By PHILIP ENGLISH
New Zealanders making contributions to overseas liberation movements which killed could be caught by anti-terrorism legislation, a parliamentary committee heard yesterday.
Graham Kelly, chairman of the panel of MPs hearing submissions on the Terrorism (Bombing and Financing) Bill, assured a number of submitters that the legislation would not "catch" New Zealanders raising funds for liberation movements.
The only exception, he said, would be if that support for a movement was made "with the express purpose of killing someone".
The select committee's day was filled with submitters ranging from the Law Society, the Auckland Council for Civil Liberties and the Human Rights Commission, to peace groups, individuals, women's groups, socialist groups and the Indonesia Human Rights Committee.
Professor Jane Kelsey of the University of Auckland, in written submissions, called the legislation arguably the most draconian ever to have been placed before New Zealand's Parliament.
"How would members of the committee have regarded similar legislation if it had been proposed by former Prime Minister Robert Muldoon?"
She and other submitters criticised the legislation as creating offences carrying severe penalties of imprisonment for actions impossible to define with certainty and the bill's low standard of proof for designating a person or group as terrorist.
The Law Society believed that some illegal actions arising from domestic protest could unintentionally be caught by the definition of a terrorist act.
Examples of such groups getting caught could be anti-abortion protesters seeking a law change and damaging Parliament Buildings, or anti-genetic modification protesters damaging the power supply to a city where GM trials were being carried out.
"Such acts may be prosecuted under criminal law but should not provide a pretext for the criminalisation of supporters of organisations that carry out such acts."
The Law Society, in submissions presented by the convenor of its criminal law committee, Judith Ablett Kerr, QC, and committee member Dr Arjit Swaran Singh, said it believed that the rights of a detained person under the legislation would be those accorded to an individual under common law or the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, except for cases where the legislation overwrote the Bill of Rights.
Individuals held in New Zealand would have the right to legal advice and representation.
Christopher Laurence, the director of human rights proceedings at the Human Rights Commission, said the organisation's view of the legislation was that it went no further than what was required, unlike similar legislation in other parts of the world.
But he raised concerns over the threshold of proof to be used by the Prime Minister, to whom the legislation gave the power to make "interim designations" of terrorists.
In cases of mistakes, there should be compensation, he said.
Other submitters spoke of the legislation being undemocratic and unnecessary and of New Zealand falling into line behind "imperialist" America and having to rely on its spies - the CIA.
Daphna Whitmore, of the Workers' Party of NZ, said the group had been about to start fundraising for a liberation struggle in Nepal but had put the activity on hold in case there were problems caused by the legislation.
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Links: War against terrorism
Timeline: Major events since the Sept 11 attacks
Terror law could net NZ liberation group donors
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