Bill damages what it seeks to protect

It was all rather shabby, shoddy and shameful.

How else to describe the latest and one of the most flawed and consequently divisive pieces of anti-terrorist legislation to hit the statute books?

How else to characterise National's seeming contempt for Parliament's role in ensuring that new law is subject to proper scrutiny?

''Procedural abomination'' was the terse, but accurate judgement of Green MP Kennedy Graham of National's truncating of the passage of the Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill through the House.

Such a verdict is a bit harsh on Chris Finlayson, who, as the minister responsible for the Security Intelligence Service, steered the measure through the House.

Mr Finlayson was all charm, all obliging and just a little bit accommodating as he sought to get Labour on board to share the odium.

By that stage it was too late. Not that Mr Finlayson or his colleagues would have cared too much. Sometimes governments just have to govern.

Moreover, National believes the great majority of New Zealanders think the Government is doing the right thing or do not really care.

The Bill's objective was simple - to block budding local jihadists from leaving the country and ending up in the living nightmare otherwise known as Islamic State.

But the issues the Bill raised are complex - essentially trading off civil liberties in return for enhancing public safety.

The Prime Minister is utterly unapologetic about giving priority to the latter over the former.

John Key knows full well who would be blamed if the extra powers which the Bill granted to the SIS were not in place and a random terrorist attack in New Zealand resulted in deaths or serious injuries.

Perversely, the new legislation increases the odds of that happening, if only very marginally.

Like any rushed law, gaping holes are already appearing in its fabric.

One such void exists at the very heart of the measure.

The big question is what should happen after the passports of would-be ''foreign terrorist fighters'' have been cancelled?

That is not spelt out in the legislation.

The answer appears to be not a lot.

The Bill does not prescribe any new offences which would enable authorities to detain someone who intended heading for the Middle East and joining the Holy War being waged in Iraq and Syria by Islamic State.

And neither should it do so.

Unless found to have breached an already existing law, such as the Terrorist Suppression Act, any passport-deprived recruit to radical Islam stuck in New Zealand will presumably be free to radicalise themselves to an even greater degree.

And with what ultimate aim or result in mind?

A ''disclosure statement'' produced by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, whose officials have responsibility for the emergency Bill, argues that developing new offences to explicitly capture foreign terrorist fighters might be ''appropriate'', but there is no urgent or immediate gap in the system that needed to be addressed ''at this time''.

The department's advice to Parliament's foreign affairs and defence select committee, which briefly heard public submissions on the Bill, was more forthcoming.

The creation of new offences would require reconsideration of the definition of a ''terrorist act'' - and that was best left to a wider and less time-pressured review.

As chance would have it, just such a broad-based review is required under the provisions of the Intelligence and Security Act, to get under way next year.

In the meantime, an extra $7 million is being injected by the Government into the SIS during the current and next financial years, specifically to monitor foreign terrorist fighters, including presumably those unable or unwilling to leave New Zealand.

There is deep suspicion, however, that the SIS is using the current Bill as a means to gain and retain extra powers before the review.

Those extra powers will allow the SIS to conduct video surveillance through installing devices on private property.

The agency will also be able to conduct surveillance in an emergency for 24 hours without first obtaining a warrant.

As Otago University law professor Andrew Geddis noted in his submission, once those powers were given to the SIS, they would not be rescinded. That was just not how things worked.

Enter Labour, which opted to be constructive and extract concessions, in the form of greater safeguards in the Bill.

The Greens and New Zealand First could still rail against the Bill.

But for National and Labour, it is a different story.

Their job is to form governments, not make up the numbers.

They are the ones who really hold the power.

And with that come obligations, one being to protect citizens from harm.

The tragedy is that in doing so, they so often damage the very thing they are trying to preserve.

John Armstrong is The New Zealand Herald's political correspondent.

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