Shearer David: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShearer David: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9660. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SHEARER (Leader of the Opposition): Today we see the Government trying to do a patch-up job on an intelligence network on intelligence agencies that have some very serious shortfalls. I would put it to you that it is too important to simply apply a band-aid to save face for the Prime Minister. This is about our national security. It is about our human rights. It is about Kiwis’ confidence in the integrity of our intelligence agencies in agencies that we need. We need them to function according tothe security demands that we have on us but also according to the protection of our privacy and our human rights. That is why we have been calling from the very beginning of the debacle around the intelligence agencies for a wide independent inquiry right across our entire intelligence network not just about the internal workings of the Government Communications Security Bureau because it is the right thing to do. We need to do this properly we need to do it once and we need to get it right because we cannot go on as we are.I want for the House to reflect just exactly why we are debating this issue in the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill today. We are debating this issue because we have had a train wreck over the last few months around our intelligence agencies which has severely undermined the confidence that the public has in those agencies. On 20 January last year the police with the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the home of Kim Dotcom after the Government Communications Security Bureau had been spying on him for more than a month. The very next month in February 2012 questions were raised with the Government Communications Security Bureau by other agencies about the lawfulness of that surveillance because Kim Dotcom was a New Zealand resident. It concluded strangely enough that its actions were lawful. In May the directors of the Government Communications Security Bureau the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security all knew there were legal issues with the bureau’s spying on New Zealanders and not just in Kim Dotcom’s case. In July it told John Key about the possibility that New Zealanders were being spied on unlawfully and he did nothing.The next month the Government Communications Security Bureau director went to see Bill English and asked him to sign a ministerial certificate suppressing the details of the agency’s involvement in spying on Kim Dotcom—suppressing the details and keeping out of any public scrutiny the fact that it had screwed up. John Key claims he was not told about any of the purported illegal spying until 17 September when he was told that the Government Communications Security Bureau had acted unlawfully. He did not admit at that point that the broader concerns about illegal spying on New Zealanders had in fact been raised with him 2 months earlier and he had done nothing in order to suppress that possibility of that spying being illegal. I have not even mentioned the fact that in the midst of all this John Key shoulder-taps a friend of his to become the head of the Government Communications Security Bureau. All of that contributes to an overwhelming lack of confidence in our intelligence agencies by the public at large.Now in the heat of all of that political fallout over this debacle what the Government is trying to do is to rush through legislation in hindsight to make these activities legal into the future. That is not what is needed. What we need is a full and independent inquiry an inquiry that obtains terms of reference from right across Parliament and an inquiry that can be agreed upon. I believe that is entirely possible. We need an inquiry of the ilk that is being done in Australia. In Australia they conducted an inquiry in 2003 an independent inquiry that looked at all of its intelligence agencies and did it again just 2 years later. Australia is not afraid of being able to look at its intelligence agencies in total. We should not be afraid of doing that either.This fully independent inquiry will look right across the agencies. It will look at all of their functions and all of their accountabilities. We accept I certainly accept that some of the findings that could come from that inquiry may well be similar to the conclusions that appear in this legislation—completely accept that. But we know it will be part of a much broader analysis. We need this inquiry because in addition to thedebacle that we have seen over the last few months around the Government Communications Security Bureau we know that the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service wants to expand its role and has got legislation. We have not seen that yet but we know that legislation is written and has been put to one side at the moment to be introduced at some later date no doubt. We know that there has been no independent inquiry since the 1970s in this country. There have been massive changes in technology and I completely agree with the Prime Minister who says that there are threats to our cyber-security. Absolutely—I completely accept that. But we need to be going about this in a way that makes sure that we have the best possible set-up and structure to enable those threats to be dealt with and with the correct ability to provide oversight.One of the things that some of this legislation deals with is the Intelligence and Security Committee the parliamentary oversight of these intelligence agencies. I can tell you that the ability of that parliamentary committee to provide oversight is woeful—it is woeful. I want to give you two examples. First we are not permitted to speak about what we discuss in these meetings but I can tell you that at the last meeting that we had to look at some of the legislation that was coming forward the briefing that we got was well below the level that the press gallery received a few hours later the following morning together with an 8-page briefing statement that we did not get a chance to have a look at. Why do we have a committee that is given less briefing than what the parliamentary gallery will be able to receive about something as important as this legislation? The second example: when the legislation was announced at a press conference by the Prime Minister earlier this week I got a copy of the legislation 2 minutes—2 minutes—before that press conference. I am a member of that committee and I got it 2 minutes before. So if this committee is going to be treated with that sort of approach I think that this legislation does not go anywhere far enough in terms of being able to satisfy public opinion that scrutiny is adequate and able to give the public the confidence that these agencies are operating effectively.Then there is the question of urgency around this legislation. We need to rush this through because—why? Because we are led to believe that there are somehow threats around New Zealand. Again I believe the Prime Minister is playing politics. If it was so urgent why did we not rush it through last year? This is now May. Either the Government is not taking those threats seriously which it says it is or there is actually no real problem and therefore we do not need to rush it through today. In fact we could have had an independent inquiry that had the buy-in of the entire Parliament last year. We could have had the buy-in of the entire Parliament we could have had terms of reference that were agreed to by the Parliament and we could have had that inquiry reporting back to Parliament in a way that gave New Zealand real confidence.We oppose the legislation because it is a band-aid. It is an ad hoc approach it is way too mired in politics and it is an attempt to get the Government out of a hole. It is not durable it is not lasting and it is not going to go as far as it needs to go in terms of satisfying the public that they can have real confidence in our intelligence agencies. We need to balance our national security both our physical and economic security with our right to privacy and civil liberties. If the Government was to establish such an inquiry that would enable us to satisfy both those competing objectives we would cooperate with that we would work with it and we would work to bring forward to this Parliament legislation that would be able to give the public the confidence that our agencies not only are up to date but have the scrutiny and the correct accountability that we need.