Andersen GinnyGINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): 你好 Mr Speaker. The Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill implements the majority of the work undertaken by the Law Commission back in 2015. The task that they undertook at that time was to review how national security information is treated in our courts and particularly around how decisions are made dealing with that sensitive information. The question at the heart of that inquiry by the Law Commission was: what should happen when information relevant to legal proceedings—how is that treated when disclosing it might prejudice New Zealand's national security? So really it's one of the toughest issues to be able to balance up in how we map that out. The Law Commission found a number of inconsistencies in terms of how things have been operating and gaps in the current law so this piece of legislation set out to try and close some of those gaps and give greater clarity in terms of the process—really what we're needing to do—hopefully before it's required.The current law doesn't provide enough assurance that national security information can be adequately protected if it needs to be used in those courtroom settings and this potentially creates a national security risk for our country. The current law can also disadvantage effective people who may not know the reason for a decision against them. So the Law Commission recommended that legislation clear up this inconsistency and really that's done in the nature of having and maintaining fairness and natural justice. So those were the principles forefront in the minds of those in the Justice Committee when considering this legislation and how we can strengthen it further.The bill set out to achieve those objectives and it's important that I set out right at the start that this forms part of a larger suite of measures that are designed to strengthen an end-to-end system and prevent and respond appropriately to terrorism. It also supports our Government's wider response to the 15th March terror attack in Christchurch.So the committee received 14 submissions in total and we heard from three of those. A key feature of the bill is that the court should be able to order a closed procedure when dealing with national security information. It will be for the courts to decide how to manage national security information and where the risks of disclosing that information are sufficiently serious to justify withholding it or not. In cases where it is in the interest of justice to exclude that information from proceedings it will be withheld completely. The closed procedure would take place within a secure court facility with only security-cleared personnel and the judge present and the court would be closed to the public media and any non-Crown parties.A key feature of this bill—I won't go through all of it because there is a lot in this bill so I'm just going to highlight some key features of the bill and then quickly go over the changes that the select committee did as part of its process of looking at the bill. A main feature is the role of special advocates in closed procedure. Special advocates are security-cleared lawyers who act for people who are not allowed to see national security information in their case because the court has decided that disclosure to them will have a security risk. So the special advocate and the judge would have full access to that information and the judge would be able to direct that a summary of that information is prepared to the affected person and their lawyer. So it essentially acts as a buffer in that sense to make sure that there's a good access of information but it's also protecting the interests of national security at the same time. Closed hearings and special advocates are already used by the courts but this bill will create clear rules to be followed in all cases where the closed court procedures and special advocates are used.As already mentioned the bill does not provide for the use of closed procedures in substantive criminal trials. The bill retains the fundamental position that a defendant would always be present during a criminal trial. However what the bill does do is provide a new pre-trial process that enables national security information to be used but protected at that criminal trial. The court would need to decide in a closed court pre-trial hearing whether admitting national security information in protected form is consistent with the defendant's right for a fair trial.To cut to where some of the interesting discussion happened if you're interested in this sort of thing which I am it was really revolving around clause 12(1) of the bill that provides that the Crown must give the authorised court access to any security information at issue in the specified proceeding[s]." That means that the Crown would also give any special advocate and any special adviser access to that security information at issue.When the committee was taking a look at this we considered clause 12(3) which as introduced would give the court discretion not to apply the requirements set out in 12(2) if the court decided that a special advocate or special adviser should not have access to that information. We raised some concerns around this area and recommended that clause 12(3) be amended to incorporate a threshold for the use of the discretion. The threshold would align with the existing powers and limitations already in place under the Evidence Act 2006 including the threshold for excluding evidence in section 8 of that Act. This would clarify the circumstances in which the court may wish to rely on the discretion provided in clause 12(3).I'd like to give special acknowledgment to my colleagues on the Justice Committee Vanushi Walters Arena Williams Emily Henderson and Willow-Jean Prime who all worked and utilised their strong—Hon Paul Goldsmith: Hey—hey!GINNY ANDERSEN: Oh and there were some National people who occasionally paid attention like Mr Goldsmith. So I'd like to acknowledge that there are some really good strong legal backgrounds that were utilised in making sure this bill is as good as it possibly could be.Look I'll conclude by stating that this forms part of a wider range of end-to-end processes to make sure that New Zealand's justice system is fit for purpose particularly dealing with modern challenges such as terrorism and how we treat information in our courts to ensure that people get a fair trial but at the same time protect our national security. I commend it to the House."