Little Andrew: Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 16 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:13994. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): That was a temporary hiatus in my contribution and I will take one moment just to collect my thoughts because they were many and varied and in that brief pause there they have been scattered throughout my headspace which is coming to terms with what I was saying just before.We were up to clause 47 and we were talking about these extraordinary powers and the lack of check and balance provided by the Supplementary Order Paper of the Minister for Communications and Information Technology which is why we actually need to ditch the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper and indeed why we prefer Clare Curran’s Supplementary Order Paper 370 which provides an appropriate check and balance on these powers.This confirms the point I was making before which is that we should never in this House—a House of the citizens of New Zealand; a House of democracy; a House of Representatives built on the principles of freedom of citizens’ rights of a thriving community and of a thriving country where we respect each other and where we respect each other’s personal space and personal lives—let a power that is as extraordinary and I would argue as extreme as this slip through this House with nary a comment. It is bad enough that not a single member opposite will talk about these extraordinary powers will defend the need for this or will talk about why this Government needs to pass legislation that makes even more encroachments on people’s personal information and personal rights and freedoms. We do not hear from the Government and it is left up to members of the Opposition to have to draw the public’s attention to exactly what is happening here.The day that a senior public servant under the control and direction of a Minister and the Prime Minister should be able to direct privately owned companies on informing the director—the public servant—and the Minister about the equipment that they are using about when they are going to use that equipment about when they are thinking about replacing that equipment about when they are thinking about how the equipment is going to be used and about when they are going through all those processes and should be able to require the private company whether it has got public shareholders or not to keep the Government notified of those otherwise commercially sensitive and private decisions is an extraordinary development in the creation of statute law in this country. We should not only stand here and remark on it but condemn it and we do and I do.I say that there is simply no call for that even in a country concerned about the security of its citizens and concerned about the security of its sovereignty and its nationhood as many members of this House are—but of course those members supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement may take a different view becausethat constitutes an erosion of sovereignty. Even for those people who are concerned about this nation’s security there is no justification for the erosions of civil liberties civil rights and personal privacy and personal information that this legislation represents. I simply make the point that there is no cause for this and that we can achieve a proper balance between the nation’s security and the right of both companies and citizens to go about their lawful business including that part of their business and their personal affairs conducted in private without this sort of erosion. We must draw a line in the sand at some point and say that privacy—personal privacy personal security and personal space—must actually be given priority when it comes to passing these laws especially when the idea of national security is called in aid to justify the ever-greater erosions of personal security personal privacy and personal space. It is time to put the flag up and say “Enough is enough. Enough is enough.”I know that members of the Law and Order Committee who looked at the bill worked very hard to try to make some sense of it and to try to get some reasonable changes but this Government is hell-bent on driving it through and diminishing for all time those basic personal rights and citizens’ rights. That is wrong and it will change. It will change on a change of Government. In the meantime we stand utterly opposed to this—