Key prepared to compromise with Peters for further GCSB Bill support

Prime Minister John Key, speaking to ONE News deputy political editor Jessica Mutch in South Korea, says he’s is prepared to compromise with NZ First leader Winston Peters to get further support for his GCSB Bill in Parliament.

“I wouldn’t rule that out. What I’ve said is that there’ll be the SOP process, so a Supplementary Order Paper. So when the bill comes back to Parliament, it’ll have its second reading. Then what happens from there is the committee stage. At the committee stage, we already know a list of things that Peter Dunne will introduce. Now, in a theoretical world, if NZ First or any other political party - let’s take NZ First - came along and said, ‘We will support the legislation if you make these changes,’ and they were acceptable to the government, there is always that window of opportunity to make that change,” Mr Key says.

Mr Key told the Q+A programme that his office had approached Mr Peters on numerous occasions, “offering to sit down with me, the officials, in writing. We’ve put all of those sorts of requests there,” but when asked if the lack of response meant it was unlikely the two could work something out, Key says: “never say never”.

The GCSB is likely to pass through Parliament with the help of ACT’s John Banks and United Future’s Peter Dunne, who has pledged his support after introducing some changes to the bill.

Jessica Mutch asked the Prime Minister whether a deal had been done with Mr Dunne in order to gain his support. Mr Key says Mr Dunne had not asked for other things outside of the changes to the GCSB legislation.

But when pressed on whether Mr Key would have a ‘cup of tea’ with Mr Dunne in his Ohariu electorate - a reference to the PM’s symbolic sit down with ACT leader John Banks in a café in Auckland before the last election as a signal the PM wanted voters to choose Mr Banks in the Epsom electorate in order to send ACT back to parliament - the PM says: “Well, I won’t rule that out”.

Meanwhile, the PM says the question of who actually owns the metadata that each person generates including when they email, text, or use a search engine, is more about “who can access data and under what conditions. I’m not quite sure it’s really an ownership issue. It’s who can actually see the information”.

When pressed over who has the rights over it, Mr Key says: “Well, I think in certain circumstances, the government, if it’s collecting that data for the purpose of trying to understand whether something untoward is taking place. For the most part, the individual obviously owns it, because you understand through your own phone bills or your own emails who you communicate with, what, where, and how and why. But obviously there are circumstances, and this is where the touchstone is or where the dilemma is, what is the demarcation line between the right of the government or its agencies to look at information vis-a-vis the privacy of an individual. And my view is that we’ve got the balance about right, because the alternative here would be either we don’t collect this data at all."

Mr Key added that if he has to pass the GCSB legislation with only one vote to push it over the line, he would do that rather than not pass it at all. He says that those protesting yesterday against the Bill were either: “a) politically aligned or b) with the greatest of respect, misinformed.”