Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. Others have talked about the history of this bill and have pointed to the events of March 15 the terror attack—the gravest we've seen in living history here in New Zealand—and then others still have pointed to 9/11. I see the origin of this bill in New Zealand law coming out of the Ahmed Zaoui case which was in the context of the war on terror when one morning New Zealanders—including myself as a young baby law grad interning at Amnesty International—woke up and found that there was an Algerian asylum seeker being held without charge or trial on national security secret information that he couldn't access and no lawyers and no judges could access. That went on for two years. We realised that our then Labour Government—and it is nice to see a Labour Government bring this bill—had adopted national security legislation that allowed for that to happen because we were so keen to cooperate with our so-called allies who had gone into war post 9/11. We realised that the rule of law was slipping in our world in very close proximity to us all but also across what we normally call the free world and in the wake of that we saw Guantanamo Bay and we saw the Zaoui case being fought out here. Eventually it was the courts that freed Mr Zaoui. It was the courts that put in place a process which I think this bill attempts to legislate for where there could be a special advocate—where there was a requirement that actually if the executive says it has secret classified information well then it better give that level of security clearance to someone that can actually advocate for the accused person with such grave consequences. Yes the war on terror still wages on and yes post - March 15th we've become a nation that's a bit more aware of our own national security apparatus needing to be updated and futureproofed. But I do also want to remind us all that in New Zealand terms the only terror group or entity that relates to March 15th in terms of being a white nationalist group or holding the ideologies that led to March 15th is still only that particular terrorist. So this bill is much more likely to be applied to those like Mr Zaoui who was then classified as a terror threat as an Opposition MP in Algeria and that was his only crime as it turned out once we saw that information. It wasn't accusations of terror at all even though our national security agencies had taken the word of the Algerian Government.So this is why it's so important to get this right because national security information is something that's shared across the globe and it doesn't have the level of rule of law or due process that we might expect applied to it here. We can't just replicate that hysteria or that unfairness here. We're not necessarily if we do that even catching terrorists or stopping national security threats. This bill tries to legislate for that process and the Green Party didn't vote for it at first because we had some quite serious concerns but we did agree to come back to it as a caucus after the select committee process because we were hoping that once the Law Society and the Human Rights Commission—who I had engaged with on the bill initially and I knew that they kind of did share some of those concerns—had been heard by the committee so that those concerns might be allayed and addressed. I do want to acknowledge the Justice Committee because I know that they worked really really hard on this. Some of those concerns were addressed but unfortunately not all were. I did note that Mr Goldsmith in noting that there were only three oral submissions then also noted that some of those submitters didn't think that this bill struck the right balance in terms of upholding the rule of law or the kinds of human rights protections that it should and that those—and I know because I've seen those submissions—breaches were not justified or that they could be addressed in other procedural safeguards but that wasn't adopted. He said that some believed it's the Law Society and the Human Rights Commission we're talking about. But it's the independent agencies that we entrust to tell us as a House of Representatives when we are breaching some of those processes—in particular in the case of the Law Society the people that have the practical application of this work in our justice system and can give us solutions. So it was disappointing to see the departmental report not really address those concerns and sort of brush them off.Some of the concerns we still hold and importantly to start with the definition of national security information" is so broad—and others have made this point—that it actually has the potential to catch a lot that doesn't need to be caught. So the bill in our view falls short of the intention which is to have a really well-defined standard for what does qualify as national security information that needs to be protected in a process like this.In terms of the special advocate there's still an incredible imbalance there where even though there's a requirement that they be present—and I keep reading this again because I find it so bizarre that this breach would be provided for still. The Crown has a general exemption from providing access to national security information to the court or the special advocate even though that person and the judge involved will have full security clearance if the court decides that's OK. There's just absolutely no reason for that to be provided for in this bill and courts are most likely to rely in a situation like that in a proceeding like that on the word of who we call national security experts. So this is a huge hole. If the national security agency says it doesn't want to or doesn't think it should have to provide the information even to security-cleared counsel then it just won't. There's just no justification for that provision being in a bill like this when all of the other processes have been put in place including the security clearance.The cost of the special advocate may be borne by the non-Crown party—with equality of arms being such an essential part of fair and due process there's no justification for this being there. We know that the special advocates will likely be QCs so it's quite high cost to even have access to a special advocate provided for in this bill.The Crown must be notified every time the special advocate has a communication with the non-Crown party whom they represent. I quote this from a submitter: there's a massive technical disadvantage that's been created where special advocates have to give the subject matter of their communication and the fact of their communication with their client—or the person they in an arm's length way represent—to the Crown. There's no real point or national security issue that would justify that.So there are holes. There's an attempt—and I hope that in future we come back again to this—but the bill in its current form still allows vast types and information of a certain nature that is not necessarily security-sensitive information to be included in classified opaque processes. It still allows for no counsel that has the job of representing the accused person to have access to it and it creates a cost that's beyond justification on that person. So it is not a fair trial in the sense that we would expect in any other part of our jurisdiction. The experts on human rights and rule of law agree that there is much work to be done that hasn't been done in this bill and even though I think the committee tried its best it doesn't meet the standard that we would expect in upholding our human rights - based system and guarding against the kind of slippery slope that we saw with the war on terror where we gave up on our rights en masse with the hysteria of terrorism. So I don't commend the bill to the House."