Cunliffe David: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 20 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12609. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn):I rise to take a short call in this title and commencement clause debate on the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill. I accept that it will be the last opportunity I have to speak to this bill before the vote is put. To echo the words of ourdeputy leader who has just spoken this bill is a travesty in terms of its title. It is not a clarification; it is a gross extension of the range and powers of these agencies. To be clear the Labour Opposition has never stated that we believe this State should be without these capabilities. But we are extremely clear as were the 2000-plus people who crammed into the Auckland Town Hall last night to make their heartfelt opposition known that it is not sufficiently balanced by proper and adequate safeguards of civil liberties and personal privacy.Let me summarise why that is the case. There are no protections against the mass surveillance of metadata because they are not included within the definition of “personal communications” as set out in the bill. Rather they fall within the definition of information infrastructure in the cyber-security provisions that include “all transmissions” including anything that goes across any electronic or wireless network. That means that every email every text message every phone call and every website visit of every New Zealander is able to be surveilled firstly in terms of its metadata without a warrant and secondly to establish a basis—and it may already be the case—for full interception without those warranting provisions at least through the cyber-security clause.The Prime Minister said on television and has repeated in this Chamber that he would personally rather resign before that happened. Well why would he not write it into the bill? The fact remains that New Zealanders will never know because there is no adequate oversight on this bill. There is no adequate oversight through the Intelligence and Security Committee. At best it will get a compendium report at the end of the year which will not include the details of what has been intercepted; merely the number of cases. That is not good enough. If the Prime Minister wants New Zealanders to accept his word then he should put an amendment in his own name to this bill that gives effect to what he has said on nationwide television. At the very least he should stand and face a press conference without scuttling for the door when the heat gets turned up and not have the temerity to insult our leader and other members of this House as being cowards when it is that member who has not completed his own press conference.But that is small beer alongside the true nature of this bill. This bill opens a door that will be difficult ever to close. To think that it is being done by the merest wafer-thin margin of one vote bought and sold for 30 pieces of silver and an overseas posting I find absolutely reprehensible. It flies in the face of decades of bipartisan handling of intelligence and security matters. It is not good enough for New Zealanders. It is not good enough for our ancestors who fought for the freedoms that this House is blithely putting aside—the Government is blithely putting aside—at the behest of one vote between a willing seller and a willing buyer a buyer who was willing to trade New Zealanders’ privacy down the river but was not willing to come to this debate and was not willing even to answer the questions in a press conference. But he was willing to insult David Shearer and other members of our party.This is a sad day for the New Zealand Parliament. This is a sad day for our democracy. This is a day when the New Zealand Government can hang its head in shame. It will be a day that New Zealanders remember when they go to cast their ballots in what is left of our democracy in next year’s general election. There are issues that come and go but they will remember that their freedoms have been compromised unnecessarily by a Prime Minister who may be adept at sleight of hand but is clearly not deep in principle.