Franks Stephen: Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Franks Stephen: Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:615;Page:11249] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 It would be helpful if the Minister in the chair could also cast a little bit of light on another matter which I raise as a matter of speculation. I am told that staff for a European mission are hanging about in Australia waiting for the passage of this law and that the earlier starting date and desire for the bill to be put through urgently are because of those staff who are hanging about waiting. If that is the case I am a bit puzzled by it in the sense that literally thousands of fellow countrymen of people from European Union missions are in New Zealand at the moment without the benefit of any immunity. Many of them would probably be far more likely to run foul of our law than any of these earnest diplomats or sober-suited mission members. 
I am therefore a little anxious to find out why members of a mission if it is true would hover around outside New Zealand waiting for immunity before they dare set foot in this country. Have our relations with the European Union gone as far down as our relations with Australia? Are we in a situation where we have to commence this bill to entice these fellows and women into our country because they are anxious that we will take some kind of primitive revenge on them in the form that once happened to diplomatic agents? If it were true what would make them sit outside this country waiting for the passage of immunity legislation when surely it could only be a tidy-up at most? Is this the way our diplomats would act—that they would not go to a country until they had the assurance of immunity even if it were a country with which we had such friendly and hopefully fraternal relations as most of the countries in the European Union? 
This is something that I think the Minister really should reassure us about because if the commencement date is as vital as has been indicated by what I have heard about the need for urgency it suggests that our relations with the European Union must be very fragile and that our reputation as a civilised nation must be at extreme risk. I cannot imagine why we would have to rush the commencement of a bill like this—to the stage of putting a hurry-up clause in a Supplementary Order Paper—when all it does is tell people that when they are in New Zealand they will not be liable to our laws and that we will accord them reasonable dignity. I hope they would feel confident that we would do that for all European Union citizens irrespective of any law. I hope that members of a European Union mission would feel they were coming to one of the countries in the world where they could expect that the law would certainly not trouble them provided they acted in accordance with the norms of reasonable civilised Europeans. 
I would like the Minister in the chair to either confirm or deny that we do have urgency. It is a very odd thing for something like this a technical tidy-up to be so urgent. I am a little concerned that there may be something behind this—that there might be some members of a mission planning to come here whom New Zealanders want to offer an indignity to. Will this legislation protect a Greenpeace mission? Will it protect people whom New Zealanders might want to protest against? Is it conceivable that there are people coming here who fear they will be offered an indignity and who want the assurance that the police will be looking after them in the way that the police have had to look after the President of China and some of the other people who have come here and who have needed the reassurance of the Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Act? 
That is the implication we get from a provision that suddenly speeds up the adoption of the effective date of this Act. The effective date of this Act as it was first stated was simply to come into force by Order in Council. Now it is to come into force on the day after the date on which it receives the royal assent. Yet there are machinery things to be done if there is to be an order made and the Minister could tell us whether the order would be promulgated on that same day.