Turei Metiria: Urgent Debates — SIS—Report on Release of InformationText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Urgent Debates — SIS—Report on Release of Information[Sitting date: 25 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:774. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green):When John Key is protecting his own interests he is not working in the interests of all New Zealanders. When John Key stands up and defends his own interests and his own political future he is not standing up for the interests of New Zealanders or for the democracy that he has pledged to serve. What he does when he defends himself against these very serious findings by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security is he completely dismisses his role as a servant of New Zealand’s people—an upholder of the democracy that has been fought for in this country and by others. What we saw today from John Key and his behaviour in the House and the disgraceful personal attack by particularly the Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service is that John Key and his people are here to protect themselves only and the rest of New Zealand can be damned. He has shown utter contempt for the security of our national intelligence services for the parliamentary democracy and again for the people of New Zealand.What we really saw today was John Key treating this serious issue of a major abuse of power—Hon Christopher Finlayson: Why don’t you apologise to Rebecca Kitteridge?METIRIA TUREI: Here we go. We can hear the Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service Chris Finlayson no doubt making more personal attacks as is his wont.Hon Christopher Finlayson: Did you hear what you said today you disgusting creature?METIRIA TUREI: Mr John Key has shown today that he—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I apologise for interrupting the member. I just want to say to the honourable Minister Chris Finlayson that anything that I said today was not disgusting and I think that he should if he is going to interject in that manner make sure that he follows the rules of the House.METIRIA TUREI: John Key has shown today that he treats this place and the public service role that he has as some kind of game where you score points for being the trickiest—not for being the most ethical not for upholding high standards but for being tricky.Well let me say very clearly that our democracy is not a game. We are not here just to win at any cost. This is about serving the New Zealand public not mocking them. It is not OK under any circumstances for John Key or any Prime Minister to run a “black-ops” scheme from the ninth floor of the Beehive no matter how tricky he thinks he is or how much he tries to bat off questions in the House. The public of New Zealand deserves significantly better than that. They deserve answers not sleights of hand and a Prime Minister who upholds the integrity and the ethical standards that New Zealanders expect from that office.For all the dispute around the findings of the inspector-general’s report what is very clear from the report is that John Key’s office was engaged in a deliberate smear campaign and it would use political information provided to it from Government agencies as critical to New Zealand’s security as the SIS for party political purposes in an election campaign. Steven Joyce tried to stand up and do this and so did Bill English. No doubt others will as we go on. You simply cannot stand here in this Parliament and tell New Zealanders that that is ethical behaviour by John Key and his office. He did know. He employed Jason Ede precisely for that purpose—to run smear campaigns out of the ninth floor of the Beehive. John Key allowed Jason Ede to use secret email and phone accounts to dig dirt on political opponents and to attack them during the election campaign. Not only that but he used information that was received by John Key and by his office through the SIS. The adviser then destroyed those records. The adviser destroyed those records. It is set out in the report. John Key says that is OK. He is quite relaxed about that behaviour of his own staff and his own office.The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security found that staffers in John Key’s office were using SIS information for political purposes. John Key thinks that that is perfectly fine and that that is a fine ethical standard for him to maintain. The inspector-general found that Jason Ede used SIS information to tell Cameron Slater what to ask for in an Official Information Act request; that Slater and Ede were on the phone together when the Official Information Act request was written; and that Ede had even drafted up a blog for Cameron Slater about the Official Information Act request. So the Prime Minister employed Jason Ede to write blogs for Cameron Slater. That is the level of disgraceful standard that the Prime Minister allows and accepts in his office. The people of New Zealand paid Jason Ede’s wages to write draft blogs for Cameron Slater to dig dirt on political opponents and to misuse information provided by Government agencies to the Prime Minister for party political purposes in an election campaign. John Key says that that is OK. For John Key that is a fine ethical standard to maintain in his office. So despite the desperate spin that we are going to hear from National—and the members are trying all sorts of distraction techniques today and we will hear more probably over the next few days. We heard some of the faux outrage today as well from National members.The inspector-general confirms a serious abuse of power by this Government by John Key and by his office. The report vindicated Nicky Hager and his most serious allegations in the Dirty Politics book. During the recent campaign John Key said that the events that were outlined in the book were “baseless allegations”—he used that quite often—but the inspector-general’s report shows that the Prime Minister was wrong to say that they were baseless allegations and confirms that the most serious allegation in the book is actually true. Yes John Key operated a “black-ops” out of his office. His own staff were involved in that. He gave approval for that. There is no way that those people could have operated like that in his office if he did not approve of those actions.This is a huge abuse of power. It is not a political game. It is an abuse of the most powerful office in the country. It was first uncovered by Nicky Hager in his book and has now been confirmed by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.John Key is denying it. We all expected that he would and that he would bluster as we saw in his behaviour today. He has not treated the issue with any degree of seriousness. He has not addressed the public on the core issues about the ethical standards and the integrity that he expects out of his office. He said instead that it is contestable that his deputy chief of staff got an SIS briefing on 25 July and that it is contestable that the information was passed on to Jason Ede who then talked to Cameron Slater to write an Official Information Act request. The Prime Minister is now saying that the findings of the inspector-general in her report are contestable—the findings of fact that she made.Her findings were based on interviews with the Prime Minister’s former deputy chief of staff who is quoted in the report as saying that he wished that Ede had given the information to a real journalist and not to Cameron Slater. Slater’s and Ede’s phone records were used to determine the facts of these matters and John Key yet again says that this information is contestable.It is absolutely a game spin that John Key is playing. He is not being honest with the public of New Zealand or treating them with the respect that they deserve. This is an issue that deserves a direct and sincere communication from the Prime Minister not the spin and game-playing that we are seeing today and will no doubt continue to see.It also raises concerns about whether this culture of grime that is coming from the Prime Minister’s office is bleeding elsewhere. What we have got now is in two elections we have had the directors of the SIS interfering in the election campaign—first of all Dr Warren Tucker with the allegations that have now been proved accurate by the inspector-general in failing to meet his political neutrality requirements and allowing information to be used for party political purposes by John Key in an election campaign in 2011 and then again with Rebecca Kitteridge making statements defending the Prime Minister’s office when those allegations were raised in Nicky Hager’s book before the inspector-general’s findings were completed.If this is the culture that John Key allows in his office of practically zero ethical standards and no integrity of course it is going to bleed through into some of those major agencies and the Public Service if that is how they think they need to deal with John Key and his people. Of course there will be this interference. We must be protecting the Public Service from this kind of political grimy culture that is coming out of the Prime Minister’s office.We have said over and over that the Prime Minister should step aside while a royal commission is undertaken into the full allegations. The Prime Minister needs to make a clear commitment to the public of New Zealand that he takes this seriously because time and time again the allegations have been proved true. It is about his integrity it is about the ethical standards that he employs and over and over we are seeing John Key the Prime Minister of New Zealand failing New Zealanders acting in his own interests and instead allowing New Zealanders to suffer this continual abuse of power. Thank you.