Andrew Little

There are specific provisions about concealing their activity.

I guess the purpose of intelligence agencies is they do act covertly.

I mean, they're required to do an annual threat assessment, published annual threat assessment, which they do, and that is public.

But there's always going to be, because of the nature of their work, there's always going to be limitations on what they disclose at a particular time, and maybe 50 years or 100 years hence.

That stuff is maybe open to disclosure, but it's always about protecting methods today, sources today, intelligence today, so that they can more effectively, where they see a threat, respond to it.

There are exchanges, I suppose, for want of a better word.

And we contributed to it meaningfully, but, you know, proportionate to our size. But there's no question that there was some intelligence that we provided to Five Eyes partners that was of value to them. And they told me that, their ministers told me that.

What, the head of the CIA or someone? Or the ministers or senior national security people like the Director of National Intelligence at the US or National Security Advisor in the UK expressed to me the appreciation and gave examples. Oh, did they? They would give examples? This is your opportunity to tell me what they were. Yeah, yeah.

We don't have a deep-seated discussion about the policy or strategic issues that underpin it. He did say some interesting things when he spoke to us though.

Because the agency, the Five Eyes partners in particular, work closely together, more so than pretty much any other group of intelligence agencies anywhere in the world. So there is, I think, New Zealand's relationship with each of the Five Eyes partners, UK, US, Australia and Canada, is particularly close. Part of the sharing of information is each partner understanding what their systems do and can do.

What are your reflections on the Such case? Because that was historic in many ways. He was the only one ever tried under the Official Secrets Act. Look, I can't say I've looked closely at the information about Bill Such. This is from the interview we did with Andrew Little. There was a time, that time in the 70s in particular, where the Cold War was highly elevated and you'd had...

The Vietnam War had been justified on the grounds that it was about pushing back international communism and the conservative parties around the world would easily play up the communist threat, I think, as unions used the statutory powers that they had to press hard for wage increases. But whether or not Dr Satch had done anything wrong, put aside the unlawfulness because he had been found not guilty, whether he had done something wrong or immoral, I'm not in a position to judge it on the basis of what I know.

Um, look, what we're seeing today is obviously a greater polarisation, there is a buying into a set of narratives, less about the fear of communism, which was what was being stoked years ago, the sort of international communist movement, and more on the kind of extreme right and hard right sort of end of politics, and the sort of marginalisation of different communities, including migrant communities and others. But are they trusted?

There's always going to be those in the community who are, if not sceptical, at least suspicious about state power and whether expressed through the police or intelligence agencies. And some of that, it is right to have sceptical voices in the community about that. That is part of the kind of the public or democratic check and balance on them. I think on average, people accept that the agencies are there doing a job and are doing the best they can.