead they declared they would wait for the Solicitor-General and Attorney-General to consider whether the prosecution should proceed. That consideration was either a model of bureaucratic efficiency or a travesty of justice. At 1 o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon the Solicitor-General received from Auckland a big box of legal submissions and detailed evidence. In a few hours he had speed-read and assessed them all recommended that the prosecution not proceed and forwarded them to the Attorney-General who signed them off by 5 p.m. 
State terrorists particularly if they are aligned to the American superpower are off our police and Government radar. Tuhoe and local environmentalists are seen to be easier targets which is not to prejudge the current cases before the courts until we have seen the evidence. Anti-terrorism laws seem to bring out the worst in police forces here and overseas. There is no way that the police had any justification or legal right to stop and search every vehicle going in and out of Tuhoe country and to photograph everyone into the bargain. All sense of proportion and respect for people’s rights seem to have been lost in our rush to join in the war on terror. 
But there is a better way: do not politicise the issue with anti-terrorism laws. If people have committed arms offences or other offences under our Crimes Act then charge them with those offences. If any offenders had a political motive then I am sure there are many many New Zealanders who would be setting them straight—their families their friends and their colleagues in political movements. 
We who are activists on environmental and social issues can use what is happening today to rededicate ourselves and all our organisations to peaceful campaigning to inoculate ourselves against any temptation to use violence. We have a wonderful tradition of non-violent protest in New Zealand. Sometimes it stretches into the realm of civil disobedience as when a peace flotilla confronted US nuclear warships in Auckland harbour. I think some of the people in this House were on those boats. We probably would not be nuclear-free today without those mass non-violent protests some of them against the law that took place in the 1970s and 1980s. 
The big protests against the impending Iraq war back in late 2002 and early 2003 helped ensure that we did not join George Bush’s disastrous invasion of that country. Although we did not join that war our Government has been an all-too-willing recruit into Mr Bush’s so-called war on terror which has undermined human rights across the world. This bill is another expression of that. It puts more powers into the hands of the State operating in secret and it reduces due process and the role of the courts. 
If this bill is passed the Prime Minister not only will be in charge of designating terrorist groups but also will be reviewing those 3 years later when previously the High Court had the review role. The designation and the review 3 years later will not be a transparent process because a lot of the classified information will not be shown to the affected person or group. 
The select committee did make one concession in relation to the designation process. It said that after the Prime Minister makes a designation he or she must report it to the Intelligence and Security Committee in Parliament. The problem is that that committee—and I asked a written question about it recently—has met for only 2 hours and 38 minutes in the 2 years since the election unless it has had a meeting in the last week or two. 
Due process is even more undermined by a provision in the bill to automatically put UN designations on the New Zealand list even when our Government has clear evidence that the people or groups concerned are not terrorists. It is just silly to take out of the existing Act a provision that evidence contrary to the UN evidence can be taken into account. Following UN Security Council resolutions and recommendations does not mean that we should abandon our adherence to all the other international human rights standards and stop giving people a chance to prove their innocence. 
The Green Party will be voting against this bill as it is a serious attack on our human rights reinforcing and extending what is already bad in the Terrorism Suppression Act. However the Green Party does support one part of the bill—that is the provisions implementing our adherence to the nuclear terrorism convention and the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. 
I am most disappointed that the Government did not listen to the overwhelming majority of submitters opposed to the bill including expert submitters from the Human Rights Commission who said that this bill should not proceed before a proper review of the existing weaknesses in the Terrorism Suppression Act and other expert submitters from Greenpeace Amnesty International and the New Zealand Law Society. The Law Society said that it was stupid to set up a parallel set of terrorist offences which would only make it confusing for judges in our courts to decide whether to prosecute on terrorism charges or on charges under the Crimes Act. It will be very confusing and as I said earlier it will be prejudicial to many people to have this set of terrorism laws.