O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I share the disappointment on this side of the House. At this point it looks like the bill will proceed. I would certainly encourage the New Zealand First Party to reconsider. They have always put themselves forward as the party of law and order and strengthened security and the Minister who has just resumed his seat the Minister of Defence has spoken rightly on that in the past and again I would encourage them to stand up to those principles and vote against this bill. It's not a good piece of legislation. What it intends to do will not be achieved.Look I've wondered when it comes to issues of national security whether you've sort of just got to accept that adage that the perfect is the enemy of the good. In other words you go Look OK this is not good. In fact this is a very bad bill but in the interests of security with the little bit of improvement it will bring should I vote for it? Should National vote for it?" But the more I reflected on it this is actually going to make things worse. If this bill passes the Parliament it's going to put us into a false sense of security that actually we're able to handle returning terrorists to New Zealand and I believe we won't be achieving that. We'll think after today if this does pass its third reading that it's done and dusted it's all tickety-boo—that when these lunatics come back we'll just be able to put these control orders around them and it will all be fine—but there's a number of gaps and problems. I pointed it out in the committee stage of the whole House—which again as others have mentioned was disappointingly quick primarily because this side of the House the Opposition spoke we took that element of national security seriously we debated we raised questions we waited for the Minister's response but we by and large waited in vain including from members of the Government to try and argue or justify their position. But I mentioned in that debate that the gaps that are presenting themselves may if you will be low probability but they come with high risk. So yes it is a low probability I would suggest of someone returning to this country unknown to our intelligence services or unknown that they are returning. That is a low probability; it probably won't happen. But if it does it brings enormous risk—enormous risk. I think the nature of who these people are has been downplayed by the Government side far too often. These zealots these fundamentalists—if you will—these terrorists are not someone that you can sit down over a cup of tea and just have a little discussion with and express to them the wonderful values of progressivism and how they've just got it all wrong. As I said yesterday they'll look at you they'll smile they'll probably slit your throat and then have another cup of tea—we're dealing with terrorists.I think one of the fundamental problems we've ended up with here is that in their desire to get the bill through the Government had to turn to the Green Party. I want to put it on the record again: the Green Party has long advocated for the abolition and demolition of our security services. Just let that sink in for a moment. They have argued consistently for the abolition of our security services and they are the ones who are providing the votes to get this through. They have done it by effectively turning what should be a national security issue on its head and that is that the national security and the defence of the Realm come second to the human rights of these criminals these terrorists returning from overseas. So what are some of the problems? Well first and foremost this bill is weaker than many of our counterparts including in the Commonwealth realms. So if we look at Canada Australia the UK our equivalent legislation is much much weaker. I've pointed out before in the House the age—these control orders only apply if you're 18 years or over. Members in this House know very well that there are people who are actively engaged or have been actively engaged in terrorist activities who are younger than 18. These control orders will not apply to them. We know that these control orders can only last six years—six years as if somehow magically we're going to be able to turn every returning terrorist away from something that has completely defined their lives in six years. No other jurisdiction has that limit. I put forward a Supplementary Order Paper to say look let's just allow renewal if required. It's not as if someone comes back and they're going to have a control order on them for life. They should be able to renew that control order if required and I have given a very practical and recent example where a supposedly de-radicalised jihadist in the UK sadly after six years went out and killed two innocent British people only two weeks ago. He was a terrorist he was known he went through all the programmes and after six years he went out and killed two innocent people. I do worry that we're allowing that gap or opportunity here. There are basically—well excuse the parlance but bugger all consequences for breaching the control orders: $2000 fine—Hon Gerry Brownlee: Max. SIMON O'CONNOR: Or perhaps maximum sorry—Gerry Brownlee rightly reminds me that's the maximum. I've yet to see of late a judge—with no disrespect to the comity between the Parliament and the courts—push the full extent of what Parliament puts forward. But if for example a terrorist doesn't turn up at the right time to meet their supervisor or doesn't come home exactly at the right time—they haven't breached anything criminal so we can't catch them on that—the maximum fine is $2000 or potentially a year in prison. Again this is not your little thief who steals a bike; this is a person who is a well-known terrorist to our security services. Then there's the whole notion of informed consent as if this was some sort of medical transaction. Again it just makes a lot of the conditions put forward ludicrous. I'm not going to repeat it at length because I think the Hon Gerry Brownlee well articulated it but just about all the conditions that can be put forward on to the terrorists have to be with their informed consent. So to flip it around on its head terrorists can say "No I don't really agree to that sorry. Look thanks for asking that I should stay at this address and yeah I know you want to slap on some sort of financial restrictions but I don't really agree with that sorry." So we've got it all the wrong way round. I am disappointed at where this legislation has ended up. It had been my hope somewhat in vain that through the select committee process—as incredibly truncated as it was—we might be able to through some civilised conversation come to a much tougher bill. We have failed to do that. I personally think that the suggestions that the Opposition have put forward are practical. They're not overly—no in fact not even overly; they're not political at all. As I say: changing the age ensuring that control orders can be renewed. I think this would make sense to the ordinary New Zealander. In fact that's what they would want—that's what they would want. But we haven't ended there and as I said at the start the real problem with this bill is if the Parliament thinks in passing it that this is now a done deal that it's all tickety-boo tidy and we're going to have no problems then I think we will find and it will be unfortunate through action or actions that we've been remiss in our duty—or the Government actually; it's not us. The Government has been remiss in its duty they've pulled the wool over their own eyes and that sort of ignorance is very very problematic. I just call on again Government members to really consider what they're doing here which is fundamentally putting forward a flawed very weak piece of legislation. If they are going to pass it I encourage them within an hour to put forward an amendment bill and tighten this up because actually the problems in this bill must be and need to be addressed. It's again a weak bill and I cannot commend it to the House."