Looking the Wrong Way? - The SIS in New Zealand

 

I would like to invite you to hear Richard Northey and Nicky Hager discuss their experiences with the SIS over the past thirty-five years, what they reveal about the agency's values and culture, and what we might want to see in the forthcoming review of the intelligence and security agencies post the Christchurch mosque massacre.

 

Richard Northey was the MP for Eden from 1984-1990. Previously he had been President of CARE, the Citizens Association for Racial Equality, and of the New Zealand Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. In June 2020 it was revealed that the SIS had spied upon Northey during his time in Parliament, under the pretext of his support for racial equality and nuclear disarmament. At the time he was chairing the Justice and Law Reform Select Committee, which was responsible for financial oversight of the SIS, and of legislation altering its powers.

 

Nicky Hager is an investigative journalist who has been writing about the activities of the intelligence agencies since his 1996 publication of Secret Powers on the GCSB. In 2019 following an inquiry the SIS was told to apologise to him for unlawfully acquiring months of call logs from his phone in relation to his investigation into Defence Force activities in Iraq published in Operation Burnham.