Q+A: Greg Boyed interviews Geoffrey Palmer
Sunday 30 September,
2012
Q+A: Greg Boyed interviews
Geoffrey Palmer
Former PM predicts
“large” damages claim and “serious legal action” by
Kim Dotcom following GCSB’s bungling of its
surveillance
“Mr Dotcom is the stuff out of which
leading cases are made”.
Boyed: …Should
he [Bill English] have asked more questions and been more
open with his Prime Minister?
Palmer:
“The difficulty is that if Mr English telephoned Mr Key
overseas to talk to him about this the communication could
be intercepted by foreign people, so he probably didn’t
want to do that…”
Boyed: So what
you’re saying is that it’s not beyond the realms of
possibility that an email or a phone call or whatever
between Bill English and John Key when he was overseas could
have been intercepted, they could have been spied
on?
Palmer:
“Absolutely…”
Oversight of intelligence
agencies sufficient, Palmer says – no oversight at all
before 2003, “and it’s because of that legislation that
we now know that we acted unlawfully”
New Zealand
has “doesn’t have the resources” to monitor spy
agencies as fully as “you would wish”
Rejects
calls for a further inquiry: “…these intelligence
agencies have to be secret. If you’re going to conduct a
commission of inquiry in public, they won’t be
secret”.
“…the way it has come out, and what
has been done as a result of it does mean that the system is
working”
“We do have the rule of law in
relation to security agencies in New Zealand, and that is a
great comfort”
PM should have known about the
Dotcom case, but “that’s a failure on his officials…
this was incompetent by any standards”.
GCSB does
very useful work – helped Palmer as minister by monitoring
foreign fishing fleets and learning how many albacore tuna
had been caught.
“We had the numbers and that was
the end of that, and we were able to negotiate a very
successful treaty”
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Q+A
GREG
BOYED INTERVIEWS GEOFFREY
PALMER
GREG
BOYED
Opposition parties say it’s not enough.
Labour says it’s been a whitewash. In your opinion, is it
sufficient?
GEOFFREY PALMER, Former Prime
Minister
Well, I really do believe that what happened here was wrong.
It was certainly illegal, and it demonstrated very sloppy
behaviour on behalf of the officials who did it. But the
Prime Minister’s reaction to it as the minister in charge
of the agency was to really berate them and get stuck into
them and ensure that they took drastic action to change
this. So I think that what has been done will certainly stop
the difficulties that the report demonstrates. I don’t
think there’s any doubt that the prime minster has taken a
very serious view of this, and he has given his officials a
rocket.
GREG Does
there need to be another report? Does there need to be a
commission of inquiry? Should something else
happen?
GEOFFREY Well, I don’t
think there does need to be for this reason: that these
intelligence agencies have to be secret. If you’re going
to conduct a commission of inquiry in public, they won’t
be secret. There is a select committee set up by statute in
parliament that can look at these. There are many more
accountabilities on the security agencies than there ever
were before. I mean, it wasn’t until 2003 that the
Government Communications Security Bureau actually had
legislation, and it’s because of that legislation that we
now know that they acted unlawfully. Before that, they
functioned, but they didn’t have any legislation. We do
have the rule of law in relation to security agencies in New
Zealand, and that is a great comfort, I
think.
GREG
Do you accept what has happened was a mistake - a sloppy
mistake, to use your words - or was there something more
insidious going on here?
GEOFFREY Well, of course,
it’s very difficult to say if you don’t know the
circumstances, and the Prime Minister is in a position to
find out, and it seems to me that incompetence is more
usually the explanation than anything insidious. But this
was certainly incompetent by any standard.
GREG This
was a major breach of our law. It was New Zealanders being
spied on in New Zealand, wasn’t
it?
GEOFFREY Yes, and there will
be more legal consequences from this. This activity was
unlawful and it could lead to very serious actions being
taken both in the civil courts and very possibly in the
criminal courts against the people who did this.
GREG Now,
when you say legal action, presumably you mean suing, Kim
Dotcom, is that what you’re talking about? And what sort
of money could you be talking
about?
GEOFFREY Yes, actions for
damages, because what has happened here is clearly a serious
breach of privacy at the very least, and that is now a tort
in New Zealand, a civil wrong, for which you can get
damages. It seems to be that there will be quite large legal
proceedings that follow from all of this. Mr Dotcom is the
stuff out of which leading cases are made.
GREG Do we
need better oversight of our intelligence agencies than what
we’ve got now, given the power they wield? In this realm,
this is about as intrusive as it can get.
GEOFFREY We have very
significant powers. We’ve got the piece of legislation
that sets up the inspector general of security who was
active in this case and who produced a report at the
direction of the prime minster, and he has very wide powers
under his own statute.
GREG That
said, we are talking about limited resources here. We’ve
got the inspector general, a retired judge and a PA and
that’s it. That’s our last port of call. Does there need
to be more teeth, more people put in that
area?
GEOFFREY Well, you could
always say that about many activities in the New Zealand
government. New Zealand is a small country and it has as
many statutes as a big country, and it doesn’t have the
resources or ways to make it work as well as you would wish.
I think we do pretty well in this area, and it seems to me
that what happened in all of this, and the way it has come
out, and what has been done as a result of it does mean that
the system is working. I mean, the New Zealand public knows
about this; the Prime Minister finds it unacceptable, he’s
apologised to the public and Mr Dotcom, and big changes are
afoot. That’s what ministerial responsibility is all
about.
GREG
I want to talk about the government’s role in this. This
is something from opposition leader David Shearer: ‘It’s
astonishing that this report fails to deal with how the
Prime Minister managed to be so blissfully unaware of what
was going on under his own nose when he’s the person with
sole democratic oversight. It is farcical.’ Are you
surprised that the Prime Minister, as a former prime
minister yourself, wasn’t more on top of a major major
case like this?
GEOFFREY Well,
it’s very difficult to put myself in his position. He
certainly took action when he found out about it, but the
problem is that he wasn’t told about it. Now, that’s a
failure on his officials. It’s not his failure, it seems
to me. I really do think that you have to remember that
these agencies operate secretly, and if all their doings
were made public, they’d be useless to the government. And
in fact, they’re very useful. Let me just give you an
example of why the GCSB is so useful. When I was a minister
we were conducting a big campaign against driftnet fishing.
The GCSB intercepted a number of communications from foreign
fishing fleets about how many albacore tuna were being
caught by them. Now, in the negotiations we were having,
there were denials that it was a problem. They said not
enough fish were being taken so it really wasn’t a
problem. Well, we had the numbers and that was the end of
that, and we were able to negotiate a very successful treaty
about that. So this is an agency that helps New Zealand in
very positive ways in many, many different fields.
GREG
We’ve got your thoughts on John Key - that he was simply
too far at the end of the chain to find out in time. Bill
English, though, we now know wasn’t. He was in the midst
of it. He signed this off. Should he have been tougher?
Should he have asked more questions and been more open with
his Prime Minister?
GEOFFREY
Well, the difficulty is that if Mr English telephoned Mr Key
overseas to talk to him about this the communication could
be intercepted by foreign people, so he probably didn’t
want to do that. I mean, one of the things the GCSB advises
you about are the problems of intercepted government
communications, and that’s one of the prime reasons they
exist, to prevent the government information systems being
invaded or corrupted. And indeed I had a very interesting
interview with the GCSB before I did this inquiry in New
York about Israel and Turkey. They warned me of how my
cellphone could be intercepted. They gave me a little
package to put it in so no one could find out where I was.
They provide a great deal of advice which is very helpful to
government ministers and to government officials about how
to protect New Zealand security interests and stop our
secrets getting into the hands of other people.
GREG So
what you’re saying is that it’s not beyond the realms of
possibility that an email or a phone call or whatever
between Bill English and John Key when he was overseas could
have been intercepted, they could have been spied
on.
GEOFFREY Absolutely. I mean,
email is an open communication. I mean, anyone can intercept
those.
ENDS