Sleeping watchdog no problem to spies

Green Party MP Keith Locke has given the Intelligence and Security Committee the ‘asleep at the wheel’ award for being the most slothful committee in the New Zealand Parliament.

“Despite the Government acting to increase the Security Intelligence Service budget by almost 50 percent since 2005 in the name of the ‘war on terror,’ National and Labour politicians seem almost totally disinterested in whether the SIS or Government Communications Security Bureau do their job properly,” Mr Locke, the Greens’ Security Intelligence Spokesperson, says.

“The committee’s track record is damning. Since the 2005 election the Committee has met only four times, for a grand total of 2 hours 38 minutes.

“According to replies from the Prime Minister to a Written Question, the committee met on March 27 (50 minutes) and June 14 (40 minutes) in 2006, and February 14 (38 minutes) and June 27 (30 minutes) in 2007.

“Another sign of the lack of oomph in the committee was that it took five weeks for staff to assemble the above information – despite seven days being the deadline under Standing Orders, for the return of Written Questions.

“This shows the need for a real Select Committee on Intelligence in our Parliament. The present committee is simply made up of the Prime Minister and the National Party leader, and their appointees. New Zealand must have the least active intelligence oversight committee in the world, outside of dictatorships,” Mr Locke says.

“In countries like Britain, Australia and the US they have parliamentary and congressional committees that can and do conduct serious inquiries, that initiate their own subjects of inquiry and that have the power to require officials and Cabinet Ministers to testify before them. They are not content – as in New Zealand – to be supine, rubber stamp bodies.

“Since 2001, there has been legislation granting extra powers to the security services and increased reliance on classified security information at the expense of open judicial processes. Is it too much to ask that the public’s parliamentary representatives should stir themselves to play a more active role in ensuring that these new, intrusive powers are necessary, and are not being abused?” Mr Locke says.