A war on judicial oversight

In response to a leak, the government has been forced to release its "temporary" anti-terror legislation - and reveal that its a lot less temporary than they said it would be. Rather than a one-year patch-job pending a review, John Key's spies will have extra powers and warrantless emergency surveillance rights for his entire term. And to spies, everything is an "emergency"...

Reading the bill, the overwhelming thrust is to remove appeal rights and judicial oversight. This is particularly clear in the case of the new powers to seize and cancel passports, where a 12-month cancellation, extendible for a further 12 months on application to the High Court, becomes a 3-year cancellation. The net effect is to remove judicial oversight from the process. Note that the government hasn't actually told anyone how many times it has even applied to extend a cancellation, let alone whether it has been successful or not; no case has actually been made. We're all simply supposed to believe that there is a problem, and see unaccountable Ministerial discretion as a solution.

There are obvious BORA problems. The cancellation of passports interferes with freedom of movement, both the right to leave New Zealand, and the right of every New Zealander to return here. And while the former might conceivably be justifiably limited for reasons of preventing crime etc, the latter cannot be. It also appears to be punishment without trial, a violation of the right to justice, while the procedural denial of appeals from those overseas (appeals are limited to 30 days after notification, but the Minister doesn't actually have to notify his victims) is another. Not to mention the new rules allowing the government to use secret "evidence" in court cases, which have been found overseas to violate fair trial rights...

These measures are not acceptable in a free and democratic society. Insofar as they are necessary to prevent terrorism, they should be exercised by judges in open court, rather than Ministers in secret.