Reti Shane: Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeReti Shane: Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee[Sitting date: 09 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1214. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei):Firstly I would like to acknowledge the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee under the guidance of its chair Mark Mitchell and collaboration with colleagues from across the House. At this reading I would like to speak to the process that has been highlighted and then the content of this bill.The case has been made that the time frame was challenging and we have accepted that and we would like to sincerely thank all the submitters. But we should note that there is a precedent for the process and against that precedent this is a good outcome. Let me explain. On this bill the committee heard 63 oral submissions. A similar bill in 2011 the Video Camera Surveillance (Temporary Measures) Bill was also seeking to balance privacy and freedoms with security and on a similar time frame the select committee concerned heard 20 submissions. This committee heard 63. Further a bill with much similar content the 2012 Search and Surveillance Bill had its first reading on 4 August 2009 and submissions to the Justice and Electoral Committee closed 1 year later on 3 September 2010. One year later 29 submissions had been heard; this committee heard 63. Of course that is not everyone’s voice and that is not the case I am making; rather that on precedent the best was made of a challenging time frame.I would like to speak to the safeguards in this bill and there are at least three. The first safeguard concerns warrantless surveillance. Many submitters talked about their concerns about warrantless surveillance and this is and always will be a legitimate concern. However this bill does not introduce warrantless surveillance for the first time in New Zealand. This is not new functionality. Section 48(1) of the Search and Surveillance Act states: “An enforcement officer who is in any 1 or more of the situations set out in subsection (2) may use a surveillance device for a period not exceeding 48 hours from the time the surveillance device is first used without obtaining a surveillance device warrant”. So warrantless surveillance is already in legislation. The difference is that in the Search and Surveillance Act the permission is for gathering information about a crime and in this bill the permission for warrantless surveillance is for the gathering of intelligence.The second safeguard is around passport cancellation. Passport cancellation already exists under the Passports Act and we need to be clear that cancelling a passport does not cancel citizenship. These are unrelated not linked and not part of this bill. If people have their passports cancelled while travelling the Passports Act states that they will receive travel documents to return to New Zealand.The third safeguard measure is that there are I believe satisfactory criteria that must be met before actions in this bill can be undertaken and many independent review and reporting measures that support this bill. This includes review by the Commissioner of Security Warrants and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.Also the penultimate sunset clause defines the intent of this bill as temporary. Much was done in the select committee to address the legitimate issues raised by submitters and committee members in this regard.So much of the logistics of this bill are already in legislation such as warrantless surveillance and passport cancellation. What this bill does then is extend the application and it is my belief that this bill is a good outcome for the process and the security needs we have. I commend it to the House. Thank you.