Goff Phil: Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 25 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:798. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):The Labour Party has come to the decision that we will support this bill at least as far as to the select committee on the basis that there are some things in the bill that we think are sensible and necessary and also because given that the Government will have the numbers to pass this bill we thought we would take advantage of the Minister’s offer to cooperate and we would see what we could do to improve the nature of the bill so that it was more broadly acceptable.I have to say Minister that the process has been pretty appalling—not the process of your consultation with some Opposition parties; that is fine. But what is appalling is that this bill introduced tonight will pass through its final stages within a fortnight. As long as I have been in this House I have been opposed to the rushing through of legislation under urgency unless there are very good reasons for it. The key question Minister and it is a genuine question that I am going to put to you is that tomorrow the British Parliament—the United Kingdom Parliament—is introducing very similar legislation to this dealing with stopping people returning as terrorists dealing with monitoring air passengers and preventing travel abroad. Our level of threat is considered low. What does low mean? Low means that it is possible but not likely. The British level of threat is much much higher than that. I think it is at a high level if not at an extreme level. But the British House of Commons and the British Government in their wisdom are taking this bill through their normal processes and they hope to have it as part of their law in May 2015.My question is a genuine question Minister: why is this so absolutely urgent that it needs to go through before Christmas given that we have a low threat level when the British are passing similar though somewhat more Draconian legislation which is going through a full select committee process and will take 6 months to do what you are doing in 2 weeks? I think that is a reasonable question to ask.I want to say about this bill that whenever you deal with security intelligence legislation it is a case of balance. It is a case of balancing our responsibility as a Parliament to protect the safety and well-being of our people. I accept that as a responsibility and that is why we are giving full consideration to this legislation. But the other rights that we have to protect are the rights of ordinary and innocent New Zealanders not to be subject to unnecessary invasion of privacy and not to have their fundamental rights such as the right to travel withdrawn. So all legislation of a security intelligence nature needs to balance these rights. I had to balance those rights when I put through the Terrorism Suppression Act in 2002 and that was in the wake of 9/11 and all of the trauma that came with that.I do not doubt that we need to watch closely what the organisation called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is doing. I denounce that organisation unreservedly as being a brutal organisation that commits crimes against humanity and commits war crimes. We do have under Security Council Resolution 2178 an international responsibility to do what we can to prevent New Zealanders going to contribute to an organisation that is committing crimes against humanity. I have no problem with that. I believe that we are obliged to do that.But there are aspects of this legislation that I worry about. One aspect of the legislation is that we can withdraw passports when people are overseas. I am told that having a passport is not the equivalent of being a citizen but the English plan I think is stupid. The English plan is to take away the passport and not to allow people to return. That is incredibly irresponsible. I know that is not the plan of this Government but Minister what I would point out to you is that I cannot see anything in this legislation that legislates for the guarantee that we have been given by your officials that people who have their passports removed while they were overseas would have the absolute right to have travel documents to return to the country of their citizenship. We may be able to repair that in the select committee but it is a concern. What they have discovered in academic research on this is if you were to leave a person without a country to go to then what are they going to do. They are going to go back to their terrorist mates and continue to do the awful things that we do not want them to do.I want to say to the Minister that protecting our people against terrorism might be helped by this legislation but mainly it is helped by two factors. One is that we do have good relationships between people and communities in this country. I have the largest Muslim community in New Zealand in my electorate. I know them to be hard-working law-abiding and decent people. What I do not want to see is legislation either in its form or in the way that it is implemented marginalising and alienating that group. I have dealt with a lot of immigration cases in my time and I know that as soon as we start getting cases where people are denied the right to travel to a wedding or to a funeral because we might have some suspicion about them we are going to target some people whom we should not be targeting. What I would like to find out in the select committee process short as it is is how we prevent that happening. I know right now that the New Zealand Government has the full cooperation of the leadership of the Muslim community. What I do not want to do is to lead them or other people in the community who are not leaders to believe that they should withdraw that cooperation. I have met with the Muslim leaders as has David Shearer—we met them together—and I want to make sure that they have a fair chance to have their voice heard so that they are part of the process and not seen to simply be a target of the process. Harmonious community relationships in New Zealand are vital to preventing support for any terrorist action.The second thing that is absolutely critical is not simply this legislation but it is New Zealand’s reputation for being relatively independent and principled in foreign affairs. This legislation has to be seen alongside a decision to commit troops to Iraq. My worry is we will pass this legislation but actually by doing the wrong thing in the wrong way we could well remove one of the major protections that actually keep this country as a safe place to live in.I also want to get the threat posed by terrorists in some proportion. It is really important to do that. Right now I believe that most New Zealanders are more at threat from methamphetamine-crazed addicts like Antonie Dixon who actually took a samurai sword and started slashing people about. The threat in my office is not that I am worried that an Islamic terrorist will come up the stairs but we deal constantly with people who have serious mental disorders. They are threatening. Some of them have been imprisoned. So before we start going overboard with this foreign fighters terrorist threat let us make sure that we see the threat in proportion.The other thing that I really need to say is that I welcomed the Minister’s speech at introduction and I welcomed his speech in the urgent debate but I contrast his speech with that of Bill English Steven Joyce and Jonathan Coleman. What worries me is that we get a very reasonable speech from the Minister saying that security issues should be above politicking on top of a debate in which leading National Ministers did not have the decency to apologise for politicising the issue of the Security Intelligence Service leaking material to Whale Oil to try to get an issue up based on inaccurate mistaken and misleading information about me. That was repeated by those Ministers over the last 3 years. Not one of them has apologised now that an official report from the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has found that I maintained my credibility and integrity and that it was the director of the Security Intelligence Service who did not.So Minister by all means we will offer you cooperation but it cannot be on the basis of a fear that I have that if this National Party does not own up to its faults in politicising the Security Intelligence Service and what Phil de Joux and Jason Ede in John Key’s office did how can I be confident that you are not going to politicise the Security Intelligence Service in the future? I would like to believe what the Attorney-General is telling us and I will try to believe that but it is not reflected in the speeches that have been given by some of his senior colleagues in the House in the urgent debate this afternoon.