Guyon Espiner

Yeah, this has been true of governments of all political stripes, hasn't it?

It was interesting to see Jim Anderton, the head of the Alliance, and he was a big sceptic of the intelligence agencies over the years, certainly historically very critical of the SIS, when he came to power with Helen Clark's Labour government in 1999.

After that, he had to grapple with the responsibility for the safety of the nation.

He ended up agreeing that the intelligence agencies were essential.

So in this final episode, we're going to dig into what this really means for New Zealand in terms of where these agencies sit in relation both to our government and New Zealand's place in the world today.

That's Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2026.

Now, he didn't actually mention it, but the elephant in the room is very clearly the current US administration.

That's right.

Now, that speech was widely reported, but like a lot of things we've heard since the start of the second Trump presidency, it's hard to know just how much genuine structural change is happening behind the headline-grabbing rhetoric.

Kit Bennett says there's no telling quite where this four-year term will take the Five Eyes.

Tim Weiner says there are real-world consequences that result from all this, and they could be disastrous.

The actions undertaken by this new regime have already led to some erosion in terms of trust in the partnership.

We know, for example, that British intelligence, they suspended sharing information in the Caribbean in the latter part of 2025 as the US ramped up a campaign supposedly against drug smuggling boats by blowing them up.

And that appeared to be a flagrant contravention of international law.

And there are multiple flashpoints that could turn very nasty.

Internally, things like, as Tim Weiner says, US elections, or maybe immigration enforcement, that could blow up even further.

perhaps most likely something that isn't even on anyone's radar right now.

Quite how you guarantee that is an open question.

Oversight, that's vital, but a lot of it is going to come from the internal culture.

Going back 50 years, Kit Bennett's remembers public mistrust of the SIS at its height after Dr Bill Such was found not guilty of breaching the Official Secrets Act.