Norman Russel William: Standing Orders—Sessional Intelligence and Security Committee — Membership 
Norman Russel William: Standing Orders—Sessional Intelligence and Security Committee — Membership 
[Volume:652;Page:1863] 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 Working within a few hundred metres of the parliamentary precinct are presumably a number of well-educated bureaucrats who like their counterparts elsewhere occasionally pop down to Lambton Quay for a latte. However unlike their fellow policy analysts advisers and general managers in other Government ministries or departments they do not have any select committee scrutiny of what they do or what they do with taxpayers’ money. This means that even a junior analyst fresh out of university and now working at the Security Intelligence Service is likely to have a far better understanding of the intelligence agency’s workings than most if not all members of Parliament except perhaps the Prime Minister. 
The committee we are discussing today the Intelligence and Security Committee is not a proper select committee and it cannot perform the parliamentary oversight functions that the Green Party thinks are necessary. It cannot get information out of the security services in the way that other committees can. The Intelligence and Security Committee is chaired by the Minister who is responsible for the agency that the committee is meant to be overseeing—the Prime Minister—unlike select committees which are chaired by an independent member of Parliament as is appropriate when we are trying to oversee what an agency is up to and to keep it accountable. Considering the scrutiny that intelligence agencies face in other parliamentary democracies this lack of proper select committee oversight does not actually protect our national security or create a culture of professionalism in our security services. The point is that we need to have proper oversight of the security agencies. We need to have a select committee that is chaired by someone independent—someone other than the Minister responsible. 
That point has been made by many members in this Parliament over the years. Jim Anderton has made it. So have Matt Robson Rod Donald and Keith Locke repeatedly over the years. In fact Rod Donald said in March 2000: “we believe that this committee should be abolished and that the powers that rest with this committee should be returned to Parliament.” 
I ask those who say that is impractical to listen to the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency William Colby who was someone we would think knew quite a bit about the oversight of security services. Mr Colby said: “We in the intelligence and security services can work under a system of parliamentary control. We can do our job and in fact we are stronger because when we make mistakes and get in trouble the responsibility is shared with the legislative committees. The intelligence service can do its important work and yet it can be under the control of our democratic system.” That is what the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency said. So if the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency thinks that why on earth cannot we have proper parliamentary oversight of our security services? It is not only practical; it is essential in a democracy. 
In the past the Green Party has derided the supervision of the intelligence services as being a joke as a result of some of the things we have discovered. For example through parliamentary questions it was discovered that the Intelligence and Security Committee met only once in 2005: on 14 June for 43 minutes. It met twice in the previous year for a total of 84 minutes. That is hardly enough time for its members to pour their coffee chow down on some macaroons and sort out what al-Qaeda is up to. 
According to the SIS’s own website there are approximately 200 staff ready to provide the Government with advice relating to our nation’s interests. The service also states that it is apolitical. However in the past it has certainly shown a distinct political bias against the left. When we think about recent documents that have been handed to my colleague Keith Locke we realise they also show that in the bad old days of the 1980s the service seemed to take an unhealthy interest in those who were fighting against apartheid in South Africa whom the SIS seemed to identify as being a threat to the State. The SIS also made a habit of targeting law-abiding political dissenters. It targeted Aziz Choudry and David Small presumably for their political beliefs—something that the courts later held the SIS accountable for and the SIS lost in court. The persecution of Ahmed Zaoui by the SIS is well documented and the courts have repeatedly upheld Mr Zaoui’s rights against the SIS. Keith Locke of course was targeted by the SIS for being a law-abiding dissident—something that we would think we would encourage and welcome in a democracy. 
There are many hundreds of other law-abiding New Zealanders whose political beliefs happen to conflict with those of the SIS and hence they have become targets for surveillance. In a free society it is wrong for the State security services to target people because of their political beliefs. In a free society a person should not become a target of the State security services simply on the basis of what he or she believes to be true. 
Of course on a minor aspect what is perhaps more worrying is that there does not seem to be a report on the SIS website for the 2007-08 year. The last report of the SIS states: “We are a dynamic professional intelligence service focused on the requirements of our core customers and stakeholders in government”. Well really? Who would know? How would anyone know that? How do we know that the SIS is actually performing what it is supposed to do? Even with the large budget increases the SIS finds it difficult to provide such basics as the adding of yearly reports to its own website. 
Over the last few years the budget for Vote Security Intelligence has kept expanding. In the financial year 2006-07 the budget rocketed up to $43.49 million without any explanation in the budget of what the money was for. What dangers is the SIS trying to dispel and protect us from and how will this massive increase make any of us more secure? Increasingly in this vote hardly ever is there an occasion for the razor gangs to go in. When are the razor gangs going to come into the SIS? Nobody knows what the money is spent on. The Green Party is committed to trying to ensure that there is some fiscal oversight and that the committee meets more regularly than it has in the past. Some of the money we think probably was spent on kitting out the new offices for the security services in the top floors of the defence building. But that can be only part of the story. 
The big increase in funding just keeps going on year after year. More money is being allocated without any improvement in the oversight mechanisms as to how the money is spent. During the 9 years of the last Government the budget for the security services more than trebled but the oversight did not treble. While other public servants are busy clearing their desks right now we have no idea what efficiencies the intelligence services are making if any. We must have more oversight of the intelligence and security services and what they are doing. We are not here to provide a public relations opportunity for the security services. We are here to try to fix a system that is mired in the first-past-the-post era and that should have been changed a long time ago. Bizarrely considering that we live in an MMP environment the Intelligence and Security Committee has only five members. Unlike select committees there are only five members—presumably some people think the fewer members there are the better it will be. 
The Green Party intends to do its best to give the public a much better oversight of the security services than they have had in the past. We are in fact changing tack in how we are dealing with the Intelligence and Security Committee. We do not resile from our belief that the security services need to be given proper select committee oversight as the security services are given overseas. We need to have a committee that can find out what the SIS and the Government Communications Security Bureau are up to. However we will none the less do our best to make the current provisions work flawed and limited though they are and hence we have accepted the Leader of the Opposition’s offer of a nomination on to the committee. We will be voting for the motion.