1.21MACMA serves as a gateway, allowing a foreign country to request that New Zealand use its powers to investigate and prosecute crime, and to restrain and seek forfeiture of property derived from crime, on the foreign country’s behalf.
1.22The current MACMA legislation is too detailed and specific and instead needs to be more principles based, allowing domestic tools that are used to investigate and prosecute crime to be available for foreign criminal matters in the appropriate circumstances. The proposals that we have made in this paper are designed to widen this gateway function as well as streamline the process for such requests.
1.23MACMA also serves as a gatekeeper, ensuring that the rights of individuals in New Zealand affected by the request are sufficiently protected. Not all requests for assistance will be appropriate, especially when first made. The current Act recognises that, as the Central Authority, the Attorney-General must decline to grant assistance for a few certain reasons and that he or she may decline assistance for a number of others. For coercive powers, there is also a second gatekeeping mechanism involving the use of the court. Our proposals would strengthen this gatekeeping role.
1.24International treaties are likely to expand the form of assistance that foreign countries might be able to request from New Zealand. MACMA should do a significantly better job in setting out the relationship between the current statute and those obligations. It should set out how those international obligations might vary the kinds of assistance that would otherwise be offered and the procedures that might be adopted to give that assistance or the terms under which it might be refused. The Act, however, should be clear as to the minimum core of obligations that cannot be waived or whether there are forms of assistance that cannot be added without statutory amendment.
1.25The relationship between MACMA and other mutual assistance arrangements with regulatory agencies and their foreign counterparts should be made clear. Inter-agency mutual assistance agreements will become more prevalent over the coming years. While we do not necessarily see anything wrong with a development that is both inevitable and desirable, there is a pressing need for New Zealand agencies to have a sense of both what is best practice for entering into such arrangements and what minimum protections ought to be expected.
1.26There are likely to be further information exchange arrangements entered into, and inter-agency mutual assistance agreements will become more prevalent over the coming years. While we do not necessarily see anything wrong with a development that is both inevitable and desirable, there is a pressing need for New Zealand agencies to have a sense of both what is best practice for entering into such arrangements and what minimum protections ought to be expected.
