Eyes on the spies

A new review recommends diluting the PM's oversight of NZ's intelligence agencies but Chris Hipkins remains unconvinced.

- PETER GRACE

George Tenet, director of the US Central Intelligence Agency from 1997 to 2004, once professed that "organisations such as the CIA exist to defend democracy, not to practise it". Tenet, a rough-speaking, second-generation Greek-Albanian from Queens, New York, was kidding.

But he was touching on a universal fear that our intelligence agencies might place themselves above the law and that in the pursuit of national security our vital freedoms might get a secretive short shrift.

It is timely then that a review of the Intelligence and Security Act 2017 has been publicly released. This is the legislation that keeps two of our most important intelligence agencies in check: the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) and the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB).

It determines what oversight we give them and how we enable them with warrants. And this review of our current policy - conducted by Sir Terence Arnold and Matanuku Mahuika - is far-reaching.

It might be too far-reaching for some. Recommendations in the review, published on May 29, have already been described as "challenging" by Prime Minister Chris Hipkins. "I don't think there's any need for this to become a political football," he said, promising he would go through the points one by one before providing a "direction of travel", hopefully by October.