Intelligence agencies to remain intact in overhaul
New Zealand’s intelligence agencies will remain intact, and spy chief Rebecca Kitteridge will keep her job, after the Government pledged to overhaul the national security apparatus.
The Royal Commission into the March 15 terror attack, in a report released on Tuesday, was highly critical of a lack of clear leadership in counterterrorism efforts, and ‘‘a systemic failure’’ to recognise that extreme rightwing terrorism was a threat.
The inquiry said the SIS had an ‘‘inappropriate’’ focus on Islamic terrorism, which Kitteridge in response said was due to a lack of resourcing.
The Government has committed to creating a new national security agency. Minister for the intelligence agencies Andrew Little yesterday confirmed that this agency would bring together the scattered committees, boards, and policy operations that currently make national security decisions.
Little said he retained confidence in SIS director-general Rebecca Kitteridge, who has been criticised for her part in the agency’s near-singular focus on Islamic terror threats.
‘‘She was dealing with the real jobs she had at her disposal at the time. Given they were the agency that had to do the frontline counterterrorism work, given that there was no strategic direction elsewhere to say, ‘Now we have to pivot away some of those resources somewhere else’,’’
Little said.
The royal commission found that the SIS should have considered other threats, not that its work on Islamic terror threats was wrongly directed, he said.
‘‘The total decision-making machinery, beyond just the two agencies responsible for intelligence gathering, wasn’t equipped to make sure those decisions to direct resources the right way were made.’’
The new national security agency would take the resources
spread across various offices to produce strategic direction for the intelligence agencies, Little said.
Little ran into trouble yesterday for speaking publicly about his contribution to the royal commission, which imposed a 30-year suppression on the evidence of chief executives and current and former Cabinet ministers.
Asked why he hadn’t recognised a lack of leadership in the national security apparatus, Little said it ‘‘wasn’t correct’’ that he had failed to identify a problem. ‘‘But I’m very conscious that I’m under obligations under Section 15 of the Inquiries Act, and I’ve already been ticked off once today for breaching it or allegedly breaching it.’’
Crown Law had notified him of the possible breach after he was interviewed on RNZ, he said.
Green Party spokeswoman on human rights Golriz Ghahraman said that if Kitteridge continued to maintain that the Muslim community should be targeted, then ‘‘she’s absolutely unfit to lead the agency’’.
‘‘The finding was that the agency was disproportionately ascribing resource ... monitoring the Muslim community, and that that wasn’t based on evidence.’’
Kitteridge on Tuesday said the Muslim community as a whole was not being monitored by the SIS, but individuals of security concern were.
Ghahraman said the report ‘‘found that prejudice existed in her agency, and that she continues to deny that evidence does give me huge concern about her leadership’’.