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Salient: Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Vol. 32, No. 12. 1969.

Bill will ensure Director safe

Bill will ensure Director safe

"If the Security Intelligence Bill is passed, the Director-General of Security will be more secure in his position than the Chief Justice", a Teach-in on security was told last Sunday by Wellington lawyer Nigel Taylor.

The Teach-in, sponsored by Political Action Co-ordinating Group, attracted more than 170 people.

Attention was focussed on the Security Intelligence Bill now before Parliament and the need for change in it before it became law.

Both Mr Scott and Mr Palmer attacked the bill for setting up a service to investigate certain kinds of activity not legally criminal, and defined with extreme vagueness. They asked for its activities to be defined in terms of the suppression.

Teachers-in were Associate Professor W. Murphy, W. J. Scott, Dr. G. R. Palmer, Rod Alley, Nigel Taylor and Hector MacNeill as well as activists Roger Boshier and Alister Taylor.

The Labour Party was represented by Mr D. Foy, the president of the Wellington Labour Representation Council, and the Communist and Socialist Unity parties, by George Goddard and Ken Dougflas, giving a 'victim's-eye view' of security of two Russian diplomats from NZ in 1962 as perhaps hoped by the Russians to increase CIA suspicions of the effectiveness of New Zealand security.

Links between New Zealand and South African security, in relation to protesters against sports tours of South African were scored by Roger Boshier.

He and Alister Taylor listed most of the known or rumoured stories about security's early history of legally criminal behaviour alone and for provisions for the right of appeal against irresponsible use of Security information.

Roderic Alley argued that Security was set up on a reorganised basis in 1956, as a consequence of New Zealand's participation in Seato, and quoted statements by various Prime Ministers on the need to protect 'Secret information' in the same way as states allied to New Zealand.

Security maintained direct relations with the CIA, he claimed.

Associate Professor Murphy saw Australian Security — the Act establishing a Security Service which was practically paraphrased in the current New Zealand Bill — as effective in preventing Russian espionage, especially in inspiring Petrous defection though not so effective in preventing extra-legal activities by extreme right Croatian organisations.

The need for an appeal system in Australia seemed proved by incidents such as the Gluckman case, Professor Murphy suggested.

Compared with Soviet and Nazi secret police operations he thought Australian security was posing very litlte danger to political freedom.

Nigel Taylor's remark that "where people are gathered together in the name of free speech, there you will find a security officer." summed up the feeling of the Teach-in— the feeling that Security was an unwelcome intruder in New Zealand's political life.