Clendon David: Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 20 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3519. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): I am also pleased to speak to this bill the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill. It is an interesting bill. It has been around for some time. It has had time to mature clearly. The Greens are supporting it because it does some good things some necessary things.Time and technology move on. Technological developments create new opportunities for criminal elements to offend and to find ways to extract money in ways they ought not to do. We are however in common with our Labour colleagues disappointed by this bill to the extent that it fails to do something that it could do and that is clearly about this notion of bribes. I will avoid the language of “facilitation payments”. It is such a dainty expression. It simply overlooks or seeks to disguise the fact that actually you are talking about bribes—small bribes perfectly formed little bribes but bribes none the less. I will say more about that in a moment or two.This bill does some good things as I said. Among other things it will make it much more difficult for people to launder money through improper transactions and pass money through the banking system by various ways and means. It was quite an education I must say. Some of the early submitters to the Law and Order Committee were the banks and some of the major financial interests. It was genuinely interesting to hear about novel ways people find to work electronic systems that to most of us look to be quite impregnable and quite bulletproof.We did raise some concerns as did others about the very low level of reporting. A $1000 remittance overseas by a New Zealander will be tracked and will be recorded. I cannot recall now the number of transactions that that represents in the course of a year going through the banks—most of them the vast majority of them legitimate—but it was many millions of transactions. That is a difficult challenge technically for the banks. They got somewhat nervous I think about the commencement date initially making the very good point that they need to develop their software and their systems to accommodate that level of reporting. There was no opposition as such that I could see. They were simply concerned about their ability to meet the requirements of the bill. So those matters were dealt with.I continue to have some unease about the level of data that is being gathered here. As we know massive data banks information about people’s banking and their transactions can have value in all sorts of ways not least of all for commercial reasons. I discovered recently when visiting Spark in Auckland that there is a new and interesting profession called a data scientist—people who can manage these massive databases extract information from them and discover patterns and trends within them. I am sure the police will do this for very good reasons for good and sound reasons. They will be looking for the patterns and trends that represent offending in some way. But equally that information is vulnerable to being mined and to being manipulated and applied for purely commercial or other reasons and for that reason I guess we will continue to have some level of scepticism about these massive databases and will want to be assured that over time they will be managed they will be eliminated—whatever it takes to protect individuals’ privacy.The bill does some very useful things around people trafficking. It tidies up our law. It stiffens up some of our regulations. It criminalises actions in New Zealand even if the offending is carried out overseas and that is as it should be. New Zealanders should not be exempt from offences or from liability for offences simply because what they are doing is not currently criminalised in New Zealand. As I said though where we part company with this bill is that it is the perfect opportunity when it does deal with matters around money laundering bribery and anti-corruption measures to remove the section in the Crimes Act that allows for these so-called facilitation payments these small bribes. We have heard a number of justifications about why that is OK and they are common enough justifications. The pragmatic argument and Mr Bakshi made that in all honesty is that yes if you want your business matter to progress you might have to slip somebody a few dollars or whatever the currency is in order to progress that. But that is simply a bribe. It also embeds in that culture the notion that it is OK.Often the history of bribes and corrupt money exchanges is about the fact that people are not properly paid to do jobs not least of all in the public service in other countries where the income levels are so low that actually the bribes supplement the income and allow those people simply to do well or at least to have decent lives and of course the potential to accumulate large fortunes. I think the pragmatic argument fails. I think we as a country with a very good reputation as a transparent country with very very low levels of corruption should exercise some leadership and not be afraid to simply say openly and publicly even in environments where bribes are commonplace: “No we don’t do that. We don’t go there.” I think we would be supporting those countries.Two of the countries with the most serious problems around corruption in the world are China and India two countries that are important trading partners for us. I think we could stand up and be the example in a sense. Yes it is true that some countries do allow for facilitation payments although it is interesting to note that typically the regulations the laws in those countries like Australia and like Canada are actually tougher than ours. I think the provision in this legislation to require the reporting of facilitation payments of small bribes catches us up with Australia where that is already obligatory. The penalties in those countries for overstepping the mark in terms of bribery internationally bribing foreign officials are more serious than ours.It is interesting to note that only 44 percent of the top 50 companies on the NZX have policies prohibiting bribery and 18 have policies that regulate facilitation payments. Compare that with the UK where of the top 100 companies there 72 explicitly prohibit giving and receiving bribes. The figure in Europe is around 57 percent. Only five companies in New Zealand on the NZX have codes of ethics that prohibit facilitation payments. As I say we have a very good reputation as being a country with very low levels of corruption. We also have a reputation as a clean green country. I think Transparency International is something like Mike Joy in the sense that Mike Joy is blowing the whistle on our water quality and on the fact that our environment is not pristine. In the same way Transparency International is blowing the whistle on the fact that to the extent that we continue to accommodate accept and even legally allow for these small bribes we are undermining our reputation.It is interesting in respect of Transparency International that the patron is one Sir Don McKinnon whom we heard mentioned in an earlier debate today a former MP of a National Government and a Deputy Prime Minister if my memory serves me. Transparency International is lobbying very hard for us to include in this bill the removal of that clause in the Crimes Act. It put out a media release just a day or two ago which I hope some members have seen and I would encourage those who have not to have a wee look at it. I think I was the only MP who attended a workshop over at Victoria University hosted by Michael Macaulay. I can never recall the name of his department. It is the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies. He calls himself the “Professor of Corruption”. It was an excellent presentation from him from Transparency International which put up I think an undeniable argument that facilitation payments are bribes. We ought not in New Zealand to have provision in our legislation that enables New Zealand companies to be involved in bribing foreign Government officials.It is not the moment now to mention it but I will anyway. In respect of the Committee stage I have lodged Supplementary Order Paper 76 which seeks to remove that provision from the Crimes Act. I would encourage Government members to have a look at that read what Michael Macaulay has had to say read what Transparency International is saying what the Human Rights Commission is saying and give some serious thought to whether now is the time to enhance our reputation as a country that does not tolerate corruption. Kia ora.