Hipkins Chris: Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 25 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:803. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):I move That the words “Tuesday 2 December 2014” be deleted and replaced with “Tuesday 10 February 2015”. The effect of the amendment I have moved would be to extend the report-back time frame from this current year through to the end of the summer adjournment of Parliament to allow the select committee adequate time to give this bill due consideration. I hope that the other parties in Parliament who have expressed similar concerns about the bill will also be supporting this amendment.The Labour Party although we are supporting this legislation and will not impede the progress of the legislation does want to ensure that it is given adequate consideration. We have made a number of efforts to work with the Government to extend the time frame for submissions and we do appreciate the work that the Government has done with us on that. But the reality is that referring the bill to a select committee tonight and requiring it to be reported back in less than a week—by this time next week in fact—does not give the committee adequate time to give the bill due consideration and therefore we are moving the amendment.I want to canvass here that in our goodwill efforts to try to extend the time frame we did canvass whether there was a way to extend the time frame beyond next Tuesday whilst still meeting the Government’s objective of having the bill passed before Christmas. I am told that one of the parliamentary procedures that we come up against is the rule that a bill that is reported back from a select committee must sit on the Table for 3 days before it can be considered again by the House even if the House were to consider it again in urgency. It is an interesting aspect of parliamentary procedure that a bill can be passed from first reading through all stages in a single day under urgency but it cannot be referred under urgency to a select committee for consideration then brought back to the House and considered immediately under urgency for the remaining stages. It still has to sit on the Table for 3 days. That is one of the factors that is constraining the select committee from having that extra time next week to give the bill adequate consideration and on balance it is one of the reasons we are moving this amendment.We want to ensure that the select committee has adequate time to hear from all of the groups who have an interest but also to consider what sensible amendments might be made. Members on this side of the House have spoken particularly for example about the 48-hour warrantless surveillance period that this bill provides for. One of the things that I certainly hope the committee will be able to do is look at some of the alternatives to that—whether it is that the period be shortened from 48 hours to other alternatives including retrospective warrants which is something that the House might not normally consider.There are a number of options that the committee could investigate that I think would provide some elegant solutions to the concerns members have raised. I do not think the committee is going to be able to do that if effectively the only time it has to meet is Wednesday Thursday and Friday this week and then on Monday. That is 4 days that the committee will have to consider the bill and I do not think that in that period of time it will be able to do it justice. Therefore we are proposing to extend the report back date to Tuesday 10 February which would allow the Government to progress that in the first week back should that be what it wants to do.We are not as I have said trying to obstruct the passage of this legislation unnecessarily. We accept that there is a need for some of the passages of this bill to be progressed. However we do not believe that effectively 4 working days is a sufficient period of time for the committee to consider it.I note for example that the Australian Parliament is passing similar legislation at the moment and is allowing both of its Houses of Parliament to give it adequate proper and comprehensive select committee hearings. That is something that we are effectively going to be denying if this resolution from the Government is passed. I also note that the English Parliament will I am advised be introducing legislation tomorrow that it has indicated it will not be voting on again until May. It is giving it that amount of deliberation and that amount of consideration. So if there is a degree of urgency around this I think it is incumbent upon the Government as an obligation to spell out more comprehensively exactly why this needs to be passed before Christmas.One of the things that Parliament did in its changes to the Standing Orders in 2011 was require that where a shortened select committee report back is required—and this is one of the shortest that you could possibly imagine; less than a week—the Minister must specify with some particularity why that shortened period is required. Simply standing up and saying: “We think it is required because we want to get it passed before Christmas.” is not enough. If Chris Finlayson genuinely believes that there was some good reason for this bill to be passed prior to the Christmas adjournment it was incumbent upon him to stand up in the House and spell that out and he simply did not do that.We know that this issue has been kicking around for a good couple of years. The Government was considering these issues several years ago and they were put on the back-burner because of the Government Communications Security Bureau debacle because the Government decided that it needed to get that legislation through first. Of course we know that it needed to get that legislation through first because it got caught in that web of deceit where the Government’s smear machine got caught in the Government Communications Security Bureau scandal. It got caught by that so it wanted to deal with that issue first. But Government incompetence is not a good enough reason for forcing a bill through in the space of a week which is what this Government is trying to do. It is trying to push it through not because there is any more urgency on this than there was several months ago but because its incompetence has meant that it did not deal with it when it intended to which was a long time ago.We have been very clear that we will work with the Government on these issues because they are serious issues and New Zealanders have a right to know that they are being dealt with very very sensibly by Parliament. David Shearer and Phil Goff have made very good contributions—as has our new leader Andrew Little—to this debate spelling out the reservations we have about this legislation but also making it clear that we are not simply taking a blanket position to oppose. We do believe that the issues are serious and that they deserve a proper hearing. How can they get a proper hearing in 4 working days? That is simply insufficient. It will not allow the committee time to do its job properly.If there was a way that this bill could go to the select committee and actually get proper deliberation and be reported back in time for it to be adequately considered by the House then we would certainly be looking to work with the Government on that. We have supported the bill at its first reading because we believe that these issues are worthy of debate but we will not be voting in favour of this truncated report-back motion because we want the bill to be given adequate consideration. Having said that we are not supporting simply extending the time frame indefinitely or for 6 full months as would be the case under the default settings. That is why we have proposed a report-back date in the first sitting week of the House which begins on Tuesday 10 February. It does allow the committee to give the bill adequate consideration. It means that Parliament would be able to then reconsider the legislation at its earliest available opportunity which is the first week that Parliament is back after the summer adjournment and I think that that is a very sensible time frame. We are not being I think unnecessarily obstructive.I want to acknowledge the comments that Mark Mitchell made on the need for a consensus on national security issues. That is something that we in the Labour Party support. We do believe that there should be a consensus on national security issues. That is very difficult to achieve when we have a Government that is willing to use the apparatus of the State in the form of national security agencies to run a vile smear campaign against people who disagree with it which is what we have seen clear evidence of in the House this week and in the public this week. It is simply not good enough.The public need to have confidence that these issues are being dealt with seriously. Part of the confidence that they can have in that process is through having a select committee process where all of the issues are adequately canvassed and where the public of New Zealand have the opportunity to make submissions. The public of New Zealand many of whom will be hearing about this for the first time today when it is debated in Parliament are being told that they literally have a period of about 48 hours to get their views in to the select committee before the bill will be deliberated on and reported back. That is not good enough. That is not going to give the public of New Zealand confidence that these issues are being dealt with adequately and that their human rights are being adequately protected by the legislation.So as I have been very clear about from the outset we are not going to be unnecessarily obstructing the progress of this legislation but we are going to be making it very clear that we want it to be adequately deliberated upon. We want the people who are affected by it to have an adequate opportunity to have their say through a democratic process. This Government is not delivering that. That is why we will be moving this amendment and in the event that the Government votes against the amendment we will be voting against the truncated select committee report-back time frame.