Turei Metiria: Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 11 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:7944. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): The Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act was passed in 2013 alongside its sister bill the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Act. Those two pieces of legislation were expressly designed to increase the powers of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) to engage in large-scale spying on citizens of this country and other countries.I just want to be really clear about what we are talking about here. The original legislation which this bill before us wants to amend was designed to increase the surveillance powers against New Zealanders and others. The original legislation gave the GCSB greater technical ability to spy on New Zealanders and to allow other foreign agencies to use the GCSB to do the same. At the time the Greens and others fought very hard alongside thousands of New Zealanders against increasing the powers of the spy agencies in large part because the spy agencies could not be trusted to use those powers wisely. They could not be trusted to follow the law appropriately. Even though 2 years have passed since this original legislation was passed into law and despite the fact that the discussion then was that these agencies could not be trusted to follow the law and they were told to do so—and they promised to do so; that they would be much better—we have now seen subsequently that the New Zealand SIS at least is still failing to follow the law.So the Green Party supports Clare Curran’s bill because although a modest bill and a small change it is a bill that helps provide the oversight the New Zealanders are demanding of our spy agencies because they are proving time and time again to be untrustworthy and to fail to follow the law. The New Zealand SIS example just recently where it is required by the law—and I guess this is one of the warnings even about legislation like that before us today that you can put these provisions in place in the law but if you have a Minister who does not understand his own legislation and you have heads of agencies who do not care for the oversight that they are required to provide they just do not do it.The latest example with the New Zealand SIS is classic. The SIS is required when it issues a visual surveillance warrant to provide that to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. The director of the SIS did not do that. The Minister who signed off the warrants did not bother to check and make sure that she had followed his new law. He did not find out that she had failed to follow the law until after the inspector-general had presented her report to the Prime Minister a week after. You can put in place important safeguards but if you still have a failed Government that does not understand the importance of both privacy and the necessity to uphold the law then sometimes these things will fall through.But none the less despite the failure of this Government to make sure the law is followed when it comes to spy agencies and despite the failure of in this case the Director of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service to undertake her legal obligations under new law we would support any legislation such as Clare Curran’s to increase the oversight of the spy agencies—in this particular case the Government Communications Security Bureau. We would do so in the name of the thousands of New Zealanders who understand there may be a need for agencies like this who recognise that there are threats that need to be dealt with and that some powers may be required but who want to have a proper balance of proper oversight over those agencies to ensure that they follow the law just like they are expecting other New Zealanders to do. To have these agencies of the law breaking the law because there is poor oversight over their operations is unacceptable in a modern democracy. I applaud Clare Curran’s bill. It is a modest change but it is a step forward and the Green Party will support it. Thank you.