Ryall Tony: Urgent Debates — Government Communications Security Bureau—Review of ComplianceText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRyall Tony: Urgent Debates — Government Communications Security Bureau—Review of Compliance[Sitting date: 10 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9227. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): It is worth reflecting on what the key issues are associated with this debate and with this issue. There is a role for the Government Communications Security Bureau in New Zealand—that is agreed by virtually all parties in this Parliament—and the previous Government brought in legislation in the early 2000s to legitimise this. In the legislation they made it very express that the bureau was not to spy on New Zealanders. That is what they did in that legislation. But there was another piece of legislation that also said that the bureau could work with other agencies as appropriate. So this comes down to a fine legal point of two potentially conflicting features of legislation: working with other agencies or not surveilling New Zealanders. That was the issue. What has come out of this case and out of the Kitteridge report are those issues—that fine contrast between those two cases.Clearly what has happened here is the Government Communications Security Bureau has been working with other agencies at their request believing as it did that the law provided it with the scope to do that. So it then assisted those other agencies with their work on people whom those other agencies had legitimate authority of one sort or another to monitor or surveil or do whatever they were doing with them. Those agencies that had those people in their sights had a legitimate and legal right to surveil monitor or do whatever they were doing with those people. They then asked the bureau because of its unique equipment and skills to support them in that work. The bureau believed because of its interpretation of the law that it was entitled to support those agencies. It is not a question of the bureau illegally surveilling a number of New Zealanders. It is a question of the fact that they thought that in support of the other agencies that were legally monitoring or surveilling these individuals they were doing what they were doing in a lawful way.What has clearly come out of the Kitteridge report is the fact that there is this confusion over the legislation and that needs to be dealt with—and the Prime Minister has said as much. But those cases now the so-called 88 are being referred to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security who is the legal authority to determine whether or not there has been a breach of the legislation. That is set out in the law. It is up to the inspector-general to decide whether or not there has been illegality. What we know from the Kitteridge report is that there are questions over that legality resulting from the lack of clarity now about the two legal provisions. That is what it is about here.It is quite wrong for Opposition members to make the comments that they do. How do we know that the Prime Minister is the only Prime Minister whom these issues were ever raised with? How do we know? How do we know whether this was the case? How do we know whether Sir Bruce Ferguson never raised it with Helen Clark? How do we know whether this happened or not? What we do know is that this hinges on a very technical interpretation of two clauses in the law. That is what the Kitteridge report says and that is why the inspector-general will investigate those. That is what is set outin the law. It is clear that in the case of the 88 people who were being surveilled or monitored it was being done with the proper legal authority of the agencies that were doing that. The law does allow the SIS to spy on New Zealanders—OK. So those people were allowed to be spied on. The confusion relates to the legal provisions that allowed the Government Communications Security Bureau to assist the SIS and other agencies. That happened under Labour and it happened under National. It will fall to National to work with other parties in this Parliament to fix those provisions. It is a very fine technical point established in the Kitteridge report.