Standing Orders—Sessional

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House) Link to this

I move, That—

(a)the Intelligence and Security Committee shall examine the Estimates Vote for each intelligence and security agency (Standing Orders 248, 249, 250, 330 are to be read and applied accordingly);

(b) the Intelligence and Security Committee shall examine the Supplementary Estimates for each intelligence and security agency (Standing Orders 248, 249, 250, 333 are to be read and applied accordingly);

(c)the Intelligence and Security Committee shall conduct a financial review of the performance in the previous financial year and the current operations of each intelligence and security agency (Standing Orders 248, 249, 250, 335, 336 are to be read and applied accordingly);

(d)no select committee shall examine an intelligence and security agency;

(e)a bill or other matter relating to an intelligence and security agency may be referred by the House to the Intelligence and Security Committee (Standing Orders 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 275, 276, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 291, 292, 294, 295, 296 are to be read and applied accordingly);

(f)the Clerk shall allocate any petition relating to an intelligence and security agency to the Intelligence and Security Committee (Standing Order 361);

(g)for the purposes of this order—

‘intelligence and security agency’ means the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service or the Government Communications Security Bureau; and

‘Intelligence and Security Committee’ means the Intelligence and Security Committee established by section 5 of the Intelligence and Security Committee Act 1996.

This motion essentially repeats the motion moved at the start of the last Parliament by defining a number of roles for the Intelligence and Security Committee that essentially mirror those of a parliamentary select committee, and this, of course, is a parliamentary committee set up under statute rather than under the Standing Orders of Parliament. So, in other words, the committee carries out the estimates functions, supplementary estimates functions, and financial review. It may consider bills referred to that are within the appropriate scope of the committee, and petitions that deal with Intelligence and Security Committee matters. Obviously, this is the appropriate range of work for this particular parliamentary committee, and I think again that it shows that progress has been made in terms of opening up, but carefully, the work of the intelligence and security agencies to parliamentary scrutiny.

Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) Link to this

The first motion deals with the membership of the committee. The second motion deals with what the committee actually does, which is primarily to examine the activities of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service, through the estimates, and so forth.

I want to return to the points I was making earlier and, in particular, to comment on the speech made by a member of the Māori Party and the role of the Inspector-General of Security. The role of the Inspector-General is intended, of course, to be precisely the opportunity for the actions of the Security Intelligence Service to be examined critically in an independent and impartial way. That is the whole purpose of that particular entity. As we all know at the present moment, the Inspector-General is doing a very careful and thorough job in relation to Mr Ahmed Zaoui, and it is not for this Parliament to prejudge the way he does that. We must trust him as a very senior member of the High Court to be able to do that job, understanding fully the importance of the rule of law and protecting freedoms.

So I believe that the issues raised by the Māori Party were properly dealt with by the very kind of independent inquiry it sought, through the role of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.

In turning to the issue of David Baragwanath’s paper, I point out that he raised two further important points. I say to members of the House that in dealing with an issue of this nature, his paper is an important one to read. I know that Mr Brown was critical of the fact that I did not deal too deeply with the membership of the committee but, rather, went on to talk about the more general issues, but this is probably the only time we can do so. It is actually the fundamental issues that we should spend the debating time of Parliament dealing with. In his paper David Baragwanath talked about the balance between protecting public safety, the challenge of terrorism, and at the same time protecting the rule of law and our fundamental freedoms.

Further in the paper David Baragwanath makes another two points. The first is the role of civil society to properly examine measures undertaken by the legislature and the executive, not just at the time but also on mature reflection. That is particularly important to do because, let us be honest, those pieces of legislation were passed under the pressure of events—the terrorist acts of 2001, and following—and it is right and proper that they should be carefully analysed. I know that the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee has done that very task. Dr Lockwood Smith was part of the select committee that undertook that careful examination, and the committee made various recommendations. Of course, it is one of the roles of university academics, legal commentators, and others also to undertake that careful analysis. That has also been done in other jurisdictions.

The judge raised an interesting final point, and that was the idea of redemption. It is not a term that one would normally think of in relation to terrorism, but the truth is that yesterday’s terrorists can become today’s statesmen. Nelson Mandela is the most obvious example of that. I suggest that in more contemporary times this will have to be dealt with in relation to Israel, Palestine, and Iraq. The truth is that at some point Israel and Hamas will have to find a way to talk to each other, because the alternative is actually just a continuation of violence. The British Government and the IRA were faced with precisely this dilemma a number of years ago and they came to the realisation that they had to move forward and talk and put down the gun.

I might say that the situation also prevails in Iraq. These are perhaps personal comments. The coalition has won the war. Saddam Hussein was arrested in November 2003 out of the spider hole. He is being tried in a court, as he should properly be. Surely there can hardly be a single Iraqi who would now wish to return to the days of Saddam. So the coalition achieved its goal of setting Iraq on the path of democracy.

One of the things that I suggest now has to be done—and it is a role that New Zealand has within the United Nations—is to think how the current situation can be resolved, and the role of the coalition in that. The truth is that the war against Saddam’s regime was won. Iraq is on the pathway to democracy. It had a huge turn-out in its recent elections and it is now time for it to work out its own democratic future, and, notwithstanding the current turmoil in that country, I am sure that it can do so.

I can see some people looking at me and wondering why I am raising this matter in the context of this debate. It is for this reason: the way in which democracies deal with global terrorism and its other effects tests the balance of public safety and liberty. It is the role of the Intelligence and Security Committee, when dealing with issues around the Security Intelligence Service, to also assure the New Zealand public that it has a complete and full understanding of that position. Maybe 43 minutes was a bit short—perhaps.

I conclude on this point: this committee is a multiparty committee. It consists quite carefully of senior members. The New Zealand First Party might go on about Rodney Hide, but I have certainly heard another member of Parliament make the same kind of outlandish allegations, and that person is the Rt Hon Winston Peters. Yet he has always been able to discharge his role on that committee properly. I do not think anyone has ever questioned his role on that committee. I was heartened by the final comments made by Mr Peter Brown when he said that New Zealand First members would give Mr Rodney Hide the chance to prove himself. The truth is that Mr Hide is a robust debater in this House. He uses the freedom of speech in this House. But I also believe that with 10 years’ experience, he understands the importance of the role of protecting the critical balance between public safety and protecting our liberties. I guess the one thing we could say about Mr Hide, more than we could about most people, is that he is acutely conscious of protecting individual liberties and freedoms. That is the very raison d’être of his party.

So I think that it was fair for Mr Brown to say that Mr Hide should have a chance to prove himself on the committee, just as Winston Peters did—and, certainly, some of my colleagues questioned his appointment 3 years ago. I believe that Rodney Hide will also demonstrate that he is a proper person to discharge the responsibilities of the committee.

KEITH LOCKE (Green) Link to this

The Intelligence and Security Committee, in the last Parliament, had the most disgraceful record of any committee in this House.

This parliamentary debate, by my calculations, has gone for nearly three-quarters of an hour, which is more than this committee sat for in the whole of last year. This committee sat once last year, on 14 June, for a total of 43 minutes. The committee was not much better the previous year, 2004, when it met for 84 minutes—that is, for 49 minutes on 15 June, and for 35 minutes on 14 December. In 2003 the committee met for a little more time—a total of 113 minutes made up of 44 minutes on 19 March, 20 minutes on 10 June, and 49 minutes on 16 December. In 2002, after the July election, it met just once, for 49 minutes, on 17 December. This makes a total of 4 hours and 49 minutes for the whole of the parliamentary term. So in 3 years this committee sat for not much more time in total than a normal select committee meets for every week. We are lucky even to know how hopeless the committee is, because it has not reported on the record I have just described to the House. I obtained the information through written questions to the Minister in charge of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service, Helen Clark.

Let us look at what the committee did report on to the House in the last Parliament. It reported three times on the Budget estimates, three times on supplementary estimates, and three times on financial reviews. None of the committee’s reports to the House exceeded two sentences, and none told us anything other than that the committee had done an examination or a review. For the financial reviews it needed a second sentence to ask that the House take note of its report. Yes, I think that the House should take note of the three reports on the financial reviews and conclude that this committee is not doing its job.

I have here the estimates and supplementary estimates for the Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Security Bureau during the last parliamentary term. They tell us nothing other than the gross amount spent by these agencies. For example, for the 2004-05 year the figures were $22.5 million for the Security Intelligence Service and $38.963 million for the Government Communications Security Bureau. Unlike the estimates for all other State agencies there was no breakdown for capital expenditure, staff, etc. Why did the Intelligence and Security Committee not comment on that in its report? Why did it allow that to happen? It cannot argue security reasons for denying Parliament and the public such general information on expenditure. We are entitled to suspect that the reason for that is to avoid any substantive debate on intelligence matters.

If the Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Security Bureau keep quiet about what they are spending money on, and the Intelligence and Security Committee goes along with that, then there will be less public debate. Is that why there is all the secrecy? Why, for example, can we not know how much the Waihopai satellite communications interception station is costing the taxpayer? It is primarily a spy station for the US National Security Agency, which is the same agency that George Bush has been misusing illegally to spy on American people—that is, spying on them without a warrant. Every day the National Security Agency takes information from the millions of phone calls, faxes, and emails that are drawn down into Waihopai near Blenheim from the two communications satellites over the Pacific equator.

There is pressure on the Government Communications Security Bureau to be a little more forthcoming in its activities, and it was good that its director, Warren Tucker, wrote an op-ed in the Dominion Post and the newspapers on 31 January. However, it included only generalities about the good work it is doing in the communications surveillance area, and claimed, without any evidence, the “immense benefits” of its close links with American and British partners. In the article, Mr Tucker claimed that the Intelligence and Security Committee functioned in much the same way as a select committee.

The problem is that it does not. It operates outside of the Office of the Clerk, and Standing Orders in general do not apply to it, apart from some in reference to financial reviews and the things mentioned in the motion before us today. One of the problems with the motion is that it shuts out all other committees from even considering intelligence issues. It specifically forbids other committees from doing so. The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee does overlap the intelligence area, to the extent that its members know that intelligence gathering is going on through police and customs and the defence intelligence units. Why should we not be allowed to stray into the security and intelligence and Government Communications Security Bureau areas at all in our consideration if we want to have a coherent understanding of intelligence gathering across all agencies in New Zealand?

Also, the motion before us prevents any petitions from going to any other committee than the Intelligence and Security Committee, which means that one cannot have proper consideration of those petitions if the oversight body for the intelligence services is also the body having to respond to the petitions.

The abysmal record of the Intelligence and Security Committee proves the point the Greens have been making for years, that the committee should be abolished and replaced by a true select committee in Parliament. A member’s bill in my name, the Intelligence and Security Committee Act Repeal Bill, was debated in the year 2000, but unfortunately was defeated in Parliament. Hiding behind a wall of secrecy, the Security Intelligence Service, the Government Communications Security Bureau, and the supposed supervisory body, the Intelligence and Security Committee, have been able to avoid real accountability to the House. We need a true multiparty select committee, not one appointed by National and Labour leaders that meets so infrequently that it effectively gives the intelligence services carte blanche to do what they want, with barely any questioning.

It is true that with any supervisory committee of intelligences services, a certain level of confidentiality needs to apply. But when one has total unaccountability to Parliament—as is currently the case—as with any other Government department, incompetence may be hidden. I am not just stating that hypothetically; we can see the Security Intelligence Service’s incompetence in the Ahmed Zaoui case. Firstly, in 2003 the Refugee Status Appeals Authority was “surprised at how limited” the Security Intelligence Service material was, it being mainly unsourced extracts from various news reports containing “erroneous claims” and relying in one case on a “self-evidently dubious source”. Then we have the Security Intelligence Service’s summary of allegations against Ahmed Zaoui provided in February 2004, which are laughable. The paranoid incompetence of the Security Intelligence Service reached new heights when it described a tourist video of Mr Zaoui’s that has his face and voice on it as being “suspiciously like a casing video”.

That is the same summary of allegations that let the cat out of the bag that the Security Intelligence Service’s concern about Mr Zaoui was all about not upsetting other Western Governments and their intelligence agencies—that is, diplomatic concerns—rather than because he is a threat to our security. The paragraph in the Security Intelligence Service summary of allegations reads: “If Mr Zaoui, with his public record, were allowed to settle here, that would indicate that New Zealand has a lower level of concern about security than other like-minded countries. That would impact adversely on New Zealand’s reputation with such countries and thus on New Zealand’s international well-being.” So much for the rights of Ahmed Zaoui to have due process and, as the Supreme Court said in its judgment, be proved to be a real threat to security. I am confident that, after all those processes that have been gone through, he will be proved to be a genuine refugee, as already stated by the Refugee Status Appeals Authority.

With the incompetence of the Security Intelligence Service and the wrong, political approach that it has taken in the Zaoui case, it is important that any parliamentary supervision be cross-party and more interrogatory. I agree with my colleague Wayne Mapp that there are a lot of issues for the Intelligence and Security Committee to deal with; there is just no way it has dealt with them in the time it sat. In fact, it has not done anything more than hear a few briefings and do a very sketchy financial review in the last Parliament. There is no indication, with the present membership of the committee being largely unchanged, that it will do a better job in this Parliament.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) Link to this

There are two lifestyle attributes that New Zealanders value: one is freedom—the freedom to do what they want and the freedom to go where they want—and the other is security. New Zealanders want to feel secure in their homes and secure when they travel. Not too many years ago New Zealanders had both. They could feel free, they had total freedom, and they were totally secure. That is no longer the case, in part because of internal problems, and in part also because of external problems.

New Zealand First sees the role of the Intelligence and Security Committee—albeit it is a relatively small one, in a global sense—as being to balance lifestyle choices between freedom and security. The members of this committee are undertaking an important mission. It is important not only for the security of the country but also for the well-being of New Zealanders.

New Zealand First will support the motion. We do not share the views of the Green member who has just outlined why the committee should not be in existence. We do not share that view, at all. We believe that there is an important role for the committee. We do not measure the importance of that role on how often the committee sits or how long it sits for. We believe that there is a function for the committee, and that it should be there and should sit and meet as required. New Zealand First supports the motion because we believe that the committee plays an important role in the administration of New Zealand.