Urgent Debates — Government Communications Security Bureau—Review of Compliance

I have received letters from Grant Robertson and Dr Russel Norman seeking to debate under Standing Order 386 the release of the Cabinet secretary’s report on the Government Communications Security Bureau. This is a particular case of recent occurrence for which there is ministerial responsibility. Given the public interest in this matter and the need for a high level of public confidence in our security agencies, I consider it important enough to warrant the immediate attention of the House by way of urgent debate.

As Grant Robertson lodged his application first, I call on Grant Robertson to move that the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance.

I move, That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance. New Zealanders can no longer trust John Key. They can no longer trust his word and they can no longer trust that he is acting in the interests of New Zealanders. That is the lesson of Rebecca Kitteridge’s report.

John Key knew in July 2012 that New Zealanders may well have been illegally spied upon, and he covered up that fact. He stood in front of a press conference in September 2012 and he was asked whether the Kim Dotcom spying was an isolated incident. What he said was: “The advice I have had in 4 years as a Minister is that in no way ever has there been an indication of unlawful spying.”, yet he was told in July 2012 that there was a concern about unlawful spying. He covered it up. But what is even worse is that he did nothing about that information. He was given that information in July 2012 and he sat on it.

Today in the House, Bill English has stood up and said: “Oh, no. That’s not what happened.” Well, I want to quote to Mr English from John Key’s press statement yesterday: “I was first told of a potential issue in July by GCSB Director Ian Fletcher. Lawyers from GCSB and NZSIS were in correspondence with the Inspector General and Crown Law and I asked Mr Fletcher to keep me informed.” Here is the money shot: “The issue was unresolved …”—the issue was unresolved. So Mr Key knew that there was considerable doubt about whether or not New Zealanders were being spied on illegally, and he did nothing. He sat on his hands and allowed New Zealanders to be spied on unlawfully. He is the first Prime Minister to have had that drawn to his attention, and he did nothing. The question for Mr Key and Mr English is: how much of that spying went on after July? How much of that spying went on when the Prime Minister had been informed?

New Zealanders have been let down time and again by this Government and by this Prime Minister. On every aspect of this issue—the issue of the Government Communications Security Bureau and Kim Dotcom—John Key has had to be dragged up to give us information, to give New Zealanders information, about how their spy agency is operating. Time and again he has left out details, has forgotten information, and has been unable to recall briefings. That is not acceptable.

We rely on Mr Key as the Minister responsible for the GCSB to be on top of his job and to know what is happening in his job, and he has failed. He has covered up and he has failed to manage the bureau in the interests of New Zealanders. He has let New Zealanders down when it comes to his management. His oversight of this agency is lax at best and deliberately misleading at worst. The bureau operates in a space where the fundamental freedoms of New Zealanders are in question—whether or not people will be spied upon—and Mr Key has been lax enough in his oversight that when he was told in July 2012 that the spying may well be unlawful, he did nothing. He sat on his hands and he allowed New Zealanders to be spied on unlawfully. He is not up to being the Minister responsible for the GCSB. He has let New Zealanders down. New Zealanders do not know whether they can trust their Prime Minister, and there is not much worse than that.

But we need to go back a step in this, because this fits into the whole Government Communications Security Bureau - Kim Dotcom debacle. It is important to go step by step through the Prime Minister’s role and the extent to which he has been prepared to cover up what has happened here. In 2011 the United States authorities were working with the New Zealand Government on the idea of being able to arrest Kim Dotcom. In December 2011 and January 2012 the Organised and Financial Crime Agency of New Zealand and the Government Communications Security Bureau were monitoring Kim Dotcom. We know that—it has come out. They discussed his residency status.

In February 2012 Ian Fletcher came in as Director-General of the Government Communications Security Bureau—and I am going to return to that appointment shortly. On 16 February Ian Fletcher attended a debriefing meeting about the Kim Dotcom raids.

💬 Hon John Banks: When?

On 16 February. At that meeting Mr Dotcom’s residency status was raised, and we know from court affidavits that immediately after that point the bureau believed that the spying was unlawful.

On 22 February bureau staff wrote that they believed that the spying was unlawful, and we have been asked to believe time and again that Ian Fletcher did not think that this was important enough to talk to John Key about in the numerous meetings that he held with him. Magically, 5 days after this, someone fathomed up some legal advice to say that, actually, it was lawful after all. There were five different versions of that legal advice in those 5 days. We have not had access to that because that material was deemed by Chris Finlayson to be legally privileged, but somehow at the end of that, the bureau thought that it could justify this.

Then in May 2012 Paul Neazor raised the question with the Government Communications Security Bureau as to whether its spying was unlawful. He raised that question with Ian Fletcher—that is what the Rebecca Kitteridge report tells us. Somehow or other he waited a little while, and then he told John Key in July 2012 that there were concerns that the spying was unlawful. John Key has been a part of this process all the way through.

But then, mysteriously, in August 2012, when it became time, apparently, for Mr Fletcher to pop across the road to Parliament and say: “We need a ministerial certificate signed to suppress the involvement of the Government Communications Security Bureau in this case.”, John Key was not there. He was overseas. So the person who signed that ministerial certificate to suppress information about the role of the bureau was Bill English. Bill English signed that certificate off.

I know that the relationship between Mr English and Mr Key is not everything that it could be given their history, but we are asked to believe that when Mr Key returned from overseas, he did not even talk to Bill English about this. A ministerial certificate that has never been used—the power that has never been used—and Bill English did not bother to tell John Key about it. It defies belief, and there are certainly questions to be answered around that ministerial certificate.

Then finally, in September last year, John Key fronted up for the first time about Kim Dotcom—in September, 7 months after the bureau identified unlawful spying. And we heard Bill English stand up today and say that as soon as the Government became aware of unlawful spying, it stepped in. That is not true. The Government knew in February, it was raised again in May, John Key found out about it in July, Bill English signed a certificate to suppress the evidence in August, and John Key tries to tell New Zealanders that September was the first time he had heard about it.

That is misleading. That is why New Zealanders cannot trust John Key any longer. This debacle with Kim Dotcom and the Government Communications Security Bureau is at the feet of the Prime Minister. He has let New Zealanders down with his lax oversight of the bureau, and he has let New Zealanders down by not being up front with them.

I do want to briefly refer to the questions that were not put in this report by Rebecca Kitteridge. There is no mention in this report of what happened in the Kim Dotcom case. That is a remarkable thing, given that the Kim Dotcom case is the reason the report got written. Rebecca Kitteridge states in here—and she clearly was concerned enough to write this—that she was not asked to do that. She was not asked to look at that. Well, there is a reason for that. It is that the Prime Minister does not want it looked at.

The Prime Minister does not want his role to be exposed, because there is also nothing in this report about ministerial oversight—about how ministerial oversight should work in an agency like the Government Communications Security Bureau. The bureau has powers that many New Zealanders are uncomfortable about—powers to spy on people—and there is nothing more important for Mr Key in his job, in my view, than protecting the fundamental rights and freedoms of New Zealanders to know that they can go about their business and not be spied upon unnecessarily. In this case, this report does not go there.

It is also very important to look at what this report says. John Key is the first Prime Minister acting under the 2003 Act to have been told that there may be problems with unlawful spying—the first Prime Minister to do that. That is what this says, and there is nowhere in here where we actually get John Key fronting up and saying: “Ministerial responsibility is important. I’m acting on behalf of New Zealanders. I’m going to make sure I act in the best interest of New Zealanders and adopt a precautionary approach that says that if I get information that there may be unlawful spying, I will inquire into it.”

We desperately need, as David Shearer has suggested, a full and comprehensive inquiry into all the intelligence agencies. It is not good enough for the Government to propose piecemeal reform where it will try to make legal what has been illegal in the past. There are too many questions to be answered about that. Bill English put up a straw man today about the fact that the Security Intelligence Service can spy on people. The point is, Mr English—

💬 Hon Bill English: A straw man!

—the point is, Mr English—that the Government Communications Security Bureau is not allowed to spy on New Zealanders. The bureau is not allowed to spy on New Zealanders, because it works with foreign Governments. The Security Intelligence Service can spy on New Zealanders, because that information will stay in New Zealand. Mr English knows full well that that is why there is a difference between the Government Communications Security Bureau and the Security Intelligence Service.

Finally, I want to turn to the appointment of Ian Fletcher. John Key was asked direct questions in this House about his relationship with Ian Fletcher and the role he played in Mr Fletcher’s appointment. He avoided those questions. He did not tell the truth to this House about his knowledge of that appointment process.

We have been told by Iain Rennie that John Key was the person who scrapped the short list of candidates and that it was John Key who made the phone call to Ian Fletcher that fundamentally changed that appointment process. Ian Fletcher was the only person interviewed for that job, 5 days after John Key made that phone call. That is not a proper and fair and transparent process, and all that John Key could do in response to that was to blame the messenger and call the media knuckleheads. Well, those journalists have done New Zealanders a favour, because they have exposed that this is a Prime Minister who cannot be trusted, who is more interested in jobs for his mates and not interested enough in the rights and freedoms of New Zealanders. New Zealanders cannot trust John Key.

Well, my colleague asks a very good question: how was Sir Bruce Ferguson appointed to the head of the Defence Force and then head of the Government Communications Security Bureau? I would ask the gossipy member for Wellington Central, Grant Robertson, to—

💬 Hon Phil Goff: By proper procedure—that’s how. Proper procedure.

And proper procedure was applied in the case of Mr Ian Fletcher. Of course, the appointment of the head of the Government Communications Security Bureau is the Prime Minister’s appointment—the appointment of the head of the Government Communications Security Bureau is the Prime Minister’s appointment.

💬 Grant Robertson: Why wasn’t that the process, Bill? Why wasn’t that the process?

OK, so despite Labour peddling gossip, it got nowhere on the issue of the appointment of Mr Fletcher as the head of the Government Communications Security Bureau. In the end it is the Prime Minister’s appointment, and, as the Kitteridge report now makes plain, the job of sorting out the mess left by the previous Labour Government with its lazy approach to intelligence is a very substantial and complex job. It is a great thing for New Zealand that we have a Prime Minister who has been willing to take it on—has been willing to take it on.

The last Prime Minister clearly took no interest in the legality of the intelligence agencies. But worse than that, the previous Labour Government passed a piece of legislation that was a result of the kind of shonky political deals that have upset many of the institutions in this country. The reason that we ended up with a provision in the Government Communications Security Bureau Act that said the bureau should not spy on New Zealanders, paraphrasing it, is that that is the only way that the Labour-led coalition of the time could pass the law. It was a last-minute addition thrown in by the Prime Minister of the time to get the votes in the House. That is how it happened. The fact that that provision was not properly understood, was assumed to codify existing practice, has led to the circumstances in which we find ourselves today.

Let us just pull back a bit about the context in which these discussions have been going on. This is not an issue, as the member for Wellington Central said, about “whether or not New Zealanders can be spied on.” The answer to that question is that they can and they are. With a warrant and following the proper procedures, they can be put under surveillance by the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service. That was the case, still is the case, and always will be the case, because we have national security interests that are quite real, because there are real threats out there, not imagined threats, and because we need agencies that have the capability of dealing with those threats. Some are external, and sometimes those threats are New Zealand citizens. That is why the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service can put New Zealanders under surveillance.

So the issue is not, as the Labour Party is trying to couch it, whether the Prime Minister cares whether New Zealanders can be under surveillance. They can. Every Prime Minister New Zealand has ever had has endorsed that position. The issue here is whether the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service can use the Government Communications Security Bureau to carry out some of that function. The reason, historically, that it has used the Government Communications Security Bureau is that the bureau has technology no one else has that it uses for surveillance, particularly of foreign nationals, which is the bureau’s territory, and it contributes to international intelligence gathering. That is the question and the assumption has always been that it can.

Up until 2003 the Government Communications Security Bureau had no legal framework in which it was operating. That is why it was a good thing that the previous Government set out to put a legal framework in place for the operation of that agency to ensure its legality and its constitutional position. After the passage of that Act in 2003 the assumption remained in place that the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service could use the Government Communications Security Bureau as an agent in its surveillance activities. When the issue came into question of whether that was legal, an issue raised by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, the clear advice from the agencies was that it was legal—it was legal.

At this stage can I just make sure that we disentangle a couple of different sorts of legal questions related to the activities of the Government Communications Security Bureau. The issue of Kim Dotcom was primarily, and still remains, an issue around his status as a citizen. It turns out he is a New Zealander under one piece of legislation and not a New Zealander under another piece of legislation.

💬 Louise Upston: Bizarre. Bizarre.

It seems bizarre, but this is what happens in legislation. The issue had not really been tested until his case came along. That is one set of issues.

And then there is a set of issues about whether the activities of the Government Communications Security Bureau itself are actually legal. What the report has uncovered was a culture of low levels of compliance within the bureau. It was a culture where people were not aware of their statutory obligations, not as aware as they needed to be of the legal processes that they should follow, and it was an organisation that had been operating to legal advice that is now held to be doubtful. It was legal advice of experienced legal counsel who worked in the area for years—decades, in fact—and it turns out that there are questions about that legal advice.

The role of the Prime Minister as the Minister in charge of these intelligence agencies has been to bring these issues to resolution. The Prime Minister initiated the Kitteridge report. I think any parliamentarian who has read that report would acknowledge that for an independent report it is actually hard-hitting. This is not the report of someone who does not understand the issues or has tried to soft soak them. This is probably the toughest report on the intelligence agencies that we have seen in a long, long time. So the Prime Minister has raised those issues and initiated the Kitteridge report.

The question has arisen around the timing of actions. I go back to what I said in question time: no one in this process can act on what they do not know before they know it. Of course it would a reasonable expectation that if the head of the Government Communications Security Bureau had been handed advice that said those activities are not legal and they should be stopped, then those activities would have stopped when that advice turned up. As it happened that kind of advice turned up around the time of October, when the bureau actually did put a stop to a range of activities because of doubt about the legality of those activities. Again, I would stress that even as of today it is still not clear whether the activities we are referring to here are illegal or not illegal. It is still not clear. The Prime Minister and the agency itself have acted with reasonably expected caution as the situation has developed and the understanding of the legal situation has developed.

Of course, now that the Kitteridge report is here it is easy to see an environment in which the Government Communications Security Bureau was operating that was not apparent then. Now that there have been 6 months or 9 months of legal discussion it is easy to sound knowledgable about the legal issues. But if we think of the context in which the Prime Minister was first informed about these matters, it amounted to the inspector-general making a suggestion to the Prime Minister that there were questions about the legality of some of the operations of the Government Communications Security Bureau. The initial advice in response to those questions was that the operations were legal, and, of course, any Prime Minister would take that position very seriously. The member from the Labour Opposition is simply wrong to assert that the Prime Minister did not act with the seriousness every New Zealander would expect of a Prime Minister dealing with these significant national security issues.

When it became significant enough that there was doubt over the legality of the operations of the Government Communications Security Bureau, those operations were stopped, and then the Kitteridge report was put in place. That report has yielded the information that going back to 2003—that is, from the passage of the Government Communications Security Bureau Act—there are 88 cases in which the question arises. It is not the case that the newspaper headlines describe that accurately. There are 88 cases in which the question arises. Of course, by today’s measure it is quite possible there are cases before 2003 where the question would arise about whether the bureau was acting consistent with the expectations—one cannot say the law, because at the time there was no law. The process from the middle part of last year has been thorough, and it has been suitably cautious, in that when doubt arose, activities have been stopped. Independent oversight has been employed, both through the Kitteridge report and the inspector-general, who oversees these intelligence agencies.

The next step in this process, of course, is the resolution of these issues, because let us be clear: we need functional intelligence agencies. We need the ability to monitor the activities that, and the people who, could be a threat to our national security—of that there is no doubt. But we need those agencies to be updated in the first place because of the massive changes in technology since their legislation was put in place, even as recently as 2003. We need the agencies to be updated, but we also need the agencies themselves to be reformed. These are agencies with less transparency than your average Government department. They are not subject to competition or contestability. If they are left alone for a long time, they can end up, as is shown in the Kitteridge report, as agencies that have lost the awareness of their need to be compliant.

The Government is moving to expose all of these issues. The Prime Minister has worked extensively over recent months to bring forward resolutions to these issues, and we would expect that over the next couple of months both this House and the Intelligence and Security Committee will have the opportunity to debate fully the means by which this situation that has arisen can be corrected, and, more important than that, the steps that this Parliament should take in order to upgrade and modernise our system of national security.

I rise on behalf of the Green Party to speak in this urgent debate related to the Kitteridge report on the Government Communications Security Bureau. The Government Communications Security Bureau is a very unusual agency in New Zealand. To some extent, it is under the control of the New Zealand Government, and to some extent it is not, and that is, I think, where a lot of the problem arises.

I think it is pretty illuminating, as a starting point, to quote from David Lange. David Lange was the Prime Minister, of course, and was responsible for the Government Communications Security Bureau some years ago. When Nicky Hager wrote his book Secret Power, exposing the role of the bureau, David Lange had this to say in the preface that he wrote for the book. He said about the satellite station at Waihopai that the bureau built—that the New Zealand Government built—“We even went the length of building a satellite station at Waihopai. But it was not until I read this book that I had any idea that we had been committed to an international integrated electronic network.”

So the Prime Minister of New Zealand who was responsible for the Government Communications Security Bureau at the time the Waihopai spying station was built had no idea what the purpose of the station was. The bureau did not tell him, because it is a secretive agency that works mostly for the US spy agencies rather than for the New Zealand Government. And that is just a fact.

The thing that Mr Lange went on to say in this book was that “… an astonishing number of people have told him”—that is, Nicky Hager—“things that I, as Prime Minister in charge of the intelligence services, was never told.” The Prime Minister was kept in the dark. David Lange went on to say that “… it is an outrage that I and other ministers were told so little, and this raises the question of to whom those concerned saw themselves ultimately answerable.” The truth is, of course, that the Government Communications Security Bureau sees itself as ultimately answerable to the US spy agencies, and that is the problem: the Government Communications Security Bureau is a rogue agency. It does not report to anybody.

The Prime Minister does not know what is going on at the Government Communications Security Bureau, as the report illustrates. The bureau acts illegally, as the report illustrates—that is, as I think Bill English was just saying, it did not pay very close attention to its compliance with the law. To put it mildly, it acted illegally.

It is an agency that does not really have any parliamentary oversight. There is no parliamentary committee that looks over the intelligence services. There is the Intelligence and Security Committee, but it does not have any power to see what the bureau is doing. There is the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, who has a woeful record of not providing any proper oversight of what the SIS and the Government Communications Security Bureau are up to, and it means that the bureau and the SIS are free to do as they want. And what they want to do is engage in unlawful activities, it turns out, as we have discovered from this report.

The reason why this matters so much is that it goes to the heart of fundamental rights and freedoms for New Zealanders. When you think about it, do you want to live in a society where you have these rogue State agencies looking at all of your emails and you have these rogue State agencies opening all of your correspondence, spying on you, listening to all of your phone calls, monitoring all of your internet use, and breaking into your house and putting bugs in your house? These are the activities that these agencies undertake, lawfully or unlawfully. These are the kinds of activities that the Government Communications Security Bureau and the SIS actually do.

So, ordinary New Zealanders, if you were to think about it, what kind of bar would you have that would make it acceptable for the State to so breach your fundamental rights and freedoms that the State could break into your house and put a bug in your house and the State could monitor all of your emails and all your conversations on the telephone? The bar has to be very, very high if you are to let the State engage in those kinds of activities. The problem is that because nobody is watching what the Government Communications Security Bureau and the SIS get up to, nobody knows whether the bar is being met for SIS and bureau activities.

There is insufficient oversight, as this report amply demonstrates, to double-check on the people who are supposed to be watching. There is a Minister, in theory, who is supposed to be watching what goes on inside the Government Communications Security Bureau and the SIS. The Minister is clearly either asleep at the wheel or just does not care what is going on inside the bureau and the SIS, and is letting them get on with their business. From my point of view, when you are talking about fundamental rights and freedoms, having a Prime Minister who is asleep at the wheel in his job as the only democratic official having oversight over the Government Communications Security Bureau and the SIS is unacceptable. There is only one democratically elected official who has oversight over the security agencies and that is the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister has manifestly failed to do his job. That is his job and he has completely failed to do it.

Obviously, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has failed to do his job, as well. There is no question about that. It is as plain as day.

This also cuts to the Prime Minister’s role as the head of the SIS, and not only the SIS but also the Government Communications Security Bureau. Let us remember that the interception warrants that were signed off so that the illegal activities that the bureau did could take place were signed by John Key. John Key signed the interception warrants as the Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service, and then the other ministry that he is responsible for illegally implemented those interception warrants.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: How many of the 88 were signed by Helen Clark? That was OK, was it?

That is the basic truth. Now we hear the shouting from the Minister, who does not like the truth, as usual. But I am sorry, Mr Gerry Brownlee, it is just the fact that is in the report. It is simply in the report that the Prime Minister signed the interception warrants that were illegally implemented by the bureau. You do not like it, but it happens to be true. So the Prime Minister—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I didn’t like it when Helen Clark did it, either.

Mr Gerry Brownlee brings up the previous Government. I fully agree that the previous Government was as culpable, because it put through the legislation, which the National Party supported. It put through the legislation, as did the National Party. It supported it. You voted for it, did you not, Mr Brownlee?

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order! Do not bring me into the debate.

Yes, that member voted for it. So the National Party voted for the legislation, as well as the Labour Government, which pushed it through, even though the Green Party at the time warned that if you set up spying agencies that do not have oversight, they will abuse their rights—and it has become so. What this report shows is that if you set up an agency like this that does not have proper oversight, it will abuse its rights. That is exactly what it has done—abuse the rights and freedoms of New Zealanders rather than protect them—and that is a tragedy.

I was saddened to hear the Deputy Prime Minister criticise section 14 of the Government Communications Security Bureau Act, and I think it is important to read out section 14, “Interceptions not to target domestic communications”. It states: “Neither the Director, nor an employee of the Bureau, nor a person acting on behalf of the Bureau may authorise or take any action for the purpose of intercepting the communications of a person … who is a New Zealand citizen or a permanent resident.” Parliament chose to put a very clear legislative direction in place. It is in black and white. The Government Communications Security Bureau and the National Party come along now and say that it is not very clear. For anyone reading this section of the Act, it is patently clear that what the bureau did was illegal and unlawful. It is in black and white. You have only to read the Act. Parliament purposefully chose to constrain the bureau and prevent it from spying on New Zealanders, and then, while John Key was supposed to be providing protection, the bureau went ahead and spied on New Zealanders and broke the law.

So it seems to me that we need a fundamental reform of the oversight of these agencies and the agencies themselves. If we are to have these kinds of Draconian, authoritarian, dictatorial powers in the hands of a State agency that breaches the highest levels of our rights and our freedoms, then there needs to be very strong oversight. There needs to be very powerful justification for any agency to exercise these kinds of powers, and there needs to be very powerful oversight. So far we have not had that oversight, and—surprise, surprise—the agency, which is not being monitored by the democratically elected officials who have that job, has abused its power and acted illegally to spy on New Zealanders, in spite of that.

It seems to me that if we are to protect freedom and democracy in our society, we have to keep the spy agencies in check in order to protect those fundamental rights and freedoms. The present Government has clearly failed to do that and, based on this report, it clearly appears that the previous Government failed to do that—to keep the spy agencies in check. The Green Party will keep pushing to make sure that that happens.

The Government Communications Security Bureau issue has been an utter fiasco from beginning to end, and no one, not even the National Party, can deny it. The National Party cannot deny that this has been an utter fiasco. Today in this Parliament during question time I tabled the time line of the coincidences that have occurred with the Government Communications Security Bureau, with the SIS—

💬 Hon Tau Henare: No, you didn’t.

—yes, I did—with Warner Bros, with the Motion Picture Association of America, and with the Prime Minister and other Ministers. And, quite frankly, this has been a litany of cover-up throughout.

Here at the heart of Government we have seen a litany of failure and incompetence, and John Key was right at the centre of it. He is full of blame for the whole affair, and he is trying to wash his hands of it from afar, in China. It is worse than a disgrace; it is an appalling breakdown in an agency that works behind closed doors, that works hidden from public scrutiny. It is the one agency in this country that handles our international intelligence affairs. It is answerable to the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister himself has been found sadly lacking. It is appalling management of the agency and appalling governance of it. Quite frankly, if he held to his own standards when he was the Leader of the Opposition—he said he would hold his Ministers to the highest level of account—if he was to hold himself to the same highest levels of account, by now he would have tendered his resignation. Quite frankly, if any other Ministers had performed so badly in overseeing a department—and at this stage I rule out the likes of Hekia Parata, and Gerry Brownlee with the Christchurch situation, because they are probably close to it—if any other Ministers had been so incompetent, such as the Prime Minister in overseeing the Government Communications Security Bureau, by now they would have been stood down; by now they would have been stood down.

The mess must be cleaned up, and it must be cleaned up fast. That calls for the Prime Minister to admit his culpability and that he is simply not up to the task of having oversight of this agency.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Tell us what the problem is.

Patches and quick fixes will not do; we are beyond that. The Hon Gerry Brownlee asks how we will fix it. Well, we will fix it by having a proper independent judicial inquiry. That means taking it out of the hands of the Ministers, with all the vested interests. That means taking it out of the hands of the Ministers who are highlighted here with their paw prints all over the time line, and putting it in the hands of an independent High Court judge to independently review this whole process. Sending in Ms Kitteridge, the Prime Minister’s Secretary of the Cabinet, is hardly an inquiry. That is sending in your person to get the answers that you require to find out something that will help sort yourself out, to get yourself out of a mess.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order! Do not bring the Speaker into the debate.

Sorry, Mr Speaker, not yourself but the Prime Minister. It was to get the Prime Minister out of the mess.

The former Director of the Government Communications Security Bureau Sir Bruce Ferguson, who has a long and distinguished military career, this week has said that the Prime Minister must be smoking something. He said that the Prime Minister must be smoking dope. He must be smoking dope. For somebody like Sir Bruce Ferguson—and I know Sir Bruce from his days in the air force—to make a comment like that is extraordinary. There has never been in this country a situation where somebody who has held such a high office in the Civil Service has said that the Prime Minister must have been smoking dope. Quite frankly, perhaps that question must be asked of the Prime Minister. Was he smoking dope? Because he seems to have an incredibly poor memory. He seems to have an incredibly poor memory. We all know that people who smoke a lot of dope tend to have a very poor memory. So the question that needs to be asked, as Sir Bruce Ferguson said, is whether the Prime Minister is a dope smoker. Is he a dope smoker? He seems to have a shocking memory, or a conveniently shocking memory when it comes to important facts.

This is the same John Key who in his own electorate of Helensville did not realise that there is a 250 kilogram German—the size of a German tank—living in his own electorate. He did not realise that this guy, the wealthiest man in his electorate—wealthier than John Key himself—was living in his electorate. It is unbelievable that he did not know. But is there a pattern here? It also beggars belief that John Key does not recall meeting Mr Tsujihara in Hollywood.

💬 Mike Sabin: Who’s that?

Mr Tsujihara happened to be the director of the Motion Picture Association of America and conveniently was involved in the anti-piracy programme for Warner Bros to stop the likes of Dotcom operating in New Zealand. But conveniently the Prime Minister cannot remember actually having a meeting with Mr Tsujihara, and the Acting Prime Minister today could not answer four of my questions on the subject.

Again, you sort of wonder: is it not convenient that he cannot remember meeting with the Government Communications Security Bureau, he cannot remember the briefings, he cannot remember a 250 kilogram German in his electorate—he cannot remember all sorts of things. It is incredible. But what you do have to wonder is where the leak came from. Where did the leak come from? Is it maybe, finally, that other Ministers within the National Government have woken up to the fact that their Achilles heel is one Mr John Key? Have they woken up to the fact and thought “Ah!”, as happens in many countries when the boss is away overseas. When do you go for the jugular? You wait until they are overseas, and then you shaft them—and then you shaft them. It is almost coincidental that the minute John Key puts his foot on the soil in China—the minute he puts it on there—somehow the Kitteridge document gets leaked. Did it come from the eighth floor? Did it come from the seventh floor? Did it come from the sixth floor? Gerry, what floor are you on?

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: A floor you’re never going to be on, fella!

Did it come from your floor, Gerry? Tony—did it come from your floor, Tony? Whose floor did it come from? Somebody over there leaked the document. It came from somebody who has got higher aspirations and would dearly love their beloved leader to not come back from China—and certainly not come back from China as the Prime Minister.

So it is very clear—it is very clear—that something has got to be done here. Bill English, the Acting Prime Minister, today said the appointment to the Government Communications Security Bureau is the Prime Minister’s appointment. At the end of the day that is correct, but it is not the Prime Minister’s prerogative to go out and shoulder-tap people—his mates—for the appointment. We still in this country have an independent Civil Service. We still in this country pride ourselves as being recognised, after Finland—Gerry, you would know this—as the second least corrupt country in the world. Gerry, you should know that. In this situation this Prime Minister is bringing that into disrepute. He is seriously undermining our Civil Service and the independence of our Civil Service.

New Zealand First calls for an independent judicial inquiry. Let us get to the bottom of the Government Communications Security Bureau. Let us stop the cover-up, let us stop the litany of lies, and let us find out exactly what is happening behind the smoke and mirrors of this National Government.

These are serious issues and they deserve better than the drivel we have just listened to from Andrew Williams. These are important issues, and, as Alan Martin would say, it is the putting right that counts. The great thing about what has happened here is that a secretive spy agency has been exposed to sunlight, has been exposed to a cold, hard review, and that is what I want to focus on this afternoon. I certainly do not want to focus on the unprofessional comments of Sir Bruce Ferguson, who was seen deep in conversation with Geoffrey Palmer on Lambton Quay this afternoon. I certainly do not intend this afternoon to comment on the role of “H3”, as he then was, when he served Helen Clark and Heather Simpson on level nine. What did Mr Robertson know, and when did he know it? He is the one who had quite a number of interactions with the Government Communications Security Bureau when he was “H3”, and it is going to be very interesting to explore that issue in the months to come.

What I want to focus on—and focusing on principles, not personalities—are two issues. The first is the 2003 legislation, the Government Communications Security Bureau Act. Mr Goff was one of those nodding automatons in the Cabinet committee who approved the bill for introduction. The fact of the matter is that this legislation was drafted when Helen Clark was Prime Minister. It went through Parliament very quickly. It was a classic case of legislative negligence, quite frankly. It was drafted by the Government Communications Security Bureau. It was not tested independently.

💬 Grant Robertson: Who voted for it?

The Government Communications Security Bureau assumptions and advice were relied on, and it was a totally unsatisfactory way of making law, for which I say to Mr Robertson that all parties in this House bear some responsibility, although I do observe—I do observe—that the Labour Party at that time was riding triumphant. It had 52 seats, although over the detested foreshore and seabed legislation it was shortly to lose a few members. We had 27, but we stand up and say that in so far as we voted for it, there are questions that, looking forward, we do need to address, because the legislation is poorly drafted. Section 14, which the Green co-leader Russel Norman relied on, is clear enough on its terms, but then you go to the definition of what is a “foreign person” or a “foreign organisation”, and there are difficult questions.

💬 Grant Robertson: Very clear-cut.

They are matters that were identified—well, I suggest, and I am quite happy to talk off-line to Mr Robertson about the definition of “foreign organisation”, because it is not clear. Go to the passage and look at it, and the member will find that his superficial, third-rate analysis is inadequate.

The other thing that needs to be addressed is that the legislation needs to be redrafted, but we also need to look at issues of compliance—issues that go back for years. Frankly, when I read the Kitteridge report, I was not at all happy, because the Act is one thing, but there was no reference in the legal section of the Government Communications Security Bureau to any other legislation. There was no reference to clear international law texts. There was no reference to jurisprudence—for example, the Supreme Court judgment recently on the issue of spying in the Ureweras, the Hamed case, was not referred to. And it is important—and I say this in answer to some of the questions that were being raised this afternoon by the Green Party co-leader about the Crown Law Office involvement, because he is right: the Crown Law Office is there to provide authoritative legal advice for the Crown, and it is very important for every public sector organisation to keep close to that organisation. But, as the report says on page 25, it did not. Twelve opinions were provided by Crown Law to the Government Communications Security Bureau between 1988 and September 2012—24 years—and only three dealt with operational matters, but in the last 6 months 10 opinions have been provided.

So, quite frankly, there is a lot to be learnt from this exercise, but the legal compliance, the fundamental primer 1 compliance that Sir Bruce Ferguson and others should have been looking at over the years, did not happen, and it is totally unsatisfactory. For all the cries and the screams, and, as I said, the adolescent piffle that we heard from Andrew Williams, let us get down to what the issues are and what the issues are not. It is important to get this right going forward. It is very good that this secretive organisation has been exposed to sunlight, and, as I said, it is the putting right that counts.

Talking of negligence, one wonders what role the Attorney-General did not play in advice to the Prime Minister. He is full of sound and fury now, but was obviously pretty silent when it came to giving advice to the Prime Minister from July last year through to very recently.

Some members of this House will be well aware of that comic strip Spy vs. Spy. It was first seen in the Mad magazine in about 1961. I am pleased to say it is still going. It is great political satire, and many of us have had a good laugh over the years. Well, I have to say that in New Zealand over the past 2 weeks we have seen behaviour straight out of the Mad magazine. If it was not so serious, you could have believed that the whole thing was a political spoof or political satire.

I mean, we have just heard from the Attorney-General about conspiracy theories—someone was seen talking to someone up Lambton Quay. Well, I believe that most of us who walk up Lambton Quay meet somebody we know—maybe people we do not even like—and we might even talk to them. But heavens, this is now a conspiracy! But I have to say I thought the whole thing was summed up this week in a cartoon by Emmerson. Here it is. It says: “Spy vs. Lie”. Here we have the Government Communications Security Bureau as the black spy, and here we have John Key as the white spy saying: “Psst! I think they’re on to us.” Well, I think that sums it up.

John Key has to get the award for the best shimmy in living memory, because he has been caught out. He has been caught out on his terminological inexactitudes over Dotcom. He got caught out on his less than honest answers about the appointment of the Director of the Government Communications Security Bureau. He said on Tuesday: “I hardly knew him.” He said on Thursday: “Well, our mums were friends.” And in the following week he said: “Well, you know, I did know him a bit better. He knew my brother.” It has been a moving feast as to whether he knew him or whether he did not know him. The truth is that he knew him well enough to have his number in his telephone book. I have to say I do not think I have got any of my primary school friends’ numbers in my phone. I did have a quick look to see whether I had any. I have not got them, but he does. He does not know him very well, he hardly remembers him, but there is the telephone number.

He also got exposed over the dates and the times that he knew about illegal spying on 88 New Zealanders. He got confused over what he knew and where and how. It is really hard for him to keep up with the very tangled web that he has woven around this whole issue. Now he has performed a beautiful political shimmy. He has shifted the blame from himself and his inadequacy on to inadequate legislation. This is legislation that we heard from the Attorney-General is inadequate, that is very badly drafted, that the National Party voted for, that it looked at at the select committee and supported, and that has been in place since 2003.

I have to say that if you use the Prime Minister’s standard of behaviour, he must step down from his position as the head of the Government Communications Security Bureau. He ought to stand down right away if he is to follow through with his own standard. After all, think of the standard he applied to Nick Smith, to Pansy Wong, to Richard Worth, to Phil Heatley, and to Kate Wilkinson. He would be gone before breakfast if he applied that standard to his behaviour in terms of this whole issue.

He is the only Prime Minister in the last decade who has been told that his agency was spying illegally—the only Prime Minister who has been told this, and that is a fact. He was told in July last year. He covered it up for 9 long months. It only came out in the Kitteridge report. Did he do something about it, as we have asked today? Did he move to stop it spying illegally? No, he did not. He hoped it would not come out, and he covered it up for 9 months. He had no plan in place as to what he was going to do. He put the issue on the back-burner because he wanted to have all those photo opportunities over in China, but he got caught out. He got caught out, and New Zealanders, I believe, cannot have confidence in a leader with his record. They cannot have confidence in a leader who cannot remember, who cannot perform, and who covers up.

It is worth reflecting on what the key issues are associated with this debate and with this issue. There is a role for the Government Communications Security Bureau in New Zealand—that is agreed by virtually all parties in this Parliament—and the previous Government brought in legislation in the early 2000s to legitimise this. In the legislation they made it very express that the bureau was not to spy on New Zealanders. That is what they did in that legislation. But there was another piece of legislation that also said that the bureau could work with other agencies as appropriate. So this comes down to a fine legal point of two potentially conflicting features of legislation: working with other agencies, or not surveilling New Zealanders. That was the issue. What has come out of this case and out of the Kitteridge report are those issues—that fine contrast between those two cases.

Clearly what has happened here is the Government Communications Security Bureau has been working with other agencies, at their request, believing, as it did, that the law provided it with the scope to do that. So it then assisted those other agencies with their work on people whom those other agencies had legitimate authority of one sort or another to monitor or surveil or do whatever they were doing with them. Those agencies that had those people in their sights had a legitimate and legal right to surveil, monitor, or do whatever they were doing with those people. They then asked the bureau, because of its unique equipment and skills, to support them in that work. The bureau believed, because of its interpretation of the law, that it was entitled to support those agencies. It is not a question of the bureau illegally surveilling a number of New Zealanders. It is a question of the fact that they thought that, in support of the other agencies that were legally monitoring or surveilling these individuals, they were doing what they were doing in a lawful way.

What has clearly come out of the Kitteridge report is the fact that there is this confusion over the legislation, and that needs to be dealt with—and the Prime Minister has said as much. But those cases now, the so-called 88, are being referred to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, who is the legal authority to determine whether or not there has been a breach of the legislation. That is set out in the law. It is up to the inspector-general to decide whether or not there has been illegality. What we know from the Kitteridge report is that there are questions over that legality resulting from the lack of clarity now about the two legal provisions. That is what it is about here.

It is quite wrong for Opposition members to make the comments that they do. How do we know that the Prime Minister is the only Prime Minister whom these issues were ever raised with? How do we know? How do we know whether this was the case? How do we know whether Sir Bruce Ferguson never raised it with Helen Clark? How do we know whether this happened or not? What we do know is that this hinges on a very technical interpretation of two clauses in the law. That is what the Kitteridge report says, and that is why the inspector-general will investigate those. That is what is set out in the law. It is clear that in the case of the 88 people who were being surveilled or monitored, it was being done with the proper legal authority of the agencies that were doing that. The law does allow the SIS to spy on New Zealanders—OK. So those people were allowed to be spied on. The confusion relates to the legal provisions that allowed the Government Communications Security Bureau to assist the SIS and other agencies. That happened under Labour, and it happened under National. It will fall to National to work with other parties in this Parliament to fix those provisions. It is a very fine technical point, established in the Kitteridge report.

It gives me pleasure to follow my colleague Tony Ryall, who I think has laid out very clearly the real issues that we are facing here today. Firstly, it is important that we understand that the New Zealand SIS is able to spy on New Zealanders if there is a warrant, which means there is a court process, and if, in order to get that, it has very good reasons to suspect that people are up to nefarious activities. So the New Zealand SIS is entitled to spy on New Zealanders. Under the Government Communications Security Bureau Act, which has been in place now for 10 years—and we have heard my colleagues in this House explain that, yes, it was passed under Labour in 2003—there was a provision put in that said the bureau could not spy on New Zealanders. But the practice was continued. The bureau and organisations like the New Zealand SIS, the New Zealand Police, and the New Zealand Defence Force believed the practice was legal because of some legal technicalities, and that the bureau could use the very expert technology, skills, and resources that it has to act as agents for those other organisations. Those other organisations would have the legal right to spy on or surveil or monitor individuals in New Zealand or organisations in New Zealand that they had evidence that a court had agreed was sufficient to enable that monitoring. So this was an attempt to act on behalf of, and to use the surveillance mechanisms that they have in place. And everyone believed they were acting within the law—everyone. That has happened for the last 10 years, under both the previous Labour Government and under this New Zealand National Government.

The second issue that I think needs to be put in play here, as we look at what the issues are and how we resolve them, is that we are in a very different world technologically today and, as a result of the increasing developments in technology, we face from a cyber-security perspective much different threats than we faced even 10 years ago, when the Government Communications Security Bureau Act was passed through this House. So we have agencies that are dealing with a whole range of different organisations and methods of committing cyber-crime that perhaps were not envisaged 10 years ago. I think those are the two issues: first of all, that we have legislation that does allow interception, monitoring, of New Zealanders, and that people believed that they were acting in good faith and within the bounds of the law.

I think we in New Zealand are very lucky that we have a Prime Minister like John Key, who, when it was brought to his attention that there was some doubt as to whether these practices were legal and the risks that we ran if they were not legal, took immediate action. He put in Rebecca Kitteridge to do an enormous review of the Government Communications Security Bureau, in order to make sure that that organisation was well positioned, both legally and capacity wise, to deal with the real threats that the modern world poses to New Zealand. I think the Kitteridge review, which is a very hard-hitting, pull-no-punches review, is excellent. I have no doubt that this House, given the comments that have been made today, wants to address the issues, and I look forward to the support in this House for putting right the legislation that will enable those organisations that have the responsibility for ensuring the security of New Zealand to get on and do their jobs and be confident that they are acting within the law.

There are two problems with the Kitteridge report. The first is that the Kitteridge report does not examine the critical issue, which was the role of John Key in exercising his ministerial responsibility to have oversight of the Government Communications Security Bureau. It cannot do that. It was unfair to expect Rebecca Kitteridge to do that. She is Secretary of the Cabinet. She is having day-to-day meetings with the Prime Minister. Is that why the Prime Minister chose a person who could not go to the heart of this problem and say: “Why was the Minister responsible for the GCSB unable to do his job of exercising adequate and proper oversight of this agency?”

You know, we give our spy agencies incredible power. We need them—people have talked about cyber-attacks, and that is quite right—but they have incredible power, and they exercise that power with total secrecy. We therefore rely on the Minister responsible for the GCSB to make sure that safeguards, checks, and balances are in place to ensure that that agency behaves legitimately, under the law, and in a proper way. I have to say this: John Key failed absolutely in that responsibility.

💬 Hon Anne Tolley: Rubbish!

I remember John Key as Prime Minister in 2009, Anne Tolley, coming into this House and saying that he would expect higher standards of his Ministers. Those higher standards, surely, need to involve competence, they need to involve a readiness to exercise proper oversight, and they need to involve a readiness to be open and transparent. On every one of those criteria John Key failed. By his own standards, he should have sacked himself as Minister responsible for the GCSB. He failed on every one of those fronts.

But there is a second thing that the Kitteridge report fails to do. The Kitteridge report fails to go to the heart of where this affair began, which was the raid on Kim Dotcom’s house. The first thing we know about that is that we went in with a combination of the Keystone Cops and Rambo—I do not know which is more appropriate as a description—with helicopters and the Special Tactics Group—

💬 Hon Chester Borrows: You Labour guys love the police, eh?

—full use of force, and for what, Mr Borrows? And for what? To issue an extradition warrant for copyright infringement!

Can anybody in the world believe that the New Zealand Minister of Police allowed her police to go in, fully armed, with helicopters, as if it was an attack on Hanoi during the Viet Nam War, all to serve an extradition warrant and to seize a couple of computers? It was bizarre. You know, probably the police and the Government Communications Security Bureau wanted to impress their colleagues in the United States, the FBI. Far from impressing them, sadly, they showed their utter incompetence in the way they carried out that role, and I hold the Government Ministers responsible for their failure of oversight.

Secondly, they went in, in this dramatic way, without the legal authority to do so. A High Court judge in this country, Justice Helen Winkelmann, found that they had no right of search or seizure and they had an invalid warrant. So when Chris Finlayson as the Attorney-General gets up to spout in this House, I want to know why there was so much incompetence and how you could conduct a raid that will make New Zealand liable for tens of millions of dollars in legal suits from Kim Dotcom. I want to know why there was so much incompetence, and why there is not an inquiry into that facet.

Then there is the third aspect of that raid, and that is that Kim Dotcom and a number of other people were subjected to a month of covert surveillance without there being the legal right to conduct that surveillance. That is correct, Mr Brownlee, is it not? There was no legal right to conduct that surveillance. They said they did it on the basis, Mr Brownlee, that they did not know that he was a New Zealand resident. But the Immigration Service had told them that very shortly afterwards, and your Government concealed it from the public—it told them that they had acted illegally, but your Government concealed it from the public.

But John Key concealed something much worse than that. For the first time a Minister in charge of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service was told that there had been spying for a significant period of time in a comprehensive way and that the legal authority to do that was in doubt. John Key was told that in July.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: 19th of March.

How do I know he was told that in July? Because he said so yesterday in his press statement. He was told that in July. Then for 9 long months he sat on that. He did not just sit on it—when he was asked in September whether this was an isolated incident, he said yes, it was an isolated incident. John Key knew he was not telling the truth. He knew that he was not telling the truth. He had known since July that there had been a pattern of activity that was illegal. And did he tell the New Zealand public? Not a word for 9 months. For 9 months he kept that from the public.

John Key has a parliamentary committee, the Intelligence and Security Committee, which should have the right to know that sort of information. During that 9 months did he call the committee together, to give the parliamentary oversight that that committee was set up to provide, and tell it the truth? No, he did not. So John Key needs to come into this House and say why he would not front up to the New Zealand public and why he would not front up to the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee and tell them the truth about what the agency that he as a Minister is responsible for was actually doing.

But there is more to it than that. Can we really believe that John Key did not know anything about what was happening in the biggest operation that New Zealand has mounted in association with the United States on New Zealand soil, involving the Ministry of Justice, involving the Crown Law Office, involving the Police, involving the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and involving the Government Communications Security Bureau? Can we really believe that as being credible?

Can we then believe that the Government Communications Security Bureau for months and months and months never told him the truth about the illegality of the actions? Well, you know, there are a couple of explanations. One is dishonesty and incompetence and an arrogant disregard for the rights of New Zealanders to know. Sir Bruce Ferguson came up with another explanation, and he said it publicly. That is very unusual for a top civil servant. He loyally served the country for four decades. He said: “When I dealt with John Key, he wasn’t interested in what we were doing.” But that does not explain why he was never told by Ian Fletcher, because Ian Fletcher was the man whom he had personally hand-picked, in breach of the normal procedures of the State Services Commission, to put in—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: It’s not true.

It is true, and Iain Rennie made it clear that it was highly unusual for him to do that. That is Yes, Minister talk for: “I was astonished and I was shocked that he did it.” He went in and he hand-picked his own person to head the Government Communications Security Bureau. He did not just hand-pick the person. There was only one interview—one interview—and they chose the person who interviewed best. One interview—that really smells.

The Prime Minister is meant to be the Minister in charge of that agency. He is meant to know what is going on, and he is meant to hold it accountable, and he failed on every front. But can we believe this, too? Bill English signed a ministerial warrant covering up the role of the Government Communications Security Bureau in this affair. That has never been done in New Zealand’s history before—

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Tell us about Bruce Ferguson.

—Chris Finlayson. It has never been done. Can you really believe that Bill English took an unprecedented step, acting as Prime Minister, and never told John Key when he came back to New Zealand that he had signed this warrant covering the matter up? It has never been done in history, and he did not bother to tell John Key? Hey, pull the other arm. Nobody believes that.

The fact is that this affair smells. It smells in every aspect. There have been too many brain fades. There have been too many lies by omission. There have been too many times when the Government has not been prepared to be open and transparent. As Chris Finlayson quoted before, Oliver Wendell Holmes said that “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”, and what we need is a full and independent inquiry to allow the sun to shine in on this murky affair.

This is a serious issue, but that was a very sad speech from Phil Goff. It was a sad speech on a number of points. Firstly, a great deal of it was simply fanciful, made up by Phil Goff to suit the mantra of the Labour Party. He is a man who was formerly the chairman of the Cabinet external relations and defence committee, and who also sat on the Intelligence and Security Committee and therefore, for a very long time, presided over the illegal activities that have affected 88 New Zealanders since 2003. He comes into this House and starts pointing the finger at the current Prime Minister, who has had the courage to say: “No more. We’re sending in someone to make an inquiry so we find out exactly where the weaknesses are, so we can sort it out.”

The Labour Party knows that this is a minor issue. It knows that it is a fine point of law that we are dealing with, and if Labour was really serious, then today it would not have had Grant Robertson request the special debate; it would have had its leader, David Shearer, request the special debate. Why did Labour not get David Shearer to lead the debate today? Well, the problem is that the first speech is a 15-minute speech, and Labour could not guarantee that by the time David Shearer got to the end of it he would remember what the debate was about. Phil Goff over there talks about forgetfulness and about omissions and all the rest of it. Well, the biggest forgetful moment in this House—the greatest omission in this House—demonstrated this year is the secret bank account of David Shearer, which he still will not tell New Zealanders about.

What you have got is essentially a party trying to create a degree of outrage over what is a very fine point of confusion between the two spy agencies in New Zealand. The Security Intelligence Service can, with a warrant, spy on New Zealanders. It can intercept. It can surveil. What it has done for years, for decades, is, in fact, get hold of the Government Communications Security Bureau to do that listening capability. That is where the problem has come from, because the Government Communications Security Bureau does not have the legal right to do that. That is what this report from Rebecca Kitteridge makes very clear, and the Government response is that that will be cleared up.

I want to turn also to a couple of points that Miss Kitteridge has put in her report that I think are particularly important. She says: “The time I have spent within GCSB has left me in no doubt that New Zealand needs this organisation now more than ever. The increasing threat of cyber attacks and the protective role GCSB plays is one part of this story, but GCSB does a wide range of other things that are essential to the well-being and prosperity of New Zealand.” That is a very powerful statement from someone who went into the organisation wanting to know where the bad bits were and what the good bits were. When the report is boiled right down, we get to that very fine legal point that can be fixed up.

What we have heard from the Labour Party is it is throwing in all sorts of other red herrings, particularly around the appointment of the new chief executive—the chief spy, if you like—of New Zealand, Mr Ian Fletcher. Can I say for a start that I was fascinated by the speech from Russel Norman, where he decided—

💬 Chris Auchinvole: Ha!

Well, it does not happen very often, but it did on this occasion. He decided to quote from David Lange’s book, where he said in that book effectively that when he was Prime Minister he had no idea what the Government Communications Security Bureau was up to, that it would not tell him anything, and that it just went about its business as if he did not exist. Well, the odd thing is that he got to appoint the chief spy. So I want to know why he appointed someone who would not tell him what was going on. What that shows, I think, is a general omission that you get from the left of politics in New Zealand, which wants to say that the rights of criminals are just as great as the rights of those who are offended against. I, for one, do not accept that.

When it comes right down to it, the appointment is made by the Prime Minister. I cannot for 1 minute believe that Helen Clark did not make a personal approach to Sir Bruce Ferguson. I believe that Mr Key has, in identifying Mr Fletcher, recognised that he needs someone from way outside the system, not someone who is sort of in the club and part of the network, but someone who is very, very far and remote from it, who has an excellent Public Service record in other jurisdictions, and who can come in and clean up the outfit. But we cannot lose sight of the fact that this is an essential organisation for New Zealand and that it must continue to exist.

I think the other things that have been mentioned this afternoon have all been designed to perhaps get the media excited about little bits of this and little bits of that, losing sight of the big challenge that this organisation has. I turn again to Miss Kitteridge’s report at point 183, which says: “My belief in the importance of the work carried out by the men and women at GCSB has only increased as this review has proceeded. The world is becoming more complex, and physical borders are less relevant. The nature of the threats to national security is shifting so rapidly that keeping up with them is a challenge—let alone getting ahead.”

So let us be clear. We have the Security Intelligence Service surveilling some New Zealanders because, presumably, they were identified as being ratbags and up to things that were not good for this country, were not good for our economy, were not good for wider prosperity, and were unreasonable for New Zealanders to have to put up with. To help it in that work, the Security Intelligence Service effectively contracted the Government Communications Security Bureau to do the listening side of that surveillance. That was not legal. That is well accepted. That is noted. The Prime Minister knew formally of that on 19 March this year and I think has acted appropriately ever since. The outrage that you get from the other side of the House is somewhat laughable.

Can I just point to the comments that came from the New Zealand First Party. There has never been a party in this Parliament that has been softer on crime than New Zealand First—utterly pathetic, always on the side of the criminal, always wanting to put forward the rights of the so-called oppressed in the justice system. The member who spoke, Andrew Williams, talked about the lack of memory that seems, in his opinion, to have characterised this whole saga. Well, I have simply got to say one thing to him. Go back to the office, Mr Williams. Go into Mr Peters’ office and say: “What was it that made you forget a $100,000 donation to the New Zealand First Party and then go out publicly and say that you forgot about it?”. This is a serious issue of the pot calling the kettle black.

No one’s history in this particular issue is good. Since 2003, when the Government Communications Security Bureau was finally put into a legislative framework, there has been a series of illegal surveillances carried out. No one denies that, but it is quite reasonable that there could have been a mistake or a misunderstanding between the two sides, the two agencies of State in this particular case.

In conclusion, my point is simply this. The Labour Party has had an enormous amount of fun over the last few weeks, trying to ramp this up into something that it is not. It is one of those things that has unfortunately happened, but it has been exposed and made certain only by the fact that Rebecca Kitteridge was sent by the Prime Minister into the Government Communications Security Bureau to investigate what the situation was. There is a commitment from the Government and a commitment from the Prime Minister that he will talk to other parties. We know that the Labour Party will not support the legislation, New Zealand First will not support the legislation, and the Greens do not want anybody who does anything illegal to be confronted at all, so they will not support the legislation, but the sensible parties in this House will pass the legislation in order to make it clear that this sort of activity cannot continue in the future. I think this is all summed up by the fact that the leader of the Labour Party was himself not prepared to lead this debate this afternoon.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.