Parker David: Video Camera Surveillance (Temporary Measures) Bill — First Reading 
Parker David: Video Camera Surveillance (Temporary Measures) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:676;Page:21453] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I acknowledge the Minister’s prior contribution. There are a couple of areas where I disagree. The Minister said there was a risk that the surveillance powers of the police were under threat. Well that may have been true a year ago but it certainly was not true when the Tuhoe people started to make their appeals through the courts. At the very least from the moment the defendants in the Tuhoe cases were making their applications to the court the Government would have been receiving reports that the power of the police to gather surveillance evidence was under question. 
I come back to the issue of whether this matter can be fixed in a different way that might be preferable to the way that the Government is proceeding. I have to say it saddens me that today we have heard from two Ministers and they are saying that effectively they will not even consider the alternative methodology that is being proposed by other parties. They hide behind the fiction that it cannot be drafted. I repeat: they hide behind the fiction that it cannot be drafted. I am sure that they were advised by the Parliamentary Counsel Office that it would be difficult to draft in time. I think that is the advice the Attorney-General said he had received and I accept that he received that advice. Indeed when we were briefed earlier today by the Solicitor-General he said that he had received that same advice. Labour’s point is that that advice is wrong. We have all but drafted the amendments that are required. Charles Chauvel is doing it with some assistance from various parliamentary staff and it is almost there. So it saddens me that the Government is saying “No we won’t look at that as an option.” because I think if you did you might find that you had a bit more support for this Video Camera Surveillance (Temporary Measures) Bill. 
Hon Christopher Finlayson 
: But I have been looking at it. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: You have been looking at— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Order! 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Sorry. The member has been looking at the information we have provided? 
Hon Christopher Finlayson 
: Yep. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Well I hope he lets his members on the Justice and Electoral Committee do so. 
There is a very difficult background to this and it lies behind the nervousness of Maori as a consequence of the Tuhoe raids. We need to be very careful of people’s perceptions in an area like this. It is not just the reality of what needs to be fixed. There is a need to be fixing something here there is a need for the police to have proper powers of search and surveillance and Labour has always agreed with that. But we need to recall that at the time we had anti-terrorism legislation effectively being used. It was subsequently acknowledged that that had been a wrong use of that legislation and that there were no appropriate charges to be brought under it. We saw on our televisions—and even on television I found it scary—black-clad armed offenders squad members in their masks with their high-powered rifles boarding buses that had schoolchildren on them and using the full force of the law on the people of New Zealand. 
Hon Rodney Hide 
: And a bit more. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Pardon? 
Hon Rodney Hide 
: Full force of the law and a bit more. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: The full force of the law and a bit more as Rodney Hide says. I find it worrisome when that happens and when it happens inappropriately even more so. I have to say that irrespective of the niceties of the law here I do think we have to have a look at the image we present to people when we are enforcing the law. I thought it looked a wee bit over the top in respect of what schoolchildren on a bus heading down the road saw. We must be aware of that. 
The next thing we have to do is we must respect our institutions of law. The Supreme Court is the highest court in New Zealand. It is one of the main protectors of New Zealand’s civil liberties. When it says that something is wrong we should do the minimum to interfere in that decision in order to remedy what might be a consequence that we need to fix. There are some things here that need to be fixed but we ought to go about it in the way that for people like the Tuhoe and other people who are worried about civil liberties causes the least amount of interference in the decision that the Supreme Court has handed down. 
There are a couple of other points to be made. I do not like the Prime Minister saying that this will cause more crime or implying that somehow there will be more crime in society. There will not be more crime as a consequence of whatever this Parliament does on this; the issue is whether people will be effectively prosecuted for their crimes. So let us not frighten people by saying that there will be more crime as a consequence of what is or is not done in this House of Parliament in the next few days; let us focus on whether we will be appropriately empowering the police for the future and whether we will be letting off people who have previously been convicted of crimes or have yet to be tried for their crimes because evidence cannot be admitted. 
We should also take considerable heart from the fact that the Supreme Court was actually enforcing an Act of Parliament that we had passed here and that is the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act which is meant to protect our citizens from inappropriate search and seizure. Let us remember that. It is another reason to do the minimum here rather than give carte blanche in the meantime. 
Hon Christopher Finlayson 
: That’s what we are doing. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Well I do not know that I agree that we are doing the minimum here; that is one of the things we need to check. 
The next thing we need to remember is that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act already specifically says that even if evidence is illegally obtained the court can admit it at its discretion if it thinks it is reasonable to do so having regard to the seriousness of the offence—or words to that effect; I might not have used the precise words. Indeed that very provision is being used in respect of the Tuhoe cases that are proceeding against Tame Iti and some of the other defendants. So we can take heart from that. Can I also gently give a message to the court that Parliament having given that discretion to the court we expect it to be used in appropriate cases. I ask the court to actually reflect occasionally on the pressure it causes for inappropriate overreactions by Parliament when it does not exercise its discretion. I should not say “when” because I am not saying it has done that; I am saying that if it were to be rare in the use of its discretion to admit illegally obtained evidence then it would create a pressure from the public and in this Parliament for retrospective legislation which would be undesirable. 
The Supreme Court does provide us with considerable protection. It has found that the actions of the Crown through the police were illegal. I think just about all of us in this House are agreed that the police need powers of surveillance. I was on the Justice and Electoral Committee when it considered the Search and Surveillance Bill and we reached that conclusion. I think everyone on that committee agreed that the police need powers of surveillance and we came up with wording that has appropriate protections. It says what the prerequisite level of offending has to be depending on the sort of search and surveillance. It says that one has to go to a judge. 
As for this idea that judges need to undergo some sort of training regime before they can appropriately confer these new warrants—if we did it through picking up the provisions of the Search and Surveillance Bill—which is what both the Attorney-General and the Minister of Justice said what nonsense that is. The same judges are already giving all the other sorts of warrants under the Summary Proceedings Act. Is it the Summary Proceedings Act or the Summary Offences Act? 
Hon Christopher Finlayson 
: Summary Proceedings Act. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: I thank Mr Attorney-General. I do not agree that that is a problem. 
In respect of the drafting problem we have had 3 weeks and it appears that the Government started drafting in the last day or two. We have had 3 weeks. We are told that the Parliamentary Counsel Office finds it too hard. This has been the most important constitutional issue in New Zealand over the last month and it cannot be given priority through the arms of Government so that someone pulls their finger out and starts drafting the legislation? What sort of Government have we got on the other side? Do the job! In the absence of the Government doing the job Labour has done most of it for it. We have drafted appropriate amendments that we think do the business in respect of the prospective power that the police do need in respect of search and surveillance. In respect of the issue of retrospectivity we need to hear from officials their advice as to whether there is a need for a retrospective fix. Until we have heard that evidence I am not in a position to say whether it is right. 
Finally I point out that the Government has been sitting on the Search and Surveillance Bill since November 2010 when I wrote to the Minister and raised three issues that the Minister has correctly listed: press freedoms; tidying up the Serious Fraud Office powers at the same time as we confer similar powers on the police that are a wee bit more constrained; and another issue in respect of examination orders where people lose the right to silence which should be a bit more tightly prescribed. We have not heard back from the Government in just about a year on the substance of those issues and that is part of the problem.