Labour: the public needs more time to have a say on proposed new security legislation.

Labour’s Defence spokesperson Phil Goff told TVOne’s Q+A programme that the public needs more time to have a say on proposed new security legislation:

“The government was talking about foreign fighters right at the beginning of the year. Why has it been left to this point to take action so that we only have two weeks and a very truncated Select Committee process. Select Committees are the heart of our democratic system. To have people in the public giving the public their say, giving the expert the chance to give evidence, that really does improve the quality of the legislation and we've cut that down to the bare minimum. Really that’s not good enough.”

He said he was most concerned about changes to the law regarding warrants for surveillance:

“Some of the things that are planned are not a particular concern for me. Visual surveillance isn't there simply because the act went through in 1969 when they didn’t have that technology. The Police currently have that under the Search and Surveillance Act. I am worried about the 48 hours. Where you can have surveillance without a warrant. It seems to me that only in extraordinary circumstances would you want to give powers to the SIS to put out surveillance techniques without having a warrant, so we're going to be looking closely at that at the Select Committee.”

Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee defended the proposed law change and the timing, saying the terror risk had increased since the beginning of the year:

“The situation has changed and John Key's speech last Wednesday was historically unique for any Prime Minister to be as specific as he was about national security issues, and people can read that any way they like, but I think this is totally necessary, we go into a two month recess from the mid part of December and we think it's appropriate to get this done prior to that long break.”

Q+A, 9-10am Sundays on TV ONE and one hour later on TV ONE plus 1. Repeated Sunday evening at 11:35pm. Streamed live at www.tvnz.co.nz

Thanks to the support from NZ On Air.

Q+A is on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/NZQandA#!/NZQandA and on Twitter, http://twitter.com/#!/NZQandA

ends

© Scoop Media