INTELLIGENCE AND TERRORISM BILLS – WHAT’S HAPPENING?
- Bob
Leonard
Both National
and Labour governments have over the last few years treated New Zealanders to
an array of new laws that are seriously eroding our privacy and making us even
more vulnerable to the ceaseless probing of so-called Intelligence agencies.
The last Bill to be passed into law was the Crimes Amendment (No. 6) Bill,
known affectionately as the Swain Bill (after
Paul Swain, the Minister responsible for it.
Ed.). As far as we know the Act came into force in February 2002
(refer to PRs 23 and 24 for details).
A Supplementary Order Paper attached to the Bill was the objectionable part
because it exempted the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and
the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) from anti-hacking provisions of the
Bill. Passed in the face of vigorous
public criticism the Swain Act greatly expanded the intrusive powers of the
GCSB and the SIS by “legalising” their computer hacking activities.
The
Telecommunications Act was to be amended soon after to grease the technical
skids for electronic interception of all manner of communications both domestic
and foreign. But at the time of writing there is still no sign of such an
amendment. We have been in contact with Parliamentary sources very recently and
they can find no reference to it in the Parliamentary
Bulletin. We assume it is just a matter of time before it appears.
What
About The Terrorism Bill?
In a knee-jerk
Labour government response to September 11, the then languishing and obscure
Terrorism Suppression Bill [aka the Terrorism (Bombings and Financing) Bill]
very nearly got rammed through Parliament with no opportunity for public
comment back in late 2001. But thanks to a crescendo of public outrage at this
sneaky business, we did get a chance to comment (see our submission in PR 24).
We also asked to be heard before the Foreign Affairs and Defence Select
Committee. And sure enough we got our chance, on a February 2002 morning in a
Christchurch hotel conference room.
GATT Watchdog’s
Leigh Cookson suitably revved up the committee, chaired by Labour’s Graham
Kelly, before our testimony. She
alleged that the Committee had initially intended to carry out its business in
secret and this struck a chord with Select Committee member, Green MP Keith
Locke, who supported the allegation. This in turn pushed the button of New
Zealand First MP, Ron Mark, and things
got a little heated with counter allegations of libel and impugning of
honour. The gentle and fair-minded Mr Kelly
calmed things down and Anti-Bases Campaign’s Murray Horton and Bob Leonard
followed Leigh. We characterised ourselves as peaceful dissidents alarmed at
the Bill’s all-encompassing powers to imprison us and declare us, and countless
others of Leftwing persuasion, as terrorists, without a smidgen of due process.
We had to suppress our startled smiles when the edgy and humourless Mr Mark
accused us of Leftwing bias. It was Murray’s reference to potential misuse of
repressive legislation by a Rightwing government that didn’t sit well with Mark
for some reason.
Coverage of our
testimony in the Christchurch Press
the following day (12 February 2002) was a pleasant surprise. You never know
what will seem newsy to a reporter. Under the headline “Allegation upsets
Mark”, was a box highlighting in bold type: “We believe Operation Deep Freeze
should be demilitarised, and that Waihopai is essentially an arm of US
intelligence”. Great, if somewhat irrelevant, publicity for ABC’s central raison d’etre that I had included to
underline our long history of dissent from the Establishment. The fact that
Murray and I had locked horns with one Helen Clark over the American military
at Christchurch Airport as far back as 1986 (when she was chairing exactly the
same Select Committee, under the previous Labour government) seemed to please
Mr Mark. It was a stimulating morning and we felt we had been listened to.
In March 2002
the Bill was reported back to Parliament by the Committee, bereft of a scathing
minority report by Keith Locke. It was apparent that public testimony had made
some impression and led to a few improvements in wording. But the Bill is still
a nasty piece of work and totally unnecessary. Keith Locke’s suppressed
minority report deserves wide circulation and ABCer’s believe it is a discredit
to the Committee that they refused to include it in its report to
Parliament. Keith’s overriding concern
is the broad definition of terrorism in the Bill that could see labelled as terrorists
a great array of peace and social and political activists who support the
activities of liberation movements, support union actions, or otherwise dissent
on a variety of vital issues. And
being locked up as a possible terrorist could happen on little more than the
whim of the Prime Minister who needs only “good cause to suspect” involvement
in terrorism. Imagine how Muldoon might have used such sweeping powers at the
time of the Springbok Tour in 1981.
The Terrorism
Suppression Bill has been sitting out the election period ominously awaiting a
second reading. After September 11, 2001, all five UKUSA-Echelon spying
partners (USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) rushed to combat
terrorism with draconian legislation - ineffective overreaction in the extreme.
Perhaps little New Zealand has moved more slowly on its Terrorism Bill because
of some second thoughts about blindly following the wildly flailing US military
machine (reminiscent of King Kong swatting at a biplane). But no doubt the Bill
will rear its ugly head later in 2002 under the new minority Labour government.
Helen Clark has shown little inclination to buck the tide of Bush and Co. And
there is little hope that her former liberal tendencies will be revived by the
likes of Peter Dunne or the spent political force that is Jim Anderton.
A small ray of
hopeful light came from Australia in late August 2002 with news that its tough
counter-terrorism legislation is now “…likely to be blocked in the
Senate”. The Government has held to a
hard line on some of the worst features of the Bill which would give the
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) extraordinary powers of
arrest and detention (see article
elsewhere in this issue for details. Ed.).
Since this was written, the Terrorism Suppression Act has become law, pushed through by the Government under Urgency, in October 2002. Only the Greens voted against it. More in the next issue. Ed.
Fighting
terrorism in the South Pacific requires not just legislation that threatens the
civil rights of New Zealanders, it also takes big bucks. According to a media
statement from the Prime Minister (30 January 2002):
“Eight
government agencies and departments will share extra funding [for
counter-terrorism activities]. It totals $26.915 million in operating
expenditure and $2.894 million in capital expenditure running from now until
2003/4. …the SIS, the GCSB and the External Assessments Bureau, will together
receive an extra $11.723 million over the financial years. $2.894 million of
capital funding will be shared between Intelligence agencies, Civil Defence and
the Defence Force.
“The funding
will also improve our Intelligence agencies’ ability to collect and evaluate
foreign and domestic intelligence. A
particular focus of their efforts will be to prevent New Zealand from being
used as a safe haven to plan and facilitate terrorist attacks elsewhere.
“The increased
funding is a measured response to the international security environment which
we now face, and demonstrates again New Zealand’s commitment to international
efforts to combat terrorism,” Helen Clark said.
The Prime
Minister acknowledged in the media statement that we are remote and an unlikely
target for terrorism. But somehow the Government can manage to find millions of
dollars to throw at vague and remote possibilities, while many New Zealanders
are deprived of proper health care and educational opportunities, not to
mention many other social and environmental needs, for lack of dollars. As
Green Co-leader Rod Donald is fond of asking, where is the value for money in
bolstering the already inflated, and arguably wasted, Intelligence
budgets?
We will never know because it’s all top secret. And there is no public accountability for the money spent. We doubt that even the Prime Minister, who is in charge of the Intelligence services, will ever have a clue as to how those millions of dollars were spent. But if the Sky Tower Casino in Auckland is protected from being blasted by a Boeing 767, it will all have been worthwhile.
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