Tim Groser and the spies

So it’s official: Government spies were entitled to help Cabinet Minister Tim Groser’s campaign to become head of the World Trade Organisation. This is the verdict of the intelligence watchdog Cheryl Gwyn, whose devotion to accountability is well-known. That doesn’t mean she is right about this, though.

Gwyn’s finding centres on a controversial part of the security legislation which says the Government Communications Security Bureau should provide foreign intelligence to ‘‘protect and advance’’ New Zealand’s economic well-being. The problem here is the word ‘‘advance’’. It opens up a bulldozer-sized gap through which the spies can happily and legally charge.

The law subverts the normal sense of ‘‘security’’, which is about threats to the nation’s safety however defined.

The idea of protecting New Zealand’s economic wellbeing is easy enough to grasp. An official who betrayed New Zealand’s bottom line in negotiations with a foreign country over free trade – say, with China or the United States – would clearly threaten the nation’s economic well-being.

But almost anything could count as ‘‘advancing’’ that wellbeing. In this case, the then head of the GCSB, Ian Fletcher, a family friend of former prime minister John Key, thought Groser’s campaign would justify some international snooping. Fletcher was so keen he suggested it to Groser himself.

Labour leader Andrew Little, whose complaint to Gwyn sparked her report, says he can’t see how Groser’s campaign for the job falls within national security, and he’s right. The law only allows it by redefining ‘‘security’’ in unnatural ways. Gwyn won’t comment on this part of the law – that’s a question for Parliament, she says.

The Government could plausibly say it was in New Zealand’s interests for Groser to get the job. He spent much of his professional life as a trade negotiator.

But nobody expected Groser would use his position in the WTO to advance New Zealand’s particular trade interests.

This only means, however, that New Zealand would be justified in promoting Groser’s case by the usual diplomatic methods: lobbying governments and so on. It does not by itself justify calling in the spies to help.

The ‘‘advancing economic security’’ clause is also loose enough to allow spies to snoop on opponents of the current free-trade orthodoxy, and perhaps has already done so.

It extends the rights of spies at the expense of citizens’ right to oppose.

What’s more, the spies failed: Groser didn’t get the job. Hardly a triumph for the security services and their obliging legislation.