Norman Russel: Intelligence and Security Committee — Membership 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Norman Russel: Intelligence and Security Committee — Membership 
[Sitting date: 20 March 2012. Volume:678;Page:1092. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I rise from the Green Party to speak to the motion. I think it is fair to say that the Green Party is pretty sceptical about the level of oversight of our security services. However we are participating in this committee and we thank the Leader of the Opposition David Shearer for nominating us on to this committee. But like the previous speaker we think there needs to be tremendously improved oversight of the security services because it is very difficult for the current committee to properly supervise or provide any kind of oversight of the security services in New Zealand. 
The Intelligence and Security Committee is not a select committee of the House like other committees. It does not have parliamentary control like other committees. It is a committee established by statute—the Intelligence and Security Committee Act. That is how it is established. The Intelligence and Security Committee has five members: the Prime Minister who is also the Minister responsible for the security services and two nominees from him and the Leader of the Opposition and one nominee from him. So this is a five-person committee established by statute whose job is meant to be to provide some oversight of the activities of the security services. 
However the Intelligence and Security Committee has very few powers to do anything much to make the security services answer questions. For example if the chief executive officer of a security service declares any information to be sensitive then we cannot ask any further questions about it. That is written in the Act. We do not know what the information is but if the chief executive officer of any security service says “No the question you are asking is of a sensitive nature; it is sensitive information.” then they do not have to answer any questions about it. So it is fundamentally different to the select committees established under the Standing Orders of this House. 
Unlike select committees the chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee is the Minister responsible for the security services. The way select committees are established in this House is that the chair is always independent—it is not the Minister—so that the chair of the committee which is meant to be keeping these Government agencies accountable is at arm’s length from the Minister. What this means is that very few people know what the security services do. It is very difficult for the Intelligence and Security Committee to get to the bottom of what the security services do because we do not have the powers. It means that the chair of the committee is actually the Minister so it puts us in a very difficult situation. 
Other jurisdictions do not do this of course. Other jurisdictions have much better parliamentary or congressional oversight of their security services. I just quote for you the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency William Colby. 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 be under the control of our democratic system.” That was a quote from the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency from the United States. What that says is that the system we have where there is not democratic oversight of the security services—not in any effective way—is not the only system that you can have. 
This is particularly the case because our security services have a terrible record of basically taking sides in politics. For example there were some documents that were released to my former colleague Keith Locke that showed that in the 1980s the security services were taking a very unhealthy interest in anyone who opposed apartheid in South Africa. So the SIS seemed to take the view that if you opposed apartheid in South Africa you were a threat to the New Zealand State so you needed to be investigated. 
The SIS has made a habit of targeting law-abiding political dissenters. For example it targeted Aziz Choudry. It burgled his home. The reason we know that is it was caught burgling Aziz Choudry’s home. That went to the courts and when it went to the courts the Security Intelligence Service lost the court case and unspecified damages were awarded against the SIS to Aziz Choudry. 
David Bennett 
: It’s a conspiracy theory. You might as well join New Zealand First. 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN 
: Mr Bennett over there says it is a conspiracy. Well this is actually on the public record Mr Bennett and you should try reading it some time. It might actually help you a little bit. At the time the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Laurie Greig said it was reasonable for the SIS to break into—to burgle—Aziz Choudry’s house. However the courts disagreed and overruled him. 
A further case where we have concerns about the activities of the SIS would be the long-term persecution of Ahmed Zaoui. This is a well-documented case and the courts repeatedly upheld Mr Zaoui’s rights against the SIS and the SIS breaches of his rights. Mr Zaoui was an Algerian democrat who was being hunted by the brutal Algerian dictatorship. He was the classic political refugee that members of this Parliament should support because he was an advocate for democracy and that is why we were very disappointed when the Labour Government participated in the persecution of Ahmed Zaoui over many years. What happened was the Algerian dictatorship provided false information that Zaoui was a terrorist to the French Government which then passed it to the New Zealand SIS which stupidly believed everything it was told. It took massive intervention by the courts—court case after court case after court case—to prevent the SIS from essentially deporting Mr Zaoui to serious harm offshore. At the time the Government of Helen Clark backed the SIS 100 percent in pursuing persecuting and wrongly imprisoning Mr Zaoui as the courts ultimately came to the conclusion. 
Keith Locke is another who was targeted by the SIS for being a law-abiding dissident—something we should encourage. In fact there are hundreds of law-abiding New Zealanders whose political beliefs happen to disagree with those of the SIS and hence they have become the target of surveillance. In a free society it is wrong for the State security services to target people because of their political beliefs yet there is a repeated pattern of the New Zealand security services doing exactly that. Some people say that we have the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security who is meant to be the safeguard to oversee the SIS. Because the Intelligence and Security Committee cannot do it because it is too constrained the Inspector-General is meant to be the safeguard. However the Inspector-General operates in secret so we do not really know what he does. We do know that one of the few times we have seen the Inspector-General in action was when Laurie Greig was reviewing the decision of the SIS to issue a security risk certificate against Mr Zaoui. Laurie Greig who was at the time the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security told the media that Mr Zaoui should be sent overseas—he should be “outski”. He clearly had a predetermined view of the issue. 
So although the Intelligence and Security Committee is very limited and that is the body that we are appointing with this motion the Inspector-General is meant to be the safeguard. But on the one occasion when we saw what the Inspector-General was doing we discovered that the Inspector-General who is meant to be an independent check on the activities of the security services was completely biased. This went to court and the courts ruled that the Inspector-General had to step down from reconsidering the case against Mr Zaoui because the Inspector-General at the time was clearly biased. The courts ruled him to get out of the case. 
This is the so-called independent check on the security services. That is what is meant to be the independent check on our security services because the Intelligence and Security Committee the parliamentary oversight is so weak. Yet we know that the one time we saw what the Inspector-General got up to he was very very biased against someone who turned out to be actually a political refugee and the kind of person whom people in this Parliament should support because he was a democrat. After that the Inspector-General actually resigned because the courts found against him. 
We recognise that the security services do some good that they have an important role; we are not naive about it. But we believe along with Mr Colby from the CIA that there should be parliamentary oversight of the security services and currently we do not have it. One victory for the Intelligence and Security Committee in the last committee was the inclusion of some human rights provisions in the Act governing the SIS. Along with the Prime Minister I think I am now the longest-serving member of the Intelligence and Security Committee—the current one—and that was one of the victories that came out. By law I cannot tell you what happens inside the meetings of the Intelligence and Security Committee but you will know that there was at least a majority inside that committee to support human rights provisions being added to the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Act. How else could it have appeared in the committee recommendations that came back to Parliament? So that was I thought one small significant thing that we have achieved. 
I would say to progressive activists and agitators to people who stand up for freedom and democracy and human rights—the people who are the targets of the security services traditionally—to not sleep easy in your bed thinking that the Greens are providing good oversight of the security services because we have one person on the Intelligence and Security Committee. There are very real limits to what this committee can do and so it is essential if you wish to protect your freedom that you should be as vigilant as possible. We will do the best job that we can on the committee but there are real constraints on it. Thank you very much. 
Motion endorsing members’ nomination agreed to. 
Motion concerning terms of reference agreed to.