Norman Russel: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — Referral to Government Administration Committee In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNorman Russel: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — Referral to Government Administration Committee In Committee[Sitting date: 06 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12375. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green):I want to pick up on referring to the 10 substantive amendments that I have put forward on Part 1 of the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill. Where I was at before was looking at amendments around sections 8A and 8B in clause 6. They are essentially to restrict the information flow to New Zealand so that the information gathered by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) under sections 8A and 8B does not travel offshore. Apparently—we were told—the practice in the past has been to send all this information offshore.I want to talk a little bit about section 8C and my amendment under Supplementary Order Paper 319 to section 8C. The amendment is to essentially remove section 8C and the reason for that is that I think we have already seen the threat that section 8C poses to our democracy. Section 8C basically says that the Defence Force the Police and the SIS can use the GCSB to spy on New Zealanders. That is what it says. We know that the Defence Force thinks that investigative journalists are subversives. Under the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Act for example subversives are part of the definition of protecting security so it is protecting New Zealand against subversives.So journalists become a legitimate target once they are defined as subversives as the New Zealand Defence Force believes journalists to be. Once journalists become subversives and hence a legitimate target of surveillance the Defence Force can go to the GCSB and say: “Help us out to spy on journalists because journalists are subversives as we all know and hence it is legitimate for us to ask you to spy on them.”This I think demonstrates the problem with section 8C and it is why we are trying to delete it under Supplementary Order Paper 319.I would also like to make a comment on Mr Dunne’s amendments which we will be supporting because they do provide minor improvements to the bill and we will vote for minor improvements. I would refer in particular to the review process that Mr Dunne has put in place. That review process is completely meaningless. It is like the MMP review. Remember the MMP review? The Government said we were going to have a review of MMP if in the referendum people voted for MMP. The Electoral Commission the independent umpire suggested a bunch of changes to MMP and the Government did not like them for partisan political reasons so implemented none of them. So I am afraid that the review that Mr Dunne has got is meaningless. We will support it but frankly it does not fix up the bill.The next Supplementary Order Paper I want to talk about is Supplementary Order Paper 309. The effect of my amendment here is essentially to revert to the original section 14 of the Government Communications Security Bureau Act 2003—that is to revert to the situation that Parliament believed it had passed in 2003 which prevented the GCSB from spying on New Zealanders. If you do not believe that that is what Parliament voted for you should read the debate in 2003. I have been on the Intelligence and Security Committee dealing with this bill and reading the debate from 2003. It is remarkable for example that Tony Ryall who is also now a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee spoke at length about how clause 14 of the 2003 bill absolutely forbade and prohibited the GCSB from spying on New Zealanders. He said that anybody else who argued anything else was a conspiracy theorist. He said that they were slightly strange people if they thought that the GCSB was going to be able spy on New Zealanders. That is what Tony Ryall said in the debate about the 2003 legislation when it was passed.So the existing section 14 of the Government Communications Security Bureau Act 2003 says that the GCSB cannot spy on New Zealanders. The GCSB said: “We don’t care what the law says we are going to spy on New Zealanders because we want to.” and it went ahead and did it and broke the law. We have never seen the legal opinion from the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security saying that it is arguable whether it broke the law. The Government will not release that legal opinion because it knows that it is bunkum. The GCSB clearly did breach the basic rights of 88 New Zealanders by spying on them against the law and clearly breaching section 14. So my Supplementary Order Paper 309 is essentially to revert back to the original meaning that Parliament supported in 2003 when it voted for the legislation which was that the GCSB was simply not allowed to spy on New Zealanders. We think that that is fundamental to why the GCSB was established.I would also just like to touch on a couple of other Supplementary Order Papers. Supplementary Order Paper 322 basically stops the unwarranted actions of the GCSB. Section 16 of the Act allows the GCSB to engage in unwarranted interception. So it can—