The Supreme Court has ruled a minister was wrong to cancel a woman’s passport on the belief she planned to travel overseas to facilitate terrorism.  

In April 2016, acting Minister of Internal Affairs Judith Collins suspended the woman’s New Zealand passport for 10 days, as a report was being prepared regarding the danger that the passport holder presented to the security of New Zealand or another country. 

Minister Peter Dunne then cancelled her New Zealand passport after being presented with a report from the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) during an oral briefing a few weeks later. 

The report advised that the woman intended to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to engage in or facilitate a terrorist act. 

The report also detailed a previous attempt to travel to Syria to join ISIL and her intention to hijrah (which the NZSIS understood to mean travelling to live under ISIL) and marry an ISIL fighter. She had also been translating and disseminating what the NZSIS thought to be ISIL propaganda. 

It also highlighted two of her online accounts, which had numerous pro-ISIL posts. 

The minister was advised that cancelling her passport, which would prevent her from travelling there, would prevent or effectively impede her ability to facilitate terrorist acts. 

The woman, who was born overseas but moved to New Zealand with her family as a child, challenged that decision but an application for a judicial review was dismissed by the High Court, as was an appeal to the Court of Appeal. 

However, the Supreme Court has now ruled the minister was wrong to cancel her passport on terrorism-related grounds. It said cancelling a citizen’s passport is a serious intrusion on a person’s rights. 

In allowing the appeal, the court concluded that the briefing paper on which the minister made the decision failed to meet the “fair, accurate and adequate” requirement. 

It also failed to provide an adequate basis for the minister to form the necessary belief on reasonable grounds that the appellant was a danger to the security of Syria because she intended to facilitate a terrorist act. 

The Minister of Internal Affairs has been ordered to pay the woman $30,000. 

More to come 

Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ’s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.