Spooks 2.0: Security bureaucracy faces re-invention to match commission advice

Explainer: Natural hazards such as earthquakes, biosecurity intrusions like the Queensland fruit-fly, and pandemics such as

Covid-19 are obvious and known threats to New Zealanders.

Domestic terrorism and violent extremism were less understood, before ripping into the public’s consciousness with the terror attack on March 15,

2019. But who was responsible for this ignorance?

The royal commission into the March 15 terror attack, which released its report on

Tuesday, said the lack of discussion about counterterrorism, intelligence and security came from the top.

Prime ministers and ministers ‘‘rarely speak publicly about the terrorism threat or violent extremism’’, far less so than in Australia, Norway or Britain. That is now poised to change. The Government has agreed, in principle, with the commission’s recommendation to create a new national security agency, after it revealed confused bureaucratic leadership and a failure to reevaluate an ‘‘inappropriate’’ focus on Islamic extremism.

How this new national security agency might look is not yet clear. The royal commission has provided its vision. It wants the agency to create more public discussion about terrorism – publishing ‘‘threatscape’’ reports, encouraging people to report behaviours that might indicate a threat, hosting annual hui or meetings to help understand violent extremism.

Who is in charge of national security now?

There is currently no single agency responsible for national security, a term which covers all risks and threats to the nation’s people, way of life, institutions and communities. The mostly hidden bureaucrats who write briefings, and investigators who gather intelligence, are spread across various agencies – meeting in a series of boards and committees obscured from the public. The Security Intelligence Service (SIS), Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), and the police are the operational agencies – the SIS and GCSB conduct human and signals intelligence, respectively, and the police deploy detectives for counterterrorism investigations.

The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) coordinated counter-terrorism work and has national security