English Bill: Urgent Debates — SIS—Report on Release of InformationText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeEnglish Bill: Urgent Debates — SIS—Report on Release of Information[Sitting date: 25 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:764. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Prime Minister):Can I start by utterly refuting the allegations made by the Greens. I mean the Greens asked for the inquiry and now they are very disappointed that it has not proven their case. The Green Party is a political movement that was party to the large-scale stealing of emails published in a book 6 weeks before an election—Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I take offence at the allegation that the Green Party was involved in the theft of emails. I seek a withdrawal—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat. We have just had a very robust contribution with a number of allegations from the member’s co-leader. The Minister has every right to respond.Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: Is it a fresh point of order?Metiria Turei: I am just—Mr SPEAKER: Is it a fresh—Metiria Turei: Yes.Mr SPEAKER: Then I will hear it.Metiria Turei: Is it now your ruling that when a member takes offence you will not treat that as it has been treated in the past which is that the integrity of the member taking offence is considered sacrosanct and a withdrawal and apology is always required? Are you reversing that many-decades-long ruling?Mr SPEAKER: That is not the ruling. If offence is taken and I consider that there is a reason for offence to be taken I will immediately ask for that to be responded to. But in this case there was a very robust debate. A very robust number of allegations were made by the previous speaker Dr Russel Norman and the Minister has every right to respond to those. And I did ask the member whether she was raising a fresh point of order. She has effectively relitigated the ruling I have already made.Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well the public will draw their own conclusions about the involvement of the Greens prior to the 2014 election; an involvement we are now grateful for as it helped to get the Government re-elected because of the excessive stupidity of the allegations made at the time. I thought that those members would have learnt.The fact is that John Key as Prime Minister runs the most open most transparent Government that New Zealand has seen and particularly in respect of the intelligence services. He has taken on the job that others did not take on—that is of bringing transparency and thoroughness to the operation of our intelligence services. [Interruption]Well I had some experience of working with the previous Labour Government as Leader of the Opposition and I am not going to bother Parliament with some of the twists and turns of that experience. But what I can tell you now is that Helen Clark would never have had an inspector-general scrutinise the phone records emails and correspondence of the SIS. That was never ever contemplated. John Key has put that in place with the assistance of the Attorney-General and that is why we have this report here today. The Greens asked for the report and because it came to conclusions that did not suit their conspiracy theory they now effectively reject the findings of the report.So let us just see what those findings were that the inspector-general found. The New Zealand SIS disclosed incomplete inaccurate and misleading information to the Prime Minister and his office and in that sense the same misleading and inaccurate information was also disclosed under the Official Information Act to the said Cameron Slater. The information that was disclosed by a member of the staff did not breach any obligations of confidentiality owed to the New Zealand SIS.This is the most objectionable part of Russel Norman’s speech: he led this Parliament to believe that somehow people in the Prime Minister’s office used information to which they had privileged access to smear their political opponents and that is wrong—that is wrong. Remember what the information was. Phil Goff having started all this by accusing the New Zealand SIS of not doing its job over the Israeli services said that he had been briefed by the SIS and the SIS for various reasons believed that he had been briefed. That was the information—that was the information. The SIS said—Hon Phil Goff: No no—precisely—that is what the inspector-general found. It was the man you said had integrity who lacked professionalism.Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well the Prime Minister’s office set out to establish whether the Leader of the Opposition had been briefed and it was advised by the SIS several times—from being checked several times—that he had been briefed. The inspector-general makes it quite clear that that piece of information and the documentation around the briefing was suitably declassified. There was no privileged access to the information.In fact Phil Goff had broadcast precisely that piece of information. He had said publicly: “I was briefed.” It was not a secret. It was not some kind of classified highly secret bit of information. The Prime Minister’s office was verifying that information. That is why Russel Norman’s speech was so wrong. He was trying to conjure up some kind of Soviet-style system where the secret information held by the SIS was used to smear people. The inspector-general’s report makes it absolutely clear that that did not happen. The Greens should stop misrepresenting the inspector-general’s report. It says that the Prime Minister’s involvement in the events was limited to a briefing given to him by the director by phone on 22 July and media comments by him published on 24 July 4 August and 6 August.This is an inspector-general who had access to every phone call every document every classified item and it was an investigation into the activities of our intelligence agencies of a sort that has never been carried out before. That has never happened before. And despite his having access to every piece of information possible the inspector-general came to the conclusion that the Prime Minister was not doing what the Opposition said he was doing—that is the Opposition’s allegations were simply wrong and do not stand up to scrutiny.The report is pretty tough on the former director of the New Zealand SIS. There is no doubt about that. He has made a public comment about his regrets for the misjudgments he made.Andrew Little: Where’s the apology?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well the member accuses him of political motivation. What the inspector-general says is precisely that that was not found—precisely that it was not found. That will not stop the Labour Party from claiming it is the case—it will not stop the Labour Party. We know that because it did not stop the Labour Party members leaking the findings of the report yesterday. It did not stop them doing that.Let me just read something out. Let me just read out the confidentiality order: “Pursuant to those provisions and in order to ensure the integrity of this inquiry … you are required until further notice from the inspector-general to keep confidential the following matters: … Questions … Requests for documents … Information provided to the witness … Failure to comply with this order is an offence … ”. OK? So when are they going to own up? When are they going to own up? Oh so Mr Goff said in the House today—[Interruption] No listen to what Mr Goff said in the House today: “No one has seen a copy of the report.” OK—this is the man who leaked the confidential notes of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials in 2005 in a discussion with the Leader of the Opposition. This is a man who was the recipient of large-scale leaks from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade last year. This is the man who leaked the findings of this report yesterday in direct breach of the confidentiality order that he signed which states that it is an offence to leak it. So why would the public believe anything that Labour members say about this report?This is the confidentiality order and on the bottom it says: “Received and acknowledged”. That is when you give evidence you sign it to say that you acknowledge that you are under a confidentiality order and that you acknowledge that it will be an offence if you breach it. Despite his personally acknowledging that he leaked it. And we are meant to believe what the Labour Party says about the conclusions of this report—the political party that specialises in smears.Do you know what? It is much worse with its own people than it is with its opponents. That is why Phil Goff leaked it yesterday—because it was Andrew Little’s first day. He made a good start as a Leader of the Opposition and in fact it was probably worrying Phil Goff about what a good start he had made. So yesterday was the day that Phil Goff chose to leak in breach of the law and his personal undertaking the findings of this report—first to spoil Andrew Little’s day and secondly to try to get his own spin on a report that did not meet his expectations.The findings of the report are pretty straightforward. The criticism is all aimed at the SIS. It makes it quite clear that the SIS made all of its decisions by itself on its own merits and in doing so made some significant misjudgments. I think that is pretty clear from the report. This is about events from 3 years ago. Since then as my colleagues can explain the SIS has been going through a significant overhaul because the way in which it did handle it did not meet the standards that should be met by the SIS in pursuing its statutory obligations. That criticism is accepted by the SIS and it is accepted by the Government.In the 3 years since then as I indicated earlier on in my speech this Prime Minister has introduced more oversight—considerable oversight—that led to a report this thorough which is unprecedented. And actually the SIS is going through a significant review of its own functioning its own resourcing so that it can deliver what New Zealanders expect—that is protection from some very real threats.I do not think there is much doubt about the conclusions of the report. The only doubt is whether the Labour Party is going to own up to leaking it and whether the Greens are possibly going to be able to let go of their vindictive hatred of the Prime Minister. Certainly nothing in this report backs up their awful allegations.