The new judge of spies

CATHERINE MASTERS investigates the man the Government found willing to step into the shoes of departed spy watchdog Laurie Greig


Justice Paul Neazor is suddenly, unexpectedly, on the line. He doesn't actually want to talk, but he thought he ought to call back. After the trouble Laurie Greig got into for talking to the media, his successor is not about to say anything silly.

He is just being polite. And no, he can't help with the request for a recent photograph.

When it is pointed out to the new 70-year-old Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security that the Weekend Herald will have to use that really old photograph from our files, the one taken during the Rainbow Warrior case when he was Solicitor-General, the one where he is smoking a pipe, wearing a big overcoat and a hat, he says: "That's good stuff, that's fine by me. Yep."

He chuckles when asked why he doesn't want a new photo taken, but says only that he is not very enthusiastic about it. It is not that the new watchdog of New Zealand's spies does not want to be recognised, he says. He is just not courting publicity.

Besides, he reckons he has not changed much "since whenever your photograph was taken".

Oh ... Do you still smoke a pipe and wear an overcoat?

"I do."

And a hat?

"I do."

Do you still take the bus?

"I do. And that's the end of the questions," he says.

And it is, almost. He tries to end the call, but the High Court judge described as honest, endearing and cheery with plenty of integrity, is too polite to simply hang up.

The family man - he has five children - is good-humoured, cheery even, but adamant he does not want to talk: "Okay? But I thought I'd ring you back anyway."

Is he sure he won't talk, just a little bit?

"No. I don't want to do it. Not about anything. No. I don't want to do it. No."

One quick question reveals he started out in law at the Public Trust Office then went to the Railways and then the Crown Law Office.

Why choose law?

"I liked to eat. That's actually the path I followed, I went from there [the Public Trust Office] to the railways, to their legal office and then I went to the Crown Law Office, Solicitor-General, Judge. That's it. Not exciting."

Asking where the Neazor name is from is pushing it a tad too far. Again, Justice Neazor answers politely, but for the last time. It is from Ireland and his family has been in New Zealand since his grandfather.

"Now look, you're doing what I said I wasn't going to do ... okay. Do your best, bye."

The name Ahmed Zaoui has not been mentioned. If it had, the conversation might have been even shorter.

Ahmed Zaoui, the Algerian politician jailed in New Zealand for more than 16 months, is the reason Justice Neazor is in this job.

He is the first person to have been issued a security-risk certificate on the basis of highly controversial secret information held by the SIS which it believes makes him a risk to the country's national security.

Justice Greig commented to The Listener and was recently forced to resign after the Auckland High Court found it might be thought he was biased against Zaoui.

It is the job of the Inspector-General to review the security-risk certificate independently.

Justice Neazor must now decide whether the certificate was properly issued and his decision, whichever way it goes, will plunge him into controversy.

If he lifts it, Zaoui will be released and can stay in New Zealand, as he has already been granted refugee status.

If Justice Neazor upholds the certificate Zaoui can be deported, although New Zealand is limited here by international conventions protecting people from being sent to countries where they will face torture and possible death.

Justice Neazor, clearly, is not about to make any unwise comments.

Those who talk about him on the record - and there are a few who don't want their names used - say you won't get much out of him.

One explains he was burned by the media 20 years ago and that was it. He just wants to do his job, not be a personality.

Sir Geoffrey Palmer reckons the High Court judge who retired but kept working and is still working is, perhaps, a workaholic.

"I don't think he'd like retirement very much."

An old friend says he is a "judicial thinker" and a "judicious thinker"; he thinks before he speaks.

Another describes him as bookish and another as never without his overcoat, the kind of man you would imagine with a packed lunch with Marmite in it. A solid sort of bloke, the type of bloke who does not have a driver's licence. There seems to be a consensus that he is a man of great integrity, an egalitarian with no airs and graces, and many say he is excellent for the job of Inspector-General.

He will bring fairness to the role, will carefully consider both sides and judge accordingly, unswayed and unflappable.

That he was once Solicitor-General, chief legal adviser to the Crown, would not lead him to taking sides with the Crown.

Paul East was National's spokesman on justice at the time of the Rainbow Warrior bombing in 1985, when Justice Neazor was Solicitor-General.

East called for a full public inquiry into the handling of the case to allay suspicions there were behind-the-scenes dealings. The French secret agents had been charged with murder but suddenly admitted to the reduced charge of manslaughter.

Sir Geoffrey Palmer, then Attorney-General, refused an inquiry, describing the request as a direct attack on Justice Neazor, QC.

But East tells the Weekend Herald he has full confidence in Justice Neazor in his new role and the call for a public inquiry was never about him.

"Any concern the Opposition was expressing back in those days was not directed at the Solicitor-General, but at the prospect of the Government negotiating with the French Government for the early release of the secret agents."

He says Justice Neazor is an exemplary judge.

Pam Davidson, the president of the Wellington District Law Society, says he is easy to talk to, not at all stuffy, as some in High Court judges could be.

"He's had years and years of sitting up on the bench, and I don't think anything will faze him. But he'll also be very aware of the sensitivity of a position like that and I'm sure he'll do exactly the right thing.

"Anyone you talk to will say he's a very, very human person."

He was, perhaps, displaying that human side in the case of Taffy Hotene, who stabbed to death and raped young journalist Kylie Jones in June, 2000, while on parole.

Hotene had been before the courts before and in 1992 stood before Neazor. He had attacked three Wanganui women and the Crown wanted preventive detention, but Justice Neazor took Hotene's youth into account: "I am going to put aside preventive detention. It is not plainly apparent that you will reoffend automatically in a sexual way ... but primarily because you are only 21 and you have only just qualified for it in terms of time."

This aside, Justice Neazor's career has been uncontroversial.

Palmer calls it "stellar". He recommended his appointment to judge and says he has proved to be superb, one of the best trial judges in the country.

"He is absolutely a straight-shooter, he's absolutely straight as a die, you'd never get a better person than him, he's absolutely, totally neutral."

He is also extremely funny, always cracking a joke, always with a smile on his face no matter the stress of the job.

"I always loved the way he dealt with the media, the media could never get anything out of him, not a word, and as Attorney-General, that suited me just fine."

Dr Andrew Ladley, director of Victoria University's Institute of Policy Studies, has followed the Ahmed Zaoui case closely and has qualms about the process, which he is far from sure balances the competing needs of security against fairness to an individual.

He is not alarmed, though, that Justice Neazor is a former Solicitor-General. He thinks it was reasonable the charges against the secret agents in the Rainbow Warrior case were reduced to manslaughter, as there was little evidence they had set out to murder someone.

Justice Neazor is a good lawyer, good judge and was a good Solicitor-General: "I have a high regard for him."

A similar verdict comes from retired High Court judge Sir John Jeffries, who has known Justice Neazor for 45 years and echoes words such as solid and honest, and adds balanced and thoughtful.

One man is concerned at the appointment.

"People spoke quite highly of Laurie Greig as well," says David Small, a Christchurch lecturer who caught two SIS agents illegally searching the house of his friend, anti-Apec activist Aziz Choudry in 1996.

In particular, he is concerned that Justice Neazor was the Solicitor-General. In that role, he would have been called on to defend the SIS, the very agency he is now called on in his new role to independently review.

Small admits he knows little about Neazor. "But I would be concerned no matter who it was, in a way, because I think the whole office is so flawed because it's isolated from the rest of the judiciary."