Franks Stephen: Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Franks Stephen: Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:615;Page:11179] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 First I want to throw a few brickbats not at the Government but at the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee. The committee has produced a report on the Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Amendment Bill that says absolutely nothing. It does not even go as far as to accurately record the introductory words the Government said. That is a puzzle to me because ACT is not represented on that committee.We rely on that committee to make sure that the hard-won liberties rights and defences of New Zealanders are not undermined by the Crown pushing through loopholes and exceptions to our domestic law for the benefit of diplomats and others whom they hobnob with in the international organisations they want to retire to. 
This committee has not even picked up the warnings of members of the major parties. For example I looked at the Hon Lockwood Smith’s warning when this bill had its first reading that it worried him. He asked why the Minister talked about new section 10D and not about new section 10E: “Sure there can be no question that article 13 of the recent agreement requires us to do something in this area.”—that is provide immunities—“But when the select committee examines the bill I want it to have a good look at what new section 10E provides because it confers very important immunities and privileges on a whole range of people who are not remotely involved in the functioning of the International Criminal Court and who may not require those immunities and privileges at all. I think we should think very carefully about how we implement article 13 of the agreement in new section 10E.” 
Behind those section references is a new set of immunities from New Zealand law for inter-governmental organisations basically for persons who may well be from the kinds of non-governmental organisations that make life a misery around the world for countries that adhere to the values we hold dear. They may be representatives of States that think that the rule of law is just a joke. They may be representatives of countries that have absolutely no respect for notions like habeas corpus. 
What this bill does is that when the International Criminal Court—comprising people who have no necessary belief in the notions of innocent until proven guilty or the right to face one’s accusers—says “Jump” this bill says to New Zealanders “Jump and allow these people into this country immune from our law.” The select committee appears to have made no examination of even the concerns of its own members—or if it did that is not reflected in its report. 
ACT will not vote for this bill. We acknowledge that it will pass and if it passes it might as well add in the people from the European Union but none of the concerns that we expressed in the speech on the first reading have been addressed as far as we can tell either by the Minister’s speech or by the woeful pitiful three-paragraph report of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee. 
This bill was a chance to re-examine the naive and over-hasty signing up by this country to the International Criminal Court. The United States for very good reason has stayed away. It breaches so many of the values in the law that we hold dear. It is a court that can define offences as it goes along. It can prosecute something called “apartheid” when no one knows what “apartheid” will mean. It can pursue crimes of aggression when no one knows what a “crime of aggression” will mean. It could if it all goes to custard be a victors’ tribunal of the worst kind. It could validate the overturning of the values of the Enlightenment—the respect for legal process that has taken so many centuries to evolve. 
The United States has secured the agreement of something like 60 countries for exemptions. It is a court that threatens the country that is realistically our major ally and whose consent was essential to make it practical. If the select committee and the Government had been doing their jobs they would have been saying that they are being asked to give a free pass—a “get out of jail free” card—in advance to people of whom they know nothing. As the Green member Keith Locke has already said members of that international body may represent regimes that are absolutely abhorrent to New Zealanders but that may have membership of that body because it is too gutless to apply its own rules—as for example the United Nations was in relation to Iraq. 
Representatives would be able to come to this country and wander about flaunting their immunity and living high on the hog while New Zealanders would be able to do nothing about offences that they might commit here. This legislation should have had a good solid sceptical look given to it because the Act that it amends by which New Zealand signed up to the International Criminal Court was done in a rush of good feeling. The National Party has new-found realism about the way in which treaties—including good and honourable treaties like the Treaty of Waitangi—can be misused by those who want to use them for political purposes some time in the future. 
I would have hoped that the National Party on coming to its senses about the gross misuse of the Treaty of Waitangi might have been slightly more realistic and sceptical about a bill like this that is supplementary to an equally well-intentioned and nobly begun but equally potentially dangerous treaty such as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court which New Zealand has signed up to and which we have now implemented in our domestic law. 
I will remind members when we get to the Committee stage of this bill that it could well be used in the future against—for example—our people who have been in the Solomon Islands because what is being done there to try to remedy some of the strife actually creates separation zones. It acknowledges the de facto separation of peoples in order to try to achieve civil peace. If Mr Mapp happens to go and look at the definition of the International Criminal Court’s offences he may well find that that is the crime of apartheid. It may well be that if someone wants to attack New Zealanders and embarrass us in 15 or 20 years’ time New Zealanders who went there in all idealism could be hauled before a court that is simply the willing or unwilling agent of those who wish to attack the United States or its allies. 
Those who wish to attack a major power not infrequently attack one of its allies to see what the reaction will be. It is possibly a 10 or 15 percent chance only but it is something that this House should have taken into account when it passed the legislation ratifying in effect the Rome treaty and it is something that the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee should have taken into account when looking at this bill even if our Minister did not. The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Mr Goff may be far more interested in glad-handing Mr Arafat in Palestine and may want to be able to run around and say that we are in the club we will do whatever the international community says and we will jump when pushed irrespective of the legitimate concerns of the United States. If he wants whatever the United Nations equivalent is of knighthood maybe he will get it at New Zealand’s expense but the select committee might have been a little more sceptical. It might have taken notice of at least one or two of the members—Keith Locke may come from the wrong direction completely but at least he is raising the right issue. This is law for New Zealanders that we are creating loopholes in. It is New Zealanders who should be retaining sovereignty and at the very least the committee members should have been making sure that the immunity was narrowly confined to those essential to the operation of the court not handed out to any hangers-on whom they might wish to bring. This legislation could be used purely to embarrass New Zealand. 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I say to the member who has just resumed his seat that that speech was characterised more by its irrelevance than its contribution to the debate. This bill does not set up the International Criminal Court. That was the subject of previous legislation. This bill simply and narrowly confers certain diplomatic privileges—which we confer on all diplomats who come to this country—on officers and officials of that court should they ever come to sit in New Zealand. It is not an issue of the wisdom or otherwise of establishing the International Criminal Court. To try to use this bill to relitigate those broader issues is in the most charitable view mischievous and at its worst ill-informed and out of place. 
The member criticised the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee for the brevity of its report. I chair that committee and its report was so brief because the number of issues the level of public submissions and the level of concern from the members of that committee—representing all parties bar his own—were not significant. This is straightforward legislation. We are not in the business of trying to manufacture scandal or controversy where none exists. I am a great believer in brevity where appropriate—if there is nothing to say do not spend a long time saying it. The member seems to have preferred us to be somewhat more voluminous in our response than we needed to be. 
The only issue I want to raise in conjunction with this bill—which is given added flavour by the Supplementary Order Paper—is that we have a companion piece of legislation called the Consular Privileges and Immunities Act. It is word for word the same as the Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Act except that it relates to the consular activities of diplomatic representatives in New Zealand rather than the diplomatic ones. It seems to me that it is probably time to look at overhauling both Acts and to streamline them into one. 
I wonder with regard to the provisions in the Supplementary Order Paper relating to the European Union whether we will face the possibility in future of a European Union office having in effect a consular branch in another city of this country. As the law stands at the moment consular privileges would not be extended to those diplomats unless they were extended by a specific piece of legislation. It seems to me that the only really substantive issue we ought to be looking at is whether the time has come to combine the consideration of diplomatic privileges and immunities with the consideration of consular privileges and immunities—because they are so similar—and put them in one place rather than continue to have them in two. This bill is as I said a straightforward technical piece of legislation given the legislation that preceded it. I intend to delay the House no longer. United Future supports this bill and the Supplementary Order Paper and I think that these matters should proceed.