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: 08 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12565. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green):I rise on behalf of the Green Party to speak to Part 3 of this bill the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill. Part 3 is in relation to the Intelligence and Security Committee. I endorse the comments of Mr Grant Robertson who gave an excellent speech. I very much really appreciate the direction of the Labour Party policy on this particular matter after the 2003 legislation which the Greens did not support.Anyway Part 3 of this bill is about the Intelligence and Security Committee. Think about it—this is meant to be a committee that provides oversight over the agencies. The Minister responsible for the agencies chairs the committee so we have already got a pretty big problem of conflict of interest in terms of oversight and unfortunately this bill does not fix that. The Intelligence and Security Committee has five members. It has the Minister who chairs it and the Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the Opposition nominates one person and the Minister nominates two.I have been fortunate enough to be nominated by Mr Goff when he was Leader of the Opposition—thank you Mr Goff—to be on the committee and then I was nominated by David Shearer to be on the committee. Having been on the committee for some time now I am well aware of its extreme limitations and the limitations in its ability to provide the kind of oversight that I think New Zealanders would expect a committee of parliamentarians to provide. I think it is most unfortunate that we do not have the kind of oversight of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and the SIS that I think most New Zealanders would like us to have. Essentially that is because the structure of the committee does not provide it. You basically have the Minister responsible who has an enormous role within the GCSB and the SIS. It is not a stand-apart role for the Minister responsible for the GCSB; it is very much in control of what the GCSB does. That Minister also controls the Intelligence and Security Committee soit is very difficult to get any kind of real independent oversight in that situation when the Minister controls both the oversight committee and the agency itself.I thought it was interesting that the last review done of these agencies was in the first calendar year of the Muldoon Government because a lot of what has been going on lately certainly reminds me of Muldoonism so it is a most interesting coincidence. I think it is also important to understand that the Intelligence and Security Committee is very highly constrained in what it can do. It has very few powers to inquire into what these agencies are doing. Even if the Prime Minister were of a mind to allow the committee to inquire into the operations of the GCSB and the SIS the committee itself has enormous constraints on what it can inquire into.A normal regular select committee has a lot of power to require departments and so forth and officials to appear in front of it and to inquire into their activities. The Intelligence and Security Committee I am afraid has very few of those kinds of powers in order to inquire into what these agencies are doing particularly in relation to operational matters.Other jurisdictions as Mr Robertson has pointed out have given their oversight committees much greater powers. As well as their having independent people on the committee in order to make sure the committee is not controlled by the Minister who is also controlling the agencies that the committee is supposed to providing oversight of those jurisdictions also give their oversight committees much greater powers. The American committees for example under the US system have the power of subpoena. If you are a spy working in an agency and you are working unlawfully—and of course we have now found the GCSB has been operating unlawfully on over 80 occasions—your fear is that the oversight committees could subpoena you to appear in front of them and you could be forced to give testimony that would effectively incriminate you for operating in an unlawful manner.The Intelligence and Security Committee in New Zealand has no such powers. We cannot demand that spies appear in front of us. We cannot demand that they testify and tell us about what they have been doing and about their unlawful activities. The GCSB can simply say: “No we don’t wish to discuss that matter.” if we were to ask about it and that would be the end of the matter. We cannot make them tell us things. If there is any question about whether we might be able to make them tell us things the Prime Minister chairing the committee can prevent any testimony and can prevent any attempt to drag officials before the committee. So there is no threat. The committee has no power. It has no stick. It cannot force people to do anything so why on earth would an agency that has been operating unlawfully on many dozens and dozens of occasions have anything to fear from this committee? Unfortunately the changes that the Government is proposing do not change any of that at all.What I have done in my Supplementary Order Paper to this bill before the Committee is propose to remove some of those constraints. My Supplementary Order Paper 313 is basically amending what the committee can do. It would give the committee much greater powers to inquire into what the agencies are doing—the very agencies that the committee is supposed to be providing oversight of. I think that that is quite an important amendment to make. If we do not give the committee those kinds of powers ordinary New Zealanders will look at this committee and think: “Well you know OK we don’t know what the spies do but there are these elected people up there who do know what the spies are doing.” Ordinary people would look at the committee and think: “Well there are these people on the Intelligence and Security Committee who do know what the spies are doing so at least someone is watching the spies.” The problem is that if the Intelligence and Security Committee does not have the powers to actually investigate what these agencies are doing then I am afraid ordinary NewZealanders are being misled if they think that the Intelligence and Security Committee has the powers to provide a proper oversight function. It simply does not. It does not have the powers. It is dominated by the Minister who is responsible for the agency. It simply cannot do the functions that basically I think all of us expect it to do.I would also like to talk about the review process that has been proposed here by Mr Dunne. I do not wish to impugn Mr Dunne’s motives because I think that he genuinely does want to put a review process into this legislation. However I think it is too confusing for people following the debate to think that the review process that Mr Dunne is proposing is anything like the kind of review process that the Labour Party and the Green Party have been proposing. They are entirely different beasts. This is not the kind of review that would look at the agencies as a whole why they exist what they are there for what kind of structure they should have and what their purpose is. It is a much narrower review and there is absolutely no requirement for the review to be concluded—for example its recommendations to be put in place.By analogy I would refer people to the MMP review if we are to think about what kind of review we have here. After the referendum on MMP when New Zealanders voted to keep MMP there was a promise by the Government that there would be a review and there was a review by the Electoral Commission which is an independent agency. It came up with a series of significant recommendations to amend the system. However the Government of the day decided purely for partisan political reasons to implement none of them. So it is all very well to have a review within this bill and within this legislation but just having a review does not guarantee that any of the recommendations will actually be implemented. It does not guarantee the kind of depth the review might require particularly in light of the malfeasance and illegal activities of these organisations. They clearly need a pretty serious review when they have been operating illegally on dozens and dozens of occasions. It does not guarantee the kind of depth the review needs and there is no guarantee that it will reach conclusions and that those conclusions will be implemented and of course the review will be appointed by the Prime Minister. It will not be an independent review; it will be undertaken by people appointed by the Prime Minister.So although I certainly will be supporting Mr Dunne’s proposals around the review—good on Mr Dunne for getting them—none the less it does not change the fundamental problems of this bill. Mr Dunne still has an opportunity to change his vote on this bill and I would strongly urge him to do so. I would also urge the ACT Party to do the same. It is completely anathema to the very founding principles of the ACT Party that the ACT Party is voting for a bill that significantly increases State powers. It does not significantly increase the power of oversight within the Intelligence and Security Committee within Part 3. So how can the ACT Party a party that is supposedly based on a principles of liberty and freedom be voting for a bill that in Part 1 dramatically increases the powers of State surveillance but in Part 3 provides virtually no increase in terms of the ability of the elected representatives on the Intelligence and Security Committee to actually provide better oversight of this big increase in powers? How can that be consistent with a party that says it is built on the principles of freedom and liberty—that is how can it vote for a big increase in State surveillance but not match that by voting for a big increase in the ability of the democratically elected representatives to provide oversight of that increase in the surveillance powers in Part 3 which is the part that we are discussing at the moment? That is why I think anyone who believes in freedom should vote against this bill.