John Minto Mana vice president

Refusing to back sending New Zealand troops to Iraq is a welcome, ethical stance from Labour. Andrew Little made good solid points yesterday to back up this decision and he and Labour should be applauded.

The party seems to have learnt from their disastrous decision to join the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan back in 2001 and since then have been much more principled and realistic about sending our soldiers to foreign lands to fight and die for US interests.

But their support for our domestic, and, through “five eyes”, international, spy legislation has always been woeful and Labour confirmed this yesterday with support for John Key’s warrantless surveillance of New Zealanders. Labour claims major concessions from Key in return for their support for new attacks on our civil liberties but these amendments are minor cosmetic changes to an ugly law.

Like our other spy legislation there are holes big enough to drive a bus through it sideways and as we know the spy agencies will exploit those loopholes as they always have.

Labour has never put up principled resistance to the extension of search and surveillance powers from the establishment of the Waihopai spybase in the 1980s – under Labour leader David Lange – to the plethora of legislation passed under Helen Clark which dramatically escalated the powers and resources of our external spy agency the GCSB (Government Communications Security Bureau) and the internally focused SIS (Security Intelligence Service)

After September 11 Labour’s justification for dealing body blows to our civil liberties was the need to respond to UN requests for enhanced surveillance but that was only a tiny part of the legislation the party drove through parliament. Most of the dozen or so laws were put in place at the behest of the US as the dominant member of the “five eyes” alliance so New Zealand would open up this country and our Pacific neighbours to US global surveillance. The US objectives in all this were neatly summed up in the Edward Snowden-leaked NSA document which gave the US objectives as “collect it all, process it all, exploit it all, partner it all, sniff it all and know it all”.

Our GCSB and SIS are now one important step closer to this US objective. Like most of its predecessor legislation the latest SIS bill has nothing to do with New Zealand security and a whole lot more to do with NewZealand support for the “five eyes” alliance which links our GCSB and SIS to US global political and military strategies.

It’s a pity Labour has spoiled its principled stance of opposition to NewZealand troops being sent overseas by toadying to US interests here at home where we make our greatest contribution to the US empire.