GUEST BLOG: Maire Leadbeater – The Official Information Act, the Official Secrets Act and Dr Bill Sutch

As debates over the Official Information Act and government transparency resurface in the wake of the Iran war emails, the story of Dr Bill Sutch offers a reminder of how far — and how precariously — New Zealand has come.

Winston Peters and Christopher Luxon might be wishing we still had the draconian Official Secrets Act in place since it severely restricted making government information public. Instead, the Official Information Act (OIA) 1982 is founded on the premise that government information should be released unless there are cogent reasons for withholding it. In my view, we should be able to see an important email debate about the Iran War and our government’s response.

Why the Official Information Act matters today

To an extent we have Dr Bill Sutch to thank for the demise of the antiquated Official Secrets Act. He was the last and only person to face trial under that Act and the publicity given to the Act’s broad powers for the state to search, arrest and interrogate, incentivised the campaign for its repeal.

In February 1975 Dr Bill Sutch was acquitted of charges based on the espionage provisions of the Act. However, ever since he has been on trial in the unforgiving court of public opinion. The latest episode is a Radio New Zealand story ‘What to make of new evidence in the notorious Bill Sutch spy case’. 

While the ‘was he or wasn’t he a spy?’ story grabs attention, more important questions go unanswered. 

Dr Bill Sutch and the legacy of state secrecy in New Zealand

The ‘evidence’ can be seen in a different light if we think about the value of openness and transparency in both domestic and international affairs. 

I recap, in September 1974 there were sensational media accounts of a late-night meeting between Dr Sutch and a ‘foreign’ diplomat on a rainy night in a hilly bush lined street in suburban Wellington. And bizarre accounts of dead of night police searches of his home, office and a vacant lot on Holloway Road. 

It was soon clear that Dr Sutch had met or was about to meet Dimitri Razgovorov, a Soviet diplomat and KGB agent, unusual late-night behaviour to be sure, but there was no verified evidence of any material being handed over. 

 Dr Sutch had retired from government service nine years earlier which suggests he would not have current government information to share in any case. However, he had long been in the annals of the Special Branch and Security Intelligence Service for his supposed ‘subversive activity’ like opposing the Korean War and attending Soviet diplomatic functions. Recently Sarah Gaitanos, biographer of Shirley Smith, Dr Sutch’s wife, commented on a now declassified SIS report about material found in Dr Sutch’s office. This material was available at the time of the trial, but the Crown did not use it.  It consists of a 1970 Cabinet document about Japanese fishing and a ‘Memo for File’, dated 20 October 1970, which detailed the interests, weaknesses and ambitions of six civil servants. It is possible to see this document as being a kind of ‘talent-spotting’ or looking for individuals for the Soviet Union to ‘target’.  

The profiles focus on assessing the individuals’ leftist and Soviet sympathies, and the author is not known. At the time, Soviet diplomats were kept at arm’s length in western countries. So, an equally plausible explanation is that the object was to help Soviet representatives do their diplomatic job by talking to people who could help them understand New Zealand’s attitudes and trading priorities. 

This is an excerpt of one profile, that of G. Easterbrook-Smith: ‘He is honestly sympathetic to the Soviet Union and so is his wife who was a Jewish refugee from Hitler, but his main interest lies in having an easy life. He will however talk about the problems he has to deal with in international trade and in South-East Asia which is his specialty…’ 

The constant digging for ‘evidence’ to establish that Dr Sutch was a spy, is a pointless exercise unless one is still stuck in a Cold War paradigm, upholding the US and Five Eyes position that any engagement with Soviet representatives indicates bad and possibly treacherous intentions.

It is time we dropped the spy story in favour of remembering Dr Sutch’s career as head of the Department of Industries and Commerce, later head of the QE2 Arts Council, a prolific writer and an economic consultant to a wide variety of companies. As an economist he advocated for New Zealand to diversify its industries and its markets, for strengthening the welfare state and he promoted the rights of women and trade unions. Post-war he headed the New Zealand delegation to the UN, and he is credited with saving the children’s fund, UNICEF, from US cost-cutting.

Economist Brian Easton summed it up when he described Sutch as a ‘nation builder’.

Maire Leadbeater is the author of ‘The Enemy Within: the Human Cost of State Surveillance in Aotearoa/New Zealand’  Potton and Burton 2024.