King Annette: Intelligence and Security Committee — MembershipText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: Intelligence and Security Committee — Membership[Sitting date: 18 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1723. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): It has been an interesting debate. I would like to begin by saying to those who have doubt about the ability of Labour to hold the Government to account in terms of any review or the Intelligence and Security Committee that they needed only to listen to the contributions that we have heard from Mr Shearer Mr Goff and Mr Little to know that we are determined to carry out our role in a transparent and open way and in the best interests of New Zealand.I just want to answer some points that have been made today. I have to disagree with Mojo Mathers. This is not about whether it is a man or a woman or a bum on a seat or numbers; it is about the most competent person for the job. For example I am the deputy leader of this party and I have been a Minister of Police; I perhaps could have done this role. But I do not believe that I have the skills that David Shearer has. When I look on balance as to whom we should put on this committee I could not go past a person who has had on-the-ground experience has actually worked in these areas has worked with intelligence agencies and has been the Leader of the Opposition. So when deciding who was the best person there could have been a number of people. It could have been someone from New Zealand First. It could have been someone from the Greens. But at the end of the day I believe that David Shearer has the skills that we need on this committee.This is going to be very important work. I know as a New Zealander as a parent as a constituency MP that there is a lot of unease in the New Zealand community about what is happening overseas. It does seem like a long way away from New Zealand but it is not in reality. You need only speak with the Australians to know how concerned they are about security matters.We are a little different in New Zealand. We do have the distance from these places and we do have a different idea about the balance between security and human rights and the ability for people to have their privacy. What we have to do here is balance those two rights—the right for New Zealanders to be secure in their homes in their streets and to be secure against threats from other nations from other people and the right to have their privacy. That is going to be where we are going to put a lot of effort into getting that balance right.I think it is important to point out that we have been interested in a review of these security intelligence agencies for a long time. As David Shearer pointed out 2 years ago we called for a review. We believed that there had been too much secrecy and not enough openness. When we hear criticism that Labour has been in the club and things happened under Labour I can assure members that if the former Prime Minister knew that there were illegal things happening she would have acted. So I take exception to the idea that we just let illegal activities by those agencies occur. We have said there ought to be a review of the intelligence services. They ought to be held to account and there ought to be much more transparency.I am very attracted to the three issues that David Shearer put forward today. The terms of reference for this review should be shared and we will push for that. We will push the Government to share the terms of reference. Why would it not share them? What would be the problem with that? I believe a Government that has its ears open knowing that we need to work across this House will listen to that call. I do believe we should have an input on those who do carry out the review. I think that there should be a call across this House for people to put in nominations for those people to carry out the review.Phil Goff made a very very good point and so did Mr Shearer and it was about the use of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee. That committee as you heard today was able to undertake work that you would normally have in the privacy and the secrecy of another committee. It was able to do it in public and to work across this House. Why should that not be a standard practice in this country? We are very keen to have a committee that is able to work that is able to get out decisions and that is more open and more transparent.I think we have shown in the work we did on recent legislation that we are able to implement change if you know how to work cooperatively. If you look at the changes that were made in the legislation that we recently had you will see that we were able for example to cut down the time for warrantless surveillance from 48 hours to 24 hours. That was done by negotiation by working on being constructive in terms of the work that we carried out. We negotiated restricting the new powers of the SIS to counter-terrorism work only. That was able to be done by working constructively and maturely within a committee. We were able to bring in a sunset clause. These were changes the Government did not want. It was not in favour of these changes but they were negotiated by our excellent members on that committee Phil Goff and David Shearer. I think they have shown that Labour is able to work constructively for the benefit of New Zealanders.I have to say in conclusion that I support the nomination of David Shearer to this committee. I want this committee to be a more open and transparent one. I want us to get the very best intelligence services in New Zealand to benefit New Zealanders so that they can feel secure in their homes and on the streets as much as is possible in this troubled world that we live in. There is no doubt it is a different world from the world of the 1960s and 1970s and the benign environment many of us lived in. It is a problem that we face this far away and how we react to it is going to be important. Good intelligence services are an important part of it. But as I said the balance between intelligence services and their ability to carry out their job and the rights of New Zealanders to their privacy is a balance that we will watch very closely indeed.