Mallard Trevor: Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill — In CommitteeText is subject to correctionMallard Trevor: Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:14069. Text is subject to correction.]Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I would like to start with in particular in Supplementary Order Paper 370 in the name of Clare Curran the amendment to clause 2 of the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill. The amendment is relatively simple and has two parts. I am pleased that the Attorney-General is present although he is uncharacteristically mute at the moment because there is a new subclause (4) which indicates that the bill may be submitted for Royal assent only if a select committee has considered it and reported that the bill is consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. The problem that we have is that there have been massive changes introduced to this bill since the time that it was at the Law and Order Committee but there has not been a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act consideration of those changes.Hon Christopher Finlayson: Read section 7.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well he mutters on. He mutters from his seat. He mumbles—Clare Curran: Has he read it?Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Oh I am sure that he has read it and probably in the Greek but that will not get him on to his hind legs. It will not get him on to his hind legs in order to make a contribution to this.Hon Christopher Finlayson: Read section 7 of the Bill of Rights Act.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: The member can prattle on for all he likes about section 10 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act but in the end if there is substantial change any Attorney-General with a sense of ethics would have a look and get another vet. Did this one do it? No he did not. No he did not because he knows that the rightsto privacy of New Zealanders are being taken away under this bill with some sort of argument around security that frankly does not hold any water at all.I want to say to the member on my right as she generally is that that particular subclause that she is suggesting is actually not very radical at all. It is a relatively minor very reasonable approach and if there was any sort of ethical sense on the side of the Government it would say yes.I now want to go to the subclause that she suggested before that and that is the insertion of subclause (3) after clause 2(2). It indicates that “This Bill may only be submitted for Royal assent if an independent review of New Zealand’s security agencies has been conducted and the recommendations incorporated into this Bill prior to the third reading of the Bill.”I do not think I am breaching any confidences because I think the Prime Minister has referred to this in the past. I was along with at least one and probably two of my colleagues one of the members consulted by the Prime Minister’s department around a proposed review of the SIS—in fact the beginnings of a review of the SIS—from memory relatively early last year. I think that at the time the Prime Minister and his department had it more or less right that the SIS was a good place to start but the interrelationship between the SIS and the other agencies—the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) in particular and the New Zealand Police—would be on the edge of that review and could be taken into account.What happened then was quite a lot of publicity around Kim Dotcom and what I think is a relatively unhealthy rush to get some very narrow specific legislation there for the GCSB. But then what happened was that that narrow legislation got widened out to something that is quite unreasonable and unacceptable to many many members of Parliament. In fact I would say it is unacceptable to every member of Parliament who has read it and understood it. I just want to say that from the contributions opposite I am not convinced that there is a member on the other side of the Chamber who has read and understood properly the legislation that we are currently considering.