Locke Keith: Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Locke Keith: Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:643;Page:12814] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 I think that John Hayes and myself have a common agreement on not banning fireworks which is a step forward. John Hayes talked about “Stalinesque” and Kafkaesque comes to mind too. I saw a film I think it was called  
The Lives of Others 
 on Stalinism in East Germany recently and it has similarities with the operation of the rule of law under terrorism laws in that John Hayes said we must trust the Prime Minister. It is no accident that National and Labour are voting together on this when National is saying “We trust the Prime Minister to do things right.” That is what happened in  
The Lives of Others 
 in East Germany. I think it was a chap called Honecker. Everyone trusted him to do things right. He had his security service. 
 That is one of the things worrying people at this present time if members talk to them—the level of surveillance involved in what has been going on in texts in emails; you name it. Somehow people have realised that and said: “Hold on.” One of the provisions in the legislation we passed back in 2001 allows the police to access a person’s computer without that person knowing and changing his or her files in order to hide his or her entry and exit. That was one of the laws that was passed in 2001. Those sorts of laws are now being applied in the context of this terrorism legislation and people are getting worried. 
In  
The Lives of Others 
 the person affected the writer did not quite know who his friends were who his accusers were and what was the information against him. That is the Zaoui scenario the scenario of the people at Guantánamo Bay detention centre. It is that Stalinist type of approach with a person not knowing what he or she is up against. It is Kafkaesque in that sense. That is where we are headed unfortunately. 
We were talking about one law for all before. One reason why the law is more prejudiced against certain sections of the community in terrorism cases is the very fact that the thing that distinguishes terrorism laws from criminal law is that terrorist acts are deemed to be political crimes whether the motivation is political ideological or religious. Once laws are defined in that sense it depends where a person sits in terms of those political motivations as to how the Government treats those people doing the crimes and how heavily it wants them punished. So political prejudices automatically affect how terrorism crimes are dealt with. The application by the police of searches and raids are then also politically coloured by Maori radicals or whoever might be in their minds. 
It was not because the police were naturally bad although I will not give them a clean bill of health at this stage but the political context in which they were operating and bringing in terrorism warrants and what not actually coloured how they saw the situation. It meant that they could do things in Tuhoe country like stopping and photographing people which they would never apply where I come from in Auckland—in Mount Eden or Remuera Road. [ 
Interruption 
] Yes if they had tried it in Remuera Road how long would it have lasted? I ask members to ask themselves that question. 
There is the whole serious political accusation stuff—these are bad people; they have bad political motives. It was mentioned before that the proceedings can then tend to drag out longer. At Guantánamo Bay they last for years and years and years. It is the same in other cases. Sometimes at the end of it as in Ahmed Zaoui’s case it was almost 5 years before it was found there was nothing really against him and he wasted those years of his life without his family. That is how it goes. 
Because the Green Party does not support this legislation of course we do not support any Attorney-General applying the legislation in whatever situation. I will not comment on the particular cases that we are not supposed to comment on but in any cases we would not support the Attorney-General proceeding with terrorism charges because we see them as politically discriminatory and everything can be covered under the criminal law anyhow. 
Reference was made to the  
Rainbow Warrior 
 and that is the point that the Greens and the Maori Party have been making all through this debate not only under this legislation but under other legislation that with State terrorism the State becomes more of the problem in many situations. The  
Rainbow Warrior 
 is a case in point—the French State for its own political interest bombed the  
Rainbow Warrior 
. The rendition programmes of the Bush administration are a form of terrorism by the State in terms of its application to some of those involved without any trials. In terms of the different prejudices of the New Zealand State in relation to different forms of terrorism—State and non-State—there was the case of an admitted war criminal Moshe Ya’alon who visited New Zealand in January. The District Court ordered him to be arrested and was he treated the way the Tuhoe people were treated? The police—and this needs to be remembered and dealt with at some point—refused to obey the judge. They refused to obey the arrest order. That they did that was to me a State crime. What the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General did was equally bad. A huge box of papers arrived from the plaintiff in Auckland. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Order! 
KEITH LOCKE 
: I am talking about the issue of State and non-State terrorism and how State terrorism is caught in practice by such legislation including this bill. The papers arrived at 5 past 1 on the Tuesday afternoon at the Solicitor-General’s office. By 5 o’clock he had processed this huge thing done all the legal determination of it and sent the papers over to the Attorney-General who had signed them off by 5 o’clock. That was a gross miscarriage of justice and it was part of that inherent bias on terrorism issues. A self-confessed State terrorist who had killed 15 people in Gaza with a bombing a year or two back was ordered to be arrested by a judge and the case was disposed of because essentially the Government did not want to politically embarrass Israel because it was closer to Israel in that political context. 
So that is the problem we get into once we start dealing with terrorism laws State terrorism and non-State terrorism—the political content of terrorism. State priorities and State prejudices come into play. That is why the Greens are so opposed to this amendment bill. Thank you.