Goff Phil: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 20 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12597. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):I want to talk to Part 3 of the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill. Part 3 of the bill deals with the Intelligence and Security Committee Act. What this part of the bill should be about is providing proper scrutiny over an agency the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) which in this legislation is being given more power—considerably more power—and indeed power to actually intercept the emails of New Zealanders on cyber-security even though the Prime Minister denies that but will not let the House put explicit safeguards in place to ensure that that spying does not happen.Hon Anne Tolley: Just not telling the truth.Hon PHIL GOFF: The member has been challenged to nominate the clause in the bill that explicitly stops the Prime Minister allowing the GCSB to spy on the emails of New Zealanders in relation to cyber-security. It is not there. The Prime Minister knows it is not there and in fact the Prime Minister said to the papers on the weekend that he would say something in the third reading of the bill and that would fix it. He does not understand how this House works and neither does that member.Hon Anne Tolley: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. We are on Part 3 I think which is a very narrow part and has nothing whatsoever to do with the third reading.Hon PHIL GOFF: Speaking to the point of order the member has a cheek in raising that point of order because I was responding to the interjection where she sought to interrupt my speech which was on Part 3 of the bill and I paused for a moment to make a lie of what she was telling the Committee.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Order! You were going so well Mr Goff and then you used a word that we cannot use in this Chamber. When Ministers interject that invites further comment. But Part 3 is debate on clauses 37 to 40.Hon PHIL GOFF: As I was saying this is the part that should give real powers to the Intelligence and Security Committee to exercise oversight of the GCSB and the Minister responsible for the GCSB. What this part does not address is the fundamental conflict of interest that you have in having the Minister in charge of the GCSB not simply on the committee—that would be unusual in any other select committee—but actually chairing the committee. So the Minister who is supposed to be the subject of scrutiny in his oversight of the GCSB which has been very poor on his track record is actually chairing that committee and ensuring that that oversight does not take place.The Attorney-General had the effrontery in his speech on this part of the bill to say that the Intelligence and Security Committee was modelled on a select committee. It is nothing like a select committee and the Attorney-General understands that. The first thing a select committee would do when hearing a piece of legislation like this is it would call in the department that the legislation was about. Did the Intelligence and Security Committee call in the GCSB to question the GCSB about legislation that pertained to it and its activity? No. Why not? Because the Prime Minister is the Minister in charge of the GCSB and he forbade the committee to have the GCSB come in to say how its powers were proposed to be expanded under this legislation what its actual competence and effectiveness in exercising its current powers were and whether there was sufficient oversight over the select committee.I have been on this committee. This committee meets rarely—at best a couple of times a year. This committee when it meets meets briefly. The Prime Minister chairs it and shows his absolute boredom with the proceedings very obviously and sends through his body language a signal to the officials who are appearing before it that they had better not say anything about the committee. The officials get the clear message from the Minister that anything that they say that could lead to other questions by the Opposition would not be appreciated by their Minister. It is a total farce. It is a total facade to say as this part of the bill says that we will fix that by taking the Prime Minister out of the chair for part of the proceedings if it is about the financial review. Who is the Government going to replace him with? It is going to replace him with the Attorney-General or the Deputy Prime Minister. I have real confidence in the independence of those members to chair the committee in a way that gets the truth out and embarrasses the Prime Minister! Yeah right! It is a Tui billboard absolutely. That proposal is paper-thin. It has not even the pretence of producing oversight and accountability.If the committee was to work properly then maybe it should take its functions from the Regulations Review Committee. As you are aware Mr Chairman the Regulations Review Committee by tradition is chaired by a member of the Opposition. The member of the Opposition listens to the official advice and asks the hard questions. So why not have a member of the Opposition—in fact the Leader of the Opposition who is actually the Prime Minister in waiting—chair that committee? Then you might have some grounds for public confidence that oversight was taking place and that accountability was being enforced.You know I have looked at a range of other Western democracies around the world that have committees like the Intelligence and Security Committee. One point that both the Australian committee and the United Kingdom committee make absolutely clear in their rules is that no Minister should sit on the committee overviewing the intelligence agencies. What have we got from the National Government? We have got three Ministers on the committee. In the United Kingdom or Australia not one of those Ministers would be eligible to sit on it. If you look at the United States the President exercises executive authority over the National Security Agency. He is scrutinised by two committees—one in the House of Representatives one in the Senate—both separated constitutionally from the executive wing and often chaired by a member of a party that is not the party of the President. If you look at the Norwegian example it goes a step further. Its oversight committee actually does not even have members of Parliament on it.But the Attorney-General brings this fraudulent piece of legislation in Part 3 to the Committee and says: “Trust us we have strengthened the oversight.” He has done no such thing. He has done no such thing. New Zealanders—40 percent in the TV3 poll said they do not trust the GCSB and 89 percent said last night they do not support this legislation—will not be fooled for a moment by this legislation. This legislation does not give oversight. It is farcical in the pretence that it makes that it might do so.The fact is that both the Privacy Commissioner and the Chief Human Rights Commissioner have made it clear in their submissions to the committee that the oversight provided by the Government is inadequate. Both of those people are appointed by the Government and are appointed to protect the rights of New Zealanders and their reasonable expectation of privacy. Marie Shroff who is the Privacy Commissioner was Secretary of the Cabinet for 10 years. She understands about the workings of Government. She says we should not go ahead with this bill that it needs more work and that there is not much oversight. The Government has changed the membership of the Human Rights Commission completely to put its own people in. But even its own people say that these measures of oversight do not work that these measures of oversight are not sufficient and that the Government is giving enormous powers to the GCSB to intrude into the private lives of New Zealanders.We do not have accountability. The media cannot report because it does not have access to the information. There are not parliamentary processes. The Official Information Act does not effectively apply to what is happening in the GCSB. The Privacy Commissioner the Human Rights Commission and the Law Society all say that we should go back to the drawing board. The protections are not sufficient. Yes we need a security—