McCully Murray: Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill — Procedure Third Reading 
McCully Murray: Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill — Procedure Third Reading 
[Volume:643;Page:12998] 
Hon MURRAY McCULLY (National—East Coast Bays) 
: 
 There are some who see irony and others who see something more sinister about the fact that this Parliament is debating at this time the final stage of the Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill which is designed to amend the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002. 
The first question that must be answered today is whether it is necessary—and indeed whether it is appropriate—that we should give final approval to this legislation in light of the significant events of the last few weeks. I have asked myself two questions: whether the contents of this bill bear in any way upon the issues recently under consideration by the Solicitor-General and whether we have seen anything in the last few weeks that would cause us to doubt the need for the general framework of the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002. 
I have given this matter considerable thought and I am satisfied that this bill should receive its third reading. I am pleased that colleagues on this side of the House agree with me. First none of the events of recent weeks touch upon the matters that are contained in this bill. This is a bill that is focused upon streamlining the process by which terrorist designations are rolled over. No designations were involved in recent events in the Bay of Plenty. With a number of senior colleagues I have reviewed this question with the Solicitor-General today. I thank the Attorney-General for facilitating that discussion. It is clear that the events that have been so widely publicised in recent weeks are very far removed from the contents of this particular bill. Second none of the events of recent weeks cast any doubt in my mind about the need for the terrorism suppression legislation that was passed in this House back in 2002. Whether that legislation requires further amendment is a matter that I shall return to shortly. 
I am satisfied that we should continue to support this bill becoming law now in light of all the circumstances as they are known to us. But that does not mean that having passed this amendment into law there are not serious matters indeed that this House must attend to. Having passed this legislation this House will have some unfinished business to attend to. The events of the past few weeks will at best have caused serious doubts about but at worst caused some loss of confidence in the institutions and processes by which this county is protected from serious disorder. On the strength of what we have seen in the media there is room for doubt about the actions of the police and their legal advisers the Crown Law Office the Government that introduced the 2002 legislation and its advisers and of course this Parliament its select committee its respective advisers and the legislation that now sits on our statute book. One thing is clear to me in these circumstances: we cannot leave matters where they stand. New Zealanders are entitled to expect that such an important issue as this would see Parliament take all the appropriate steps to ensure that the public can have confidence in the law in those who make it and in those who enforce it. 
Like almost all other New Zealanders I am handicapped by a serious lack of facts in understanding where the shortcomings might be and what remedies might be required. But I take this opportunity to share with the House my broad thinking about what has happened here and about what should happen next. First I am convinced that when the Solicitor-General who has seen the evidence asserts that some activities of a very worrying kind were being engaged in in the Ureweras and that the public interest has been well served by their curtailment then we should believe him. 
It is also clear to me that the Solicitor-General gave the police at a suitably early stage of their investigation a very clear picture of the weight and strength of the material they would need to produce in order to secure his approval to proceed under the terrorism suppression legislation. The fact that the police chose to proceed down that path but failed to meet the test the Solicitor-General had signalled raises serious concerns in two areas. First it raises serious concerns about the decision making of the police and the legal advisers to the police. It was a big call to invoke the Terrorism Suppression Act rather than to simply proceed under the Crimes Act and the Arms Act. That decision raised the stakes very considerably indeed. This Parliament passed special legislation with special powers for the authorities—powers that override the civil liberties of those involved—to deal with the most barbaric form of human behaviour which is terrorism. Those special powers should never be lightly invoked. The fact that the police action under this legislation fell at the first hurdle invites very close inspection of the competence of the decision-making process once such material as will now eventually emerge is produced before the courts. For my own part I would be extremely concerned if it emerges that dangerous individuals who should have faced serious charges under the Crimes Act will instead face a slap across the wrist with a wet Arms Act bus ticket because of a misguided police excursion under the terrorism legislation that was never entirely intended for this purpose. 
Second questions will be asked about the law and about whether Parliament made a mess of its attempt to put suitable counter-terrorism machinery in place back in 2002. If as the Solicitor-General has implied there are deficiencies in the Act then those shortcomings will have been clearly signalled by him to the police in indicating to them the standard they would need to meet in order to gain his approval for a prosecution. The Solicitor-General has used the word “incoherent” to describe some provisions of the Act and at least implied that if Parliament was attempting to legislate against domestic terrorism then it failed. 
I do not feel particularly defensive about the latter proposition. Although like other members I voted for the bill because I thought it a worthy even essential initiative at the time I was not involved in its drafting in the select committee or in the debate in the Chamber. But I have gone back to inspect  
Hansard 
. It is very clear to me that back in 2002 the House was attempting in the wake of the September 11 attacks to provide a framework to deal with international terrorism and in doing so to comply with UN Resolutions 1267 and 1373. So I am not particularly concerned that the 2002 legislation might now be judged to have failed to achieve something that was never on Parliament’s mind in the first place. 
If the threat of domestic terrorism was not on Parliament’s mind back in 2002 the question that now arises is whether recent events should cause this Parliament to have such a threat on its mind today. That is a question that we cannot properly answer without knowing a good deal more than we know today about the activities of certain individuals currently before our courts. But I suggest that in appraising such material that comes forward into the public arena over the next few weeks we must be prepared as a Parliament to consider new legislative initiatives if it appears that there are gaps in the laws that protect members of the public from those who would do them harm. 
Members on this side of the House will support this third reading of the bill today but in doing so we equally signal our strong determination that as the relevant facts emerge we will play a full and active part in achieving the necessary changes that will enable the public to have full confidence in the laws that are designed to protect them to have full confidence in those who make the laws and of course to have equal confidence in those who are charged with the enforcement of the laws.