Climate bill's search powers alarm professor

Proposed climate change legislation contains provisions close to "state-sanctioned trespass", a law professor told MPs yesterday.

Professor Philip Joseph of Canterbury University was voicing his concerns about the Climate Change Response Bill to the foreign affairs, defence and trade select committee.

He said the legislation, which sets up the framework to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, allows officials powers of entry that conflict with the Bill of Rights.

Its "extraordinary" powers cut across basic rights and would serve little purpose, Professor Joseph said.

"The more I look at it the more I wonder why you need these coercive state powers of entry, search and seizure - because that's what they are.

"In fact you could almost make the case that ... it's almost sort of state-sanctioned trespass in the absence of any pressing and clearly identifiable national interest.

"I don't believe those powers should be there."

Similar view were expressed by dairying giant Fonterra, the Federation of Maori Authorities and Rural Women New Zealand.

The powers of entry and seizure are intended to provide access to records held by farmers, or to test emissions from their property.

Professor Joseph said it was not known what information could be sought, as the regulations were not yet in place.

New Zealand First MP Ron Mark asked what information a dairy farmer would have that warranted inspectors, accompanied by police, to go on to farms.

Fonterra shareholder services general manager Ray Parker added: "We'd like to be enlightened as well".

He knew of no information farmers had "that would require the sort of search and seizure provisions that they are talking about".

Professor Joseph said the powers were extreme for the purpose of information collection.

He could not see where that was in the national interest, and said the regime would not work if there was wholesale objection to it.

"You come back to the use of extraordinary powers of compulsion to enter and to search and seize, to administer a legislative scheme.

"That, with respect, cannot be good legislation," the professor said.

"There must be other ways to achieve it."

- NZPA

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