Locke Keith: Identity (Citizenship and Travel Documents) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Locke Keith: Identity (Citizenship and Travel Documents) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:625;Page:20122] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 I have an amendment in relation to the powers of the Minister of Internal Affairs to take away a New Zealander’s passport. As I indicated in my second reading speech the Green Party is opposed to that. The discussion so far has been interesting. So typically was the contribution made by Stephen Franks who brought in the Zaoui case. Sometimes I describe the clause giving the Minister of Internal Affairs the power to take away a New Zealand passport as the “Zaoui clause”. That power was likewise applied in relation to the security risk certificate in the Zaoui case. We are giving the Minister—a political figure not a judicial figure—the power to affect the future of a person detrimentally in terms of whether he or she has the right to stay in a country and in this bill the right to have a passport. 
The issue is whether we should be governed by the rule of law and the judiciary or whether we should give those powers to penalise people to a Minister. Sure there are rights of appeal in both the security risk certificate procedure and this bill but it is reversing the onus of proof where a person’s future is detrimentally affected. In Mr Zaoui’s case he has had to wait well over 2 years now and has had to go through all sorts of hoops after the ministerial determination. The same would apply under this bill. If the Minister of Internal Affairs is given the right to take away a New Zealander’s passport then the person whose passport is taken away will suffer all sorts of disadvantages and have to go through a complicated court process to get it back. It illustrates a point following on from what Stephen Franks said that if we start to treat foreigners—people who do not have New Zealand residency or citizenship—differently from New Zealanders and think that the full rule of law can be applied to New Zealanders but does not need to be applied to foreigners then we will actually undermine our own due process our own rule of law and it will come back to bite us in the end. That is why in this bill I call the clause the “Zaoui clause”. 
The fact is that the New Zealand political system and the Government went weak on the security risk certificate procedure even though there was Labour opposition to that procedure in 1999 when it came in. It was applied against Mr Zaoui thereby undermining the due process of law and laying the groundwork for the “Zaoui clause” to come into the bill giving unprecedented powers as Matt Robson has explained to take—and I quoted earlier from the Auckland Council for Civil Liberties and the Human Rights Foundation—away what is a fundamental and long-cherished right of a New Zealander to have a passport and not to have it taken away for political reasons. There is a history of other countries such as Australia and America during the cold war putting into their legislation the right of political discretion as to whether someone has a passport. It was applied in America against the well-known singer Paul Robeson because of his political views. His passport was taken away. In the case of Australia a chap called Wilfred Burchett wrote on the Vietnam situation and was critical of the Australian Government’s position—the Menzies Government position. His passport was taken away. 
New Zealand had enough of a democratic tradition not to go along with the Australians and the Americans in the depth of the cold war but now under the George Bush inspired “war on terrorism” that is undermining human rights across the world the Labour Government has unfortunately caved in. It is bringing in a provision that gives a political figure the power to undermine a fundamental right and to take away a New Zealander’s passport. Although there are appeal processes they are not adequate and that was drawn out in the submissions to the select committee by the Auckland Council for Civil Liberties and the Human Rights Foundation. The problem is that some of the material is classified. Even the New Zealander whose passport is taken away might not be able to see all that material.