Teanau Tuiono: Waihopai spy base has no place in New Zealand

Teanau Tuiono is the Green Party spokesman for security and intelligence.

Electronic eavesdropping systems, computer programmes that automatically index and search captured communications, and databases where details of a whole region's communications are stored: these are all standardised parts of the global surveillance system run by the US National Security Agency (NSA).

Some people would be surprised to learn we have spy bases like these in New Zealand. One of the portfolios I picked up as a new Green MP is security and intelligence.

The role took me down to the Waihopai spy base last month, and I got to speak at the annual protests at the gates of the facility, near Blenheim. The giant white spy domes, which look like something out of a sci-fi movie, are a lot more foreboding and ominous in real life.

The spy base is operated by New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) in the interests of the foreign powers grouped together in the super-secret UKUSA Agreement.

New Zealand is a member of the UKUSA Agreement, a multilateral agreement for signals intelligence (SIGINT) co-operation. This international alliance is also referred to as the Five Eyes, and Waihopai functions as a cog in that spying machine. It is the alliance's main eye on the South Pacific region.

One repetitive defence of the Waihopai spy base is that it helps to protect Aotearoa from terrorists. It doesn't. That was dramatically shown on March 15, 2019, when a white terrorist murdered 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch and attempted to murder 40 more.

The GCSB totally missed the worst act of terrorism on our soil. Waihopai and the GCSB define "terrorists" as per the instructions of their Five Eyes big brother, the NSA.

Waihopai does not operate in the national interest of Aotearoa New Zealand. We should not be spying on behalf of other countries. In all but name it is a foreign spy base on New Zealand soil, paid for with hundreds of millions of our tax dollars.

By closing these bases and using that money we can then focus on fostering community tolerance and resilience. It's all well and good to say we are going to do something; actually doing it is another matter entirely.

With the dysfunction of the Trump regime behind us, history has turned a page. We here in Aotearoa must also turn a page. We must be independent and non-aligned. I have had people say to me before that it's a big world and we need friends. To that I say, friends respect boundaries and if they don't, then they aren't really friends.

• Teanau Tuiono is a Green list MP based in Palmerston North.