Clendon David: Search and Surveillance Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clendon David: Search and Surveillance Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 20 March 2012. Volume:678;Page:1097. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 I am pleased to take another call on the Search and Surveillance Bill and on Part 3 to once again affirm the Greens’ opposition to this bill. There is a very slim margin majority—or has been up to now—in the House for this bill. It is becoming very obvious in the media and in public generally that people understand what this bill is intending to do and that the majority in the street and in the public domain are very much in opposition to this bill. We are very happy to join that opposition and to voice it in this Committee. 
 We have no problem with some of the stated intentions of this bill which are to rationalise what is admittedly a very convoluted complex array of legislation. We recognise of course that the police and other bodies need investigative powers and on occasion they need covert investigation powers. But as has been very eloquently stated by the previous speaker Phil Goff this bill simply goes too far. This bill sets out deliberately to be a catch-all bill. It sets out to give the maximum possible powers to State agencies rather than taking the view that we should give the State agencies the fewest powers that they need to fulfil their obligations to do their job and to ensure public safety. 
I will move directly to some of the clauses of the bill specifically under clause 44 the part of the bill that talks about surveillance warrants devices and so on. The focus in this particular part of the bill is on the ability of State agencies—be it police or any other—to install surveillance devices on private property without warrants for a defined period of time. Yes that time has been reduced from 72 to 48 hours but it is extraordinary that agents of the State should have the power under this legislation—and indeed under the proposed Supplementary Order Paper in the name of the Minister of Justice—to enter people’s houses; to break into people’s premises areas or vehicles; to interfere with vehicles; to install using whatever force is necessary covert surveillance devices; and to add insult to injury to even plug into the electricity of somebody’s home or business premises to power up these devices. 
It is extraordinary that the State a police officer or other State agencies should have the power to actually break into people’s homes and steal their vehicles and then return them or to put in these devices unknowing on suspicion—reasonable suspicion which is a reasonably low bar we must say—that a crime has been committed is being committed or indeed might be committed. Those are very very low bars to protect the right to privacy. Basic civil liberties are at stake here and we think it is important that people are aware of the very very considerable powers in this part that would be given for warrantless intrusion into people’s homes their business premises and their vehicles—places where people ought to feel that they have a reasonable level of security and privacy. The fact that this can be done without a warrant even for a shorter period of 48 hours we think is simply a step too far. 
There is absolutely no proven necessity for these quite Draconian measures that this bill proposes and that this part of the bill proposes. We are in a place where we are not under immediate threat from major terrorist groups despite the best efforts on occasion to paint certain individuals in that light. The need simply does not exist for these extraordinarily powerful provisions in this bill—for example around the warrantless insertion of surveillance devices even in people’s homes. 
The issue of production orders has excited considerable interest in the media among other places and I think that is appropriate. The editorial in the  
New Zealand Herald 
—which is not noticed as the most radical media outlet that has ever been seen and which enjoyed the appellation “Granny Herald” at one time—acknowledges that this bill simply goes too far. 
There is a clear indication in the provisions around production orders about self-incrimination and this was referred to by a previous speaker. Within the provisions of this bill a person who is absolutely a person under suspicion—so-called reasonable suspicion—can be obliged to incriminate themselves or to involve other people in incriminating themselves. For a very very long time—for centuries—there has been a common law assumption a belief a convention that people ought not to be obliged to incriminate themselves. 
That is the job of the police and the courts. The role of the police is to bring evidence to accuse and to deliver evidence of wrongdoing and of course the courts’ role is to judge on that. The notion that people should be obliged to be complicit in their own conviction is simply anathema. Yes we understand that we want to prevent the commission of crime. We want to ensure that people who undertake criminal activities should be taken to task and should suffer the penalty. But going against a centuries-old convention for what reason? For reasons that are not adequately described in this bill. We do not have a situation where we ought to be compromising these very very long-held conventions that protect people against being obliged to incriminate themselves. There is no justification given in this bill. 
For what this bill does—and in particular in this part in the warrantless surveillance provisions in the issues around production orders and in the provisions that are made explicit in terms of production orders—the case has not been made that we need these sorts of provisions. They are major assaults on civil liberties on the privacy of individuals and of businesses in fact. The expectation of most New Zealanders is that they can go about their business with a reasonable assurance of privacy. This bill does go too far. These provisions go far beyond the pale and we will continue to oppose them. Thank you.