So the chief spy who briefed Key on Dotcom just happens to be Key’s old school mate whom Key vouches for???????
I’m sorry, what?
PM plays down friendship with GCSB boss
Prime Minister John Key has downplayed the closeness of his relationship with GCSB director Ian Fletcher after Labour’s Grant Robertson suggested the two men were friends of long standing before Mr Fletcher’s appointment.
But Green MP Steffan Browing claims Mr Key has had a close ongoing friendship with Mr Fletcher which has “sinister” implications for the oversight of the spy agency.
…by not telling his old school mate who helped get him the job about the spying on Dotcom, Fletcher protected the PM by creating deniability. Is this the sort of Government we want? Riven by cronyism and self-interest masquerading as the public good?
There are enough questions about how our Police force allowed themselves to become puppets for the US and how captured our Government seem to be by corporate Hollywood and America’s drive for a TPPA that will seriously erode our economic sovereignty.
There are even more questions about how our own security apparatus managed to become involved when they knew the spying was illegal and how the same clowns involved in previous over steps in Police authority were involved in this one.
And let’s not forget all the times John Key seems to have brain faded over when and when he wasn’t briefed on Kim Dotcom.
Now we need to add to that mountain of questions the childhood relationship with the Chief Spy whom Key appointed and whom provided Key with his deniability.
Don’t give me that ‘it’s a small country we all know each other’ crap. Key’s old school mate is made the Chief Spy??? That’s not knowing a mate in a contract or having a family member appointed somewhere, it’s the Chief bloody Spy!
Those two should not know each other in any way shape or form. Are we appreciating the vast amount of power being handed into a small group of people who are mates?
The Prime Minister and the GCSB director should not be old school mates. That this has only come out now shows how questionable it was in the first place.
This stinks to high heaven, and everyone knows it.
I guess Key got his man in there just like the CIA got their man in the Beehive.
Shit, even the Speaker of the House has stopped pretending we live in a real democracy.
Bad days for freedom in New Zealand.
Even this wouldn’t be such a problem if the spy agencies were responsible to a cross party committee, for example, rather than just to the PM. (Or to Washington when we have a Labour government). The problems occur because they, like the Police, are just not accountable. Time to start again.
In my view you have nailed the big issue here. This country needs to reform its intelligence oversight framework.
A minister can be responsible for the NZSIS and GCSB, and the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security can have retrospective judicial inquiry powers (although proper resourcing is needed) – that is all fine.
But there must be robust oversight by a Parliamentary intelligence committee (far in excess of the 45 minutes or so of baffle they are served a few times a year).
More analysis should be done on whether a sworn commissioner heading an independent committee of sworn members should be established to oversee New Zealand’s intelligence agencies.
This aspect of reform has had little attention of late, but after the NZSIS (and EAB’s) failings re the Zaoui case, the GCSB’s illegal surveillance of Kim Dotcom, the culture within the agencies does little to sustain the public’s confidence.
It is time for opposition parties (Labour, Greens, NZ First and Mana) to seriously develop oversight policies that will be on the legislative agenda once there is a change of government.
What we need are policy-solutions that will ensure true oversight is established. The national and public interest demands reform be undertaken.
The current state of affairs is unsatisfactory to say the least.
Yes, Martin, this is a revelation, is it not. School mates run this country, and besides of John Key, most of them come from private schools. They have known each other for years. That is little NZ, it is a small “old boys and girls” and “not so old boys and girls network”.
When it comes to business, lobbies, government and so forth, they are all over the place. It is a who knows whom, and Key is popular and well connected, also to the mainstream media (besides of, and through Joyce).
So no bloody wonder we have the polls we get, the reporting or lack thereof we get, the supposed high popularity of Key and his government.
It is well stricken together, a neat network, and now it comes out, while Key knows the GCSB chief as an old school mate, he pretends he knew nothing else.
In other countries people would long have rallied outside John Key’s Parnell mansion and asked for his removal, but the “Kiwi battlers” are largely a peculiar kind of human specimen. They do not want to be revolutionaries or law breakers, they want to be perceived as “egalitarian”, but nobody really dares to challenge and rock the boat.
It is a mentality of a people here that is ideal for a soft form of a dictatorship, and that is what we more or less have here.
Powers are taken off the individuals and people in general, by restricting laws, rights, and access, like to legal aid, like OIA information releases, like Privacy Act information, like access to places and to be heard in legal and semi legal processes.
The RMA is now on the block, privatisation goes on unabated, mistakes like privacy breaches get brushed off with easy, convenient excuses, but NO media person really challenges.
So the dictatorship in Aotearoa NZ is WORKING, I am afraid, the people have gone home into the closets, to watch drivel on TV or escape into cyber socialising. It is a people gutless and powerless, cheated and disowned by the day, yet most do nothing but ROLL OVER. A damned horrible place NZ has become. I will be out soon, I had enough of this shit.
That sums up exactly what I’ve been thinking for a long time now. I’m out of here too. I can’t take it anymore. It makes me feel like a coward but I’m afraid of what will become of this place.
Don’t go – we need you! (and the other guy).
This sort of happening everywhere in the world – even in Canada! There IS no escape because ultimately what is at stake is this planet.
sorry, should have been “this sort of thing is happening etc”
And also on the day of the re-emphasis of the Casino skulduggery. Must say though, our style of corruption is so smiling and gentle.
Hey now, some of my best friends are my cronies.
I remember a Dr Who series from the 1970s where the power behind the man who appeared on television was a bunch of what looked like giant lobsters. Could this be a case of life imitating art?
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