Parker David: Search and Surveillance Bill — Second Reading 
Parker David: Search and Surveillance Bill — Second Reading 
[Advance Copy - Subject to minor change before inclusion in Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 For a start can I repeat the thanks that have been expressed by my colleague Charles Chauvel for the way in which the National Party conducted itself at the Justice and Electoral Committee. The committee was chaired by Chester Borrows. The Search and Surveillance Bill is one of the most complex and difficult pieces of legislation that I have considered in any select committee since I have been in Parliament. It is one in which the select committee took very seriously the proper balance between the protection of civil liberties and the necessary powers to be afforded to State agencies to investigate criminal conduct. 
The need for an update of the law had been made clear by the Law Commission. There were various powers in New Zealand that were being exercised by the police in an unregulated form because the original legislation passed in yesteryear did not cover some of the new technologies that had been developed since. So it was clear that there was a need to update the search and surveillance legislation. 
I do not have time to go into the detail of the many changes that were made at the select committee. With the cooperation of the Minister of Justice and members of the select committee suffice it to say that other than issues that Charles Chauvel and I have been talking about today we are satisfied that the bill represents an appropriate balance between powers that are needed by the State and civil liberties that we need to protect for our citizens for them to be free from unreasonable search and surveillance by State agencies. 
But we are left with some very serious issues and I want to put on record what I think has been a deliberately political and improper dealing with the concerns that have been raised by me on behalf of the Labour Party. While the bill was at the select committee it became abundantly clear that the issue of Serious Fraud Office powers needed to be addressed. Why? Because at the time when this was at the select committee or thereabouts the Serious Fraud Office without a judicial warrant exercised its powers against the  
National Business Review 
 to seize—or to claim a right to seize—records relating to the  
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 investigation of the South Canterbury Finance failure. It became absolutely apparent that this was a problem that needed to be fixed. It needed to be fixed by changes to the Serious Fraud Office powers to make sure that it can exercise its powers only if it goes to a court and gets a warrant. At the moment it does not need to go to the court to get a warrant and that is the fundamental problem that we have with the Serious Fraud Office powers. 
This issue came to light because when the prior Labour Government was considering these issues at that time we were proposing a merger between the Serious Fraud Office and the organised crime unit of the police and so there was a discussion as to what powers should be carried forward from the Serious Fraud Office to the police. At the time the Law Commission recommended to Cabinet that none of these powers for examination orders and production orders which are an undermining of the right to silence should be carried forward to this new unit. 
There was some public disquiet about those powers being taken away from the Serious Fraud Office at the time when it was being merged with the police. So with the approval of my then Cabinet colleagues I as a member of Cabinet went to see a number of Queen’s Counsel mainly in Auckland about whether these powers were needed for the Serious Fraud Office. The advice that I received was that we were naive if we thought that some of these powers were not necessary for the Serious Fraud Office and therefore the advice was that these powers should carry forward for the Serious Fraud Office in some form. There was also a universal—but for one person—view that the Serious Fraud Office abused its powers because it used this non-warranted route for normal investigations which should be carried out either through normal investigative processes or though the police in ways that get warrants. 
So it was the view of the Law Commission as well as the senior lawyers involved and the Labour Cabinet that we needed to carry forward these powers of the Serious Fraud Office to this new joined agency for both the police on serious crime and the Serious Fraud Office in respect of its serious fraud problems. We reached that view because we realised that some of the most pernicious organised crime and gang crime is even more serious or at least as serious as the crime that is dealt with by the Serious Fraud Office and if those powers were justified for the Serious Fraud Office we could not see how we could say they were not justified for the police. 
Hence we had the situation where the National Government was elected. It had campaigned against the Serious Fraud Office being merged into the police force and we accept that is its right but then we had the carry-on of the new powers for the police including the derogation or undermining of the right to silence through production orders and examination orders through the police. We agreed at the select committee that that needed to be surrounded with very careful protections of civil liberties the most fundamental of which is that you have to get a warrant from a judge. 
This problem remains in respect of the Serious Fraud Office because it does not need a warrant. It was outside the scope of the Search and Surveillance Bill. We said we would cooperate with the Government to bring forward another bill to make sure it happened. We said that we would cooperate through the Business Committee to make sure that parallel legislation could be introduced to this House. It is easy to do. We did it this very day in the House in respect of some of the Maori settlement legislation earlier today so it can be done Minister and it can be done easily as it was done this very day in respect of settlement legislation. 
I wrote to the Minister of Justice in November 2010 in respect of these very issues and I laid all of this out. I did not get a reply until after the election. At the time because of delays I speculated both to my colleagues and to the police that this was effectively an act of political subterfuge and it was the real intention of the Government to reply so late in the piece that it could just push this legislation through after the election without addressing the very serious issue of media freedoms. 
Media freedoms are absolutely essential to clean democracies. If you do not have free media free of intrusion from State agencies you cannot guarantee the long-term strength of your democracy. There are a number of things that are piling up in New Zealand that show that this Government has a poor record in respect of media freedoms. I do not have time to go through some of the attacks on civil liberties during the last 3 years but I do have time to note to members opposite the abuse of the Prime Minister’s position by calling in the police to hound media sources after the tea tapes went wrong. That was wrong. That was an attack on media freedoms. I do have time to recount the fact that under this Government the Serious Fraud Office without a warrant went into the  
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 and put it at risk of prosecution fines and criminal penalties because it would not hand over its records about the press’s investigations into South Canterbury Finance. I do have time to report how terrible it is that we have the Prime Minister’s Helensville electorate chairperson appointed to NZ On Air and trying to interfere with the timing of programming leading up to the election when that Mr McElrea tried to stop the airing of a documentary on child poverty. I do have time to talk about Minister Joyce doing a sweet-heart deal with one of the commercial companies in respect of frequency fees for— 
Simon Bridges 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Point of order the member Simon Power. 
Simon Bridges 
: Well almost but not quite: Simon Bridges. This has absolutely nothing to do with the bill. The speaker has strayed very wide of the mark of this bill and what he is saying is irrelevant. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Speaking to the point of order I am emphasising why media freedoms in respect of both the police and the Serious Fraud Office need to be dealt with in this bill. This is clearly within order and I would request the right to continue. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: It is a debatable issue. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. So against that background— 
Simon Bridges 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It was not a debatable issue. I was asking you to rule on a question of relevancy. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I have ruled on the question of relevancy: it is a debatable issue. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: So not having had a response from the Minister during the period prior to the election what turns up the day following the election? The day following the election I get a letter from the by then ex-Minister of Justice Simon Power effectively saying they were not going to do anything about it. They did not even have the decency to point out the date of the letter that I had sent them because they were so embarrassed that that letter was sent over a year prior. 
This is very very important legislation. We should have agreement across the House in respect of search and surveillance legislation. It ought not to be an issue of political controversy and yet we have the Government refusing to move on the issue of whether the Serious Fraud Office needs these powers. It says now in this latest letter that it will look at how often the Serious Fraud Office is abusing or using these powers. I say that I do not need to know any more. I know that the Serious Fraud Office marched into the  
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and without a warrant from a judge said “Give us your records.” That is wrong. That can be fixed by this Parliament and unless it is fixed by this Parliament or we get an agreement from Judith Collins that she will fix it—we will accept an undertaking that she will fix it in the next little while—you have got a scrap on your hands with this because it is wrong. It is wrong and the problems in respect of media freedoms need to be addressed.