Spy station a cancer, MP tells Waihopai protest

The Waihopai spy station, near Blenheim.

Green Party MP Keith Locke told a protest rally at Waihopai, near Blenheim, today that the spy station was "a cancerous cell" eroding any moves New Zealand made to become a more independent and peaceful nation.

The Greens combined their annual Picnic for the Planet with the protest demonstration at Waihopai this year, encouraged by the publicity about the station generated by disclosures earlier this week in former prime minister David Lange's papers.

Mr Locke said the Government's silence about Waihopai and the Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) which runs it had to end.

"We can't assume that our government's use of our intelligence agencies is actually in New Zealand's best security interests," he said.

"The Greens don't believe it is in New Zealand's security interests to spy on France, Japan, and the UN on behalf of the American Government - as our GCSB admitted was the case in 1986 in the report discovered in the Lange papers."

Mr Locke said the Waihopai station was built in 1988, and it was logical to suggest New Zealand had expanded its intelligence gathering in recent years.

"You don't have to be very smart to know that the US National Security Agency is the main body trawling through the millions of phone calls, faxes and emails the Waihopai dishes draw down from the two communications satellites over the Pacific equator," he said.

- NZPA