Norman Russel: Urgent Debates — SIS—Report on Release of InformationText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNorman Russel: Urgent Debates — SIS—Report on Release of Information[Sitting date: 25 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:761. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green):I move That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance. The issue before us today could not be graver. The issue is that the Prime Minister is using the security services to smear his political opponents. It could not be a graver issue. We have had to deal with the issue of previous Ministers who have interfered in police investigations of National Party donors. That was another occasion on which we had an urgent debate in this House—another terrible occasion for our democracy. But today—Hon Steven Joyce: Ha ha!Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: —and Steven Joyce laughs about that occasion. On that occasion it was a Minister of the Crown interfering in a police investigation for a National Party donor. It was a shocking event. Anyone who knows anything about what happened will know that it was a shocking event. Maurice Williamson did a terrible thing. On this occasion we have the Prime Minister’s office using the security services to smear his political opponents. It is hard really to find the words to describe how damaging this is for our democracy when the Prime Minister himself is using the security services to smear a political opponent. It is an extremely dark day for our democracy. It is extremely damaging to our democracy when the Prime Minister uses the SIS in this manner.What the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security found was that the Prime Minister’s former deputy chief of staff Phil de Joux got a briefing from the SIS regarding Mr Goff. He used that information to talk to Jason Ede who was also the Prime Minister’s staffer. Jason Ede then rang up Cameron Slater who is an attack blogger and is one of John Key’s friends. That attack blogger Cameron Slater then did an Official Information Act request while he was on the phone to Jason Ede in order to get the information. So the Prime Minister’s deputy chief of staff was using information he received in a security briefing in order to smear Mr Goff who was at that time the Leader of the Opposition. That is what the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has found in her report today. It could hardly be more serious for our democracy when the Prime Minister abuses his access to security information in order to smear his political opponents but that is exactly what is in the inspector-general’s report.The report vindicates one of the central claims of Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics which was released during the election campaign. At the time the Prime Minister said these were baseless allegations. In fact the inspector-general’s report has found that one of the central claims in Nicky Hager’s book was true. That was the claim that the Prime Minister runs a “dark ops” operation—whatever you want to call it—a “dirty politics” operation out of his office that is through Jason Ede and now it turns out Phil de Joux as well who was the deputy chief of staff of the Prime Minister. They ran that operation out of the Prime Minister’s office and had no boundaries in their abuse of power in order to smear their political opponents. On this occasion what the Prime Minister’s office did—Hon Bill English: Say it like you mean it.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: Mr English?Hon Bill English: Say it like you mean it.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: It is true Mr English and you know it is true. It is in the inspector-general’s own report that the Prime Minister’s deputy chief of staff received a briefing from the security services and told Mr Ede about the briefing. Mr Ede then contacted Mr Slater and while they were on the phone Mr Slater put in the Official Information Act request for the report. Those are the facts in the inspector-general’s report. And what those facts show is that the Prime Minister of New Zealand is abusing his power in order to use the security agencies to smear his political opponents. It is an extremely dark day in our democracy. The Prime Minister should step aside. There should be a royal commission of investigation into what is going on inside the Prime Minister’s office when we have a Prime Minister who is abusing his access to security briefings.Perhaps one of the other really disturbing elements of this is the politicisation of the SIS. The SIS in fact has certain limits in its Act the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Act. It is not supposed to actually support or get in the way of political parties. Yet the verbatim conversations between the director of the SIS Warren Tucker and Mr de Joux who was the deputy chief of staff show that Mr Tucker was overtly party political and was trying to stop members of the Opposition from criticising the SIS and the Government of the day. Annette King gets a special mention in the report because she dared to criticise the Government of the day so Warren Tucker said: “Well we have to try to stop that don’t we?”.What we have seen is that the SIS has now intervened in two consecutive elections on behalf of the National Party. In 2011 Warren Tucker helped the National Party to attack Phil Goff. In 2014 the new director Rebecca Kitteridge amazingly in the middle of an election campaign put out a statement defending the Prime Minister’s handling of this exact issue—of this exact issue—in which the Prime Minister has been found to be acting in a way that is undermining our fundamental principles of our democracy. The Prime Minister used the Security Intelligence Service in order to smear Phil Goff. It was a shocking—a shocking—abuse of power.The Prime Minister today in question time bounced around here and there trying to avoid responsibility for the actions in his office. The Prime Minister cannot have it both ways. Either he knew or had wilful ignorance of what was going on in his office or he did not—he was completely out of control and he did not know what was going on in his own Prime Minister’s office. It is one or the other. Which is it? Is it that he knew and approved of what Jason Ede and Phil de Joux were doing which was using the information from the security services to smear political opponents? Or was he so out of touch with his office—so out of control of the Prime Minister’s office—that he did not know what was going on? Phil de Joux Jason Ede Cameron Slater—I mean he just did not know what was going on.Hon David Parker: He used to phone Cameron Slater.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: That is right. That is right Mr Parker. He would phone Cameron Slater. Remember John Key is at both ends of this. He would phone and talk to Cameron Slater directly. He did not rely on just Jason Ede to work with Cameron Slater; he did it himself directly in order to help Cameron Slater use security information to attack Phil Goff who was Leader of the Opposition. The Prime Minister of New Zealand was assisting Cameron Slater to help him attack Phil Goff who was Leader of the Opposition. The office of the Prime Minister of New Zealand was accessing information from the security services in order to pass it on to an attack blogger to attack the Leader of the Opposition. And Warren Tucker in a disgraceful act I mean a truly disgraceful act—the conversation between Warren Tucker and Phil de Joux in the inspector-general’s report is really disgraceful where it is clear that Warren Tucker identifies with the Government of the day and is out to help it undermine the Labour Party. I know that Phil Goff has treated Warren Tucker in a very respectful manner over many years—I have seen it myself—and I think it is a shameful thing that Warren Tucker has done and I think what Phil De Joux did is shameful for our democracy as well.The Prime Minister says that he did not know anything about this. That is his essential line. It simply defies belief that in the Prime Minister’s office the deputy chief of staff was running his own “black ops” operations. That is what the Prime Minister is asking us to believe. He is asking us to believe that the deputy chief of staff—of his own volition independently and completely to the ignorance of the Prime Minister—was working with Jason Ede to contact Cameron Slater to leak information from the security services to an attack blogger in order to attack the Labour Party. That is what the Prime Minister is asking us to believe: he had no knowledge of any of this. Jason Ede broke into the Labour Party database without permission where there were credit card records all range of private records kept—Jason Ede broke in there but oh the Prime Minister knew nothing of this. The Prime Minister knew nothing of the fact that his deputy chief of staff Phil de Joux was passing on information that he had received as a briefing from the Security Intelligence Service. The Prime Minister did not know that his deputy chief of staff was doing this.That is what the National Party is asking New Zealanders to believe and it is what we saw from the Prime Minister’s absolutely disgraceful performance in question time today. He tried to tell us that black is white war is peace and ignorance is strength. He tried to tell us that the inspector-general’s report said no such thing and that it did not implicate his staff when the inspector-generals’ report is absolutely black and white that the Prime Minister’s office was completely involved in this and had full knowledge of what was going on. We saw the Prime Minister’s disgraceful performance where he tried to say that the inspector-general said that black is white where he tried to say that he could not have possibly have known what was going on. The Prime Minister knew. That is the truth. The despicable truth is that the Prime Minister knew. That is the reality of this situation.All of us in New Zealand now have to face this thing. We think ourselves as having clean honest politics. Well we do not. I am sorry but it is not true. The Prime Minister knew that his deputy chief of staff was colluding with Cameron Slater to pass on the security information briefing in order to attack Phil Goff. That is the sad truth. It is a corruption of our political process. That is the truth. It is a sad day but it is time that we faced up to it. John Key is not the smiling nice guy that people like to think he is. John Key is not the smiling nice guy that he presents to the public. The truth is that he is operating an attack politics regime using his access to the Security Intelligence Service to attack the Labour Party. That is the actual truth because it is in the inspector-general’s report. I would challenge anybody who is watching or listening to this to go and read the report of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security because that is exactly what it says.It is a dark day and it is time for John Key for the good of the country to step aside. He is not fit for the job. He is not fit. He does not have the ethical standards. He has the ethical standards of a junkyard dog. That is the truth of it.Hon Bill English: Oh God.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: That is the truth of it and Bill English knows it is true. It is true Bill and you know it. What the Prime Minister has done is unacceptable for our democracy. The Prime Minister knew what Phil de Joux was doing. He knew what Jason Ede was doing. He knew what Cameron Slater was doing. They were using security information to smear the political opposition and that is wrong in a democracy. It is wrong of a New Zealand Prime Minister. John Key should step aside. There should be a royal commission of inquiry into what has been going on on the ninth floor of the Beehive and in the Prime Minister’s office.As this has gone on one of the things that I think is really damaging for our reputation as a clean politics country has been the Prime Minister’s denials. Nobody is perfect. The Prime Minister’s comments where he says that everyone makes mistakes—OK everyone makes mistakes but when you have an inspector-general’s report that comes out and documents the role of the deputy chief of staff of the Prime Minister and ministerial staffers in organising this kind of attack politics it is time for the Prime Minister to admit that mistakes were made that he has made mistakes and that it was wrong to use security information to attack and smear the political Opposition. When that does not happen—and what we saw in Parliament today was a disgraceful episode when the Prime Minister refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing whatsoever—then it really corrodes our reputation for honest politics it corrodes our reputation for running a clean democracy and it corrodes the reputation of the National Party.It is not like the National Party has always been like this. It has not. Let us remember it was the National Party that introduced the Official Information Act. Fair enough. Muldoon did that. I mean it is worth remembering how far we have come with the National Party since we had Robert Muldoon. I mean you know Robert Muldoon had a lot of problems—do not get me wrong—but Muldoon introduced the Official Information Act. John Key is systematically undermining the Official Information Act by essentially blocking all requests for information except for when it comes from Cameron Slater and then he gets it in a matter of days or minutes. So how far has the National Party come? It was not always like this. There was a time when the National Party stood for something. There was a time when the National Party could stand up with integrity and say: “We’ve done some good things for New Zealand. You might not agree with us all of the time and maybe there are some things you disagree with.” and obviously we would have the debate.But this is of a different order to that. This is an entirely different order. This is a Prime Minister abusing his office—abusing his access to the Security Intelligence Service—in order to smear his political opponents. This is a different kind of a thing. This is almost beyond politics. This is about the kind of country we want to have. The National Party needs to look at itself in the mirror and say to itself: “Is this really the kind of party we want to become?”. Mr Speaker is this really the kind of National Party that you signed up to?Mr SPEAKER: Order!Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: Is this really the kind of National Party that should be a responsible Government about which people can say: “Yes we might disagree with it about this or that but it basically has integrity.”? When the Prime Minister has denied all wrongdoing he has stepped over a line. He has stepped over a line. He should step down step aside and let a royal commission of inquiry look into what he has been doing. I think that when all is said and done it will really be up to the National Party caucus—those who are here in this House today—and others to look at themselves and ask: “Is this how we want to finish our third term in Parliament with this kind of cloud hanging over us?”. It is unacceptable. It needs to change. The Prime Minister needs to step aside.