Ardern Jacinda: Passports Amendment Bill Customs and Excise Amendment Bill New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Amendment Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Passports Amendment Bill Customs and Excise Amendment Bill New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Amendment Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 09 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1271. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour):Thank you for the acclamation. Anyone listening to this debate I think would have heard on balance a reasonably constructive debate perhaps with the exception of David Bennett. There are things that unite us in this House but there are also deeply held principles that we will dispute and that we will dispute in a constructive way. As Opposition MPs—and we have all noticed this and known this over the past 6 years—we are often forced to take the on-balance view. This legislation is an example of that in the most extreme. But let us be under no illusion. If right now we were voting on the first iteration of the original bill that came before the House I doubt very much that you would see support from Labour on that version of the bill. In fact you absolutely would not. It was a bill we just could not support.It was made absolutely clear in some of the speeches that were first given in the House that we had five main concerns: the fact that it allowed warrantless surveillance for up to 48 hours; the fact that the sunset clause did not expire until 2018; the fact that it enabled the SIS to conduct visual surveillance like the police; the fact that it increased access to the Customs Service database; and the fact that it extended the period that passports could be cancelled from 1 year up to 3 years. I think everyone in this House would agree that those were significant steps to be taking as a Parliament and that we had to be assured that there were grounds for those steps to be taken. It was our view that there were not grounds to go as far as that bill first suggested.Let us also be absolutely clear. If we were voting just based on the process that the Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill underwent we also would not be voting in favour of it. The process by which we came to debate some extraordinarily significant issues was appalling to the extreme. I think everyone would probably agree—and in fact on ratings they are—that the United Kingdom and Australia are facing a significantly higher threat to their security than New Zealand is. Yet they are taking greater time to debate and consider these similar powers than we did and we never heard the justification for that from the Government. We understand that there will always be security and intelligence information that we as citizens or even as Opposition members of Parliament are not privy to and for good reason. In those circumstances we therefore place an enormous amount of trust in those who are privy to that information. But if the only comparator that we have is the fact that the UK which also has similar threats and which also is not able to share that information is still taking more time than we are then of course that sows the seeds of doubt as to what the motivation was and whether it was justified.The fact that we had a 2-day process and yet still in that time there were 588 submissions speaks more about the concern of citizens in New Zealand than it does about how grateful the Government was that so many people were still willing to submit. In fact I have almost heard it termed as a victory on that side of the House that so many people were still willing to come forward and engage in those circumstances. It was not a victory. How many people missed out because of that short time frame or were unable to be heard given only 63 submitters were heard? Yes I congratulate the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee on putting in such long hours to hear as many submissions as it could but it did not have to be that way. The great irony of course is that we were proposing that spy agencies be given 48 hours of warrantless surveillance but we would not give that long to submitters to submit on the bill that would have granted that power.This was not the basis on which we as an Opposition were forced to make a decision as to whether or not we would support the legislation. Yes we accept that there is an increased threat. We accept that the acts of terror undertaken by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria are heinous and should not and cannot be tolerated by any nation State. Yes we accept that the international environment in which we are operating now is very different from what it was even 10 years ago. We accept all of those premises but how much of our inalienable rights do we trade in order to meet all of those threats that we accept? Well not as much as the Government first proposed. I want to acknowledge the work that David Shearer and Phil Goff did on behalf of the Labour Party to push extremely hard in the select committee in a constructive way to change some of the fundamental elements of the bill. I just want to cover some of those briefly.First of all is warrantless searches. It is a massive step. The threshold needs to be extraordinarily high. As introduced the bill allowed warrantless searches to “detect activities prejudicial to security … or [for the purpose of gathering] foreign intelligence information that is essential to security;”. That was the definition. This bill was introduced under the premise that we were tackling only international terrorist acts. That is what this bill was meant to be around. That definition was far too broad to ensure that those were the only circumstances in which it was used. So it was because of Labour that that definition has been narrowed as far as it has now.The bill also allowed a time frame that was far too generous and unnecessarily so. The select committee again argued it down to 24 hours not 48. Extra safety provisions extra safeguards have been added. The SIS will have to report to the public every 6 months rather than annually on the use of the powers that have been granted to it and also the director of the Security Intelligence Service will be required to immediately notify the Commissioner of Security Warrants and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security when using this warrantless power.The second major change was to the sunset clause. A sunset clause of course means the expiration of a bill. We do tend to do this when we use a controversial extension of powers. We did it when we extended supervision orders for offenders for instance. It gives a chance for Parliament to review its use. But as introduced the sunset clause in this bill did not expire until April 2018. That would mean that a new Parliament would discuss and debate it. It was of course quite far out. I think it is right that the select committee made sure that it would expire on 1 April 2017. Part of our argument has been that this should be part of a wider review of our security and intelligence agencies and we still argue that that review should have taken place even before we saw the massive changes to the powers of the Government Communications Security Bureau. We continue to argue for that broader review.Finally of course there were changes to the Customs and Excise Act. We continue to have concerns about the ability under the Passports Act to cancel a passport for 3 years rather than 12 years but we made sure that we would never leave a citizen stateless if their passport were to be revoked. Those again were assurances that Labour sought at the select committee.There has been considerable talk in this House about perception except perhaps we have talked about perception in the wrong direction. There has been a view that terrorist agencies would be looking at what New Zealand would be doing in its domestic context to tackle terrorism. But what about what New Zealanders perceive of this legislation and this process? This law may now be one on balance where we have worked hard to preserve those inalienable rights of New Zealanders but a balanced view was not what was brought to the debate in the lead up to this law. The perception posed by the Government left members of our ethnic community feeling vilified and feeling targeted and that was wrong. Yes perception matters but what has this process done to that community?That is why I absolutely believe that we must defend—as much as or even more vehemently than our security—our independence we must defend our inclusiveness and we must defend more than just tolerance in our society. I am extremely sad about what this process has done to damage that.