KEY POINTS:
If the police have got it wrong, they will be held to account. That was the stern warning delivered by the National Party during debate on the Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill in Parliament yesterday.
National may support the bill, thereby guaranteeing its passage into law. However, that party
wanted to make it absolutely clear that Parliament did not lightly bestow extra powers on the police and other agencies of the State.
Both Murray McCully and Wayne Mapp, the MPs who spoke on National's behalf, stressed they were not going to prejudge the legitimacy of last week's anti-terrorist operation.
However, having legislated a "tool kit" for the police to combat terrorism, Parliament's responsibility was to ensure such powers were not abused. The police needed to have got it right. Otherwise, there would be consequences.
That is National's strongest statement on last week's operations and an indication of just how much trouble the police will be in politically if their actions are seen as unjustified.
Otherwise, National weighed in behind the Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill during its second reading, with Dr Mapp going as far as suggesting the bill was necessary to avoid someone from al Qaeda fronting up to the High Court to argue that the organisation should be removed from the list of designated terrorist entities when such designations come up for their three-yearly renewal.
The bill's passage means the renewal of such designations will now be in the hands of the Prime Minister, not the High Court, as is currently the case under the existing Terrorism Suppression Act.
However, Osama bin Laden could still seek a judicial review of the Prime Minister's decision.
Dr Mapp's reference to al Qaeda was designed to make the point that much of the contents of the amending legislation and the timing of its passage through Parliament are coincidental to last week's events. The terrorist designations, for example, are due to expire later in the year, thereby, in National and Labour's view, forcing Parliament to act.
Much of Dr Mapp's speech echoed the reassuring noises coming from the Labour and National benches. The two big parties may regard the bill as necessary. But they were conscious of the sensitivity surrounding yesterday's debate.
Speakers from both parties emphasised how the bill merely brought New Zealand into line with similar overseas jurisdictions on some matters. They stressed that other measures in overseas anti-terrorism laws - such as detention without charge - were absent from New Zealand law. They claimed that while there was a new offence of committing a terrorist act which carried a life sentence, the courts would set a high threshold for conviction.
None of this was going to dissuade the Greens, the Maori Party and Act from opposing the bill. By a quirk of parliamentary seating, those three parties sit close together and the Greens' Keith Locke, the Maori Party's Tariana Turia and Te Ururoa Flavell, and Act's Rodney Hide chatted and compared notes.
Mrs Turia did not speak during the debate, instead frequently interjecting during Dr Mapp's speech.
She may have drawn comfort from National's parting message that the police had better have got it right when they stormed into Ruatoki 10 days ago.
