KEY POINTS:
It is going too far to suggest that a commission of inquiry is needed into the police's Special Investigation Group. Judicially controlled investigations are inevitably drawn-out and expensive affairs and a cash-strapped Government would be irresponsible to authorise such spending, given the state of the nation's books. But that is not to say that the conduct of the group, known as SIG, is not a matter of legitimate interest and considerable concern.
SIG was set up in 2004 to focus on possible threats to national security posed by the new wave of 21st-century terrorism. But this week it emerged that it has been paying informants to spy on groups as diverse as trade unions, animal rights and climate change campaigners, Greenpeace and even the Green Party.
The girlfriend of Christchurch man Rob Gilchrist, a veteran member of various activist networks, discovered that he had been passing on information to SIG officers about, among other things, planned protest actions. Gilchrist, who reportedly told his now-ex-girlfriend that he was serving an unspecified "higher cause", was paid up to $600 a week and given other inducements.
Police Commissioner Howard Broad has assured Police Minister Judith Collins that police were "meeting their responsibilities" - an anodyne and entirely unsatisfactory statement - and that SIG's investigation of activist groups targeted individuals within groups and not the organisations themselves. But information subsequently released by trade union leaders, including Herald on Sunday columnist Matt McCarten, seem to give the lie to that.
Even in the absence of that information, it is hard to see that Broad's explanation makes great sense. The investigation of an individual's activities within a group can hardly occur in isolation from scrutiny of the activities of the group as a whole.
The police's need to maintain secrecy around intelligence operations may argue against his going into detail about SIG's work, but his internally illogical explanation is less than the public is entitled to.
The silence of the Police Minister since her meeting with Broad is even more questionable. The matter, which landed on her when she had scarcely got her feet under the ministerial desk, is a test of her mettle - and she needed to be more proactive in dealing with it. With the country winding down to the Christmas break, she may be hoping that if she can keep her head down it will go away. But that is not good enough.
Politicians properly say that they do not interfere in police operational matters, but there is a principle at stake here. As the Prime Minister said, we need to be sure that those being investigated present a real risk and are "not just a group the police target because they feel like it".
That is the nub of the matter. Some members of some groups allegedly targeted by the SIG have been known to engage in acts of vandalism and other behaviour that would be unacceptable to most New Zealanders. If they come to the police attention, they have no one to blame but themselves.
But it is a long way from that to conducting surveillance of groups that exercise a fundamental and legitimate right to dissent, much less of political parties with an electoral mandate.
It is at least worth debating whether SIG should operate, like the Security Intelligence Service, under ministerial oversight. That way, at least the desk where the buck stops will be occupied by someone who can be voted out of office. The alternative scenario - that the police might secretly operate a dragnet operation spying on citizens who are engaged in lawful activities - is far too unpleasant to contemplate.
