Goff Phil: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) — In Committee Third Reading 
Goff Phil: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:7093] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Justice) 
: 
 I move  
That the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) be now read a third time 
. I thank members of the House for their strong support for this bill. I think that apart from opposition from one quarter to one aspect of the bill everybody realises that this is legislation that needs to be introduced and will have a positive effect. 
I will comment very briefly on what happened during the Committee stage. Judith Collins was concerned that somehow this legislation had overlooked the repeal of some legislation on home invasion. Unfortunately Ms Collins a relatively new member had not seen the Supplementary Order Paper but I can assure her that the Supplementary Order Paper covered that. However I will comment a little bit in response to Mr Ryall’s comments on it. In 1999 he was the architect of home invasion legislation that was roundly panned by the Court of Appeal as being rushed politically inspired and totally inappropriate. I am proud that we now have legislation before the House that treats home invasion as an aggravating factor that starts murder sentences at 17 years and that does not single out home invasion as the only aggravating factor which is what that failed Minister of Justice did in the previous legislation. This legislation is totally appropriate and has been supported widely across the country. 
The second issue that came up during the Committee stage was interception warrants. Interception warrants now will be legally required in order to tap into emails or faxes. Any person who does that without the legal authority to do so will be committing a crime so this bill largely creates a protection for privacy. But of course we allow certain law enforcement agencies to have the power to tap into emails and faxes—just as they have always had the power to tap into telephone calls—with proper safeguards for individual privacy and with the involvement of the judiciary in allowing that to happen. It is clear to 99 percent of the country that our law enforcement agencies which are fighting against crime and transnational crime—and they now have the additional concern of international terrorism—must have the exact same ability where appropriate and where a member of the judiciary has verified that it is appropriate to tap into emails and faxes as they have always had to tap into telephone calls. 
This bill updates most of the property offences in the Crimes Act many of which have not been updated since the Act was passed in 1961. Updating is needed to have many of the property offence provisions reflect changes in technology crime and law enforcement since the Act was passed 40 years ago. 
Central to the bill’s reforms is plugging the gaps and areas of uncertainty in the Crimes Act’s application to computer-related crime. The bill will ensure that offending involving computer technology is adequately covered. 
 Amendments to Parts 9A and 11A of the Crimes Act which respectively contain interception offences and provisions relating to police interception warrants will ensure that the interception of emails and faxes by people who are not parties to the communication is illegal. Currently only oral communication is covered by the Crimes Act. The amendments relating to police interception warrants will help the police deal with organised crime. Currently the police when acting under an interception warrant can intercept only oral communications and cannot use any written communications such as text messages emails or faxes that are intercepted. Criminals are taking advantage of technologies that we all now take for granted and it is clearly important that the police have the necessary powers to deal with that. 
There was criticism by one party of the qualified exemptions for some State agencies from the offences relating to interception and unauthorised access to computers. The Law and Order Committee carefully considered those concerns against the necessity for the exemptions to allow effective investigations of for example organised crime or potential terrorist threats. The committee concluded that the safeguards provided in the bill together with existing statutory safeguards are adequate to ensure that personal privacy is balanced appropriately with the duty of the State to protect its citizens. I believe that the bill will strengthen privacy interests by criminalising some activity that is not currently criminal such as the interception of non-oral private communication and accessing computers without authorisation. 
A particular criticism of the bill was that the qualified exemption for law enforcement agencies from the unauthorised computer access offence gives police the power to hack into computers. It does not do that. The Crown Law Office provided a legal opinion to the select committee on the effect of those sections. In its opinion the effect is to put beyond doubt that a law enforcement agency accessing a computer system under some existing authority does not have unauthorised access. In other words it is not committing an offence if it already has some legal basis such as a search warrant for accessing the computer. This measure is a matter of clarification not a free licence for those agencies to hack into computers without legal justification. 
Aside from the computer and interception offences there are other important amendments that the bill makes to the criminal law. As well as the new computer offences the bill contains another new offence that of taking obtaining or copying trade secrets. The essence of the offence is wrongly acquiring something such as a document plan model or diagram of commercial value with the intention of obtaining financial gain. The offence of burglary is amended. The phrase “breaking and entering” is replaced with “entering without authority” which will remove technical arguments as to what constitutes a break. Effectively it means that burglary and unlawful entry offences are combined and that should assist the police in their efforts against burglary. The offence of blackmail is broadened from the current offence of extortion by certain threats. The new offence will apply to any threat of disclosure. The scope of the threat has also been widened to cover a threat to cause serious damage to property or to endanger the safety of any person. The offence of obtaining by deception or causing loss by deception replaces the current offence of false pretences. It will cover a broader range of financial benefits than the current offence does and the element of causing loss is also new. A number of new offences have also been broadened to include liability for reckless as well as intentional conduct. 
This bill is a very important update of New Zealand’s property offences regime. It will strengthen the criminal law and will give the police and the Serious Fraud Office more effective laws to deal with offending ranging from burglary through to organised crime. I thank members and officials who have worked on this legislation which I believe represents an important advance in the law.