Former Labour PM disagrees on party call for Dotcom inquiry but predict big damages claim
Former Labour Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer does not support the party’s call for an inquiry into the GCSB affair.
Speaking this weekend on TV3’s The Nation programme at the weekend, Sir Geoffrey said “you have to be very careful about this.” He said the GCSB was an intelligence agency.
“You can't have an open inquiry like a commission of inquiry with evidence in public about that, because these agencies will cease to be any use if their secrecy is not preserved.
“They can be held to account in the courts and no doubt they will be in relation to what happened here. No doubt there will be civil legal actions and possible criminal proceedings brought as a result of what happened here."
Big damage claim ahead
Asked if he thought Kim Dotcom would bring a civil action for damages, Sir Geoffrey replied:
"Yes, actions for damages, because what has happened here is clearly a serious breach of privacy at the very least, and that is now a tort in New Zealand, a civil wrong, for which you can get damages.
"It seems to be that there will be quite large legal proceedings that follow from all of this. Mr Dotcom is the stuff out of which leading cases are made."
Regardless, he had a lot of good words for the GCSB.
“This agency can be very helpful for a lot of things that the New Zealand government does,” he said.“When in 1976 there was a difficulty with the Security Intelligence Service, the Chief Ombudsman was asked to conduct an inquiry into that, and he did so, and that is a possible way of conducting an inquiry if that was desired.”
Sir Geoffrey said the GCSB had been helpful to him when he was prime minister and had provide him with catch details of fishing boats in the Pacific when he was campaigning at the United Nations against drift net fishing in 1989.
The GSCB intercepted fishing boat captains' reports home on what they actually caught, which helped Sir Geoffrey in negotiations.
Watch Sir Geoffrey's full interview on The Nation here; his full Q+A interview here.
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Comments and questions12
says the man who was prime minister for 6 weeks before he was ousted please give me a break . mr palmer is a nice man no doubt but he is the establishment at the end of the day they are mr palmers golden goose so to speak .
Labour should be very worried - any inquiry will go deep and a long way back. All pollies will be terrified of all sorts of exposures.
Im in full support of an enquirey and in full support of Dotcom.
None of this should have ever happened and the man has lost a year of his life / income as a result.
Dotcom is owed millions and millions of Dollars in compensation, I just hope that he uses a fair amount of the money to be put back into the community, places where the government seems to fail to do so.
Sir Geoffrey Palmer is a man I take seriously on matters of constitutional law - he is a well established international expert.
I think that where we have a 'victim' with the resources of Kim Dotcom, we can have comfort in his ability to access justice as he sees fit. Privately taken tort action in a civil suit is far more appropriate in this scenario than allocating millions in government resources.
the point sir Geoffrey seems to have overlooked is that Mr dotcom has significant resources and a solid legal team. Would an ordinary citizen have the resource and therefore ability to bring this all to light? I think not and I have little faith in the backroom oversight when the smoke screen of national interest is so easily ignited.
No matter what Sir Palmer might utter in his dotage I cannot read much of this without the constant nag that he was a party to throwing out all those wonderful old fashioned albeit, but useful laws tested in courts over hundreds of years such as drunk in public etc that we desperately need again and gave plod ability to be proactive.
Incompetence, lies, and a culture which appears to believe that it is above the law seem to be hallmarks of the top police officials, the GCSB, and ultimately, this government. It is time for a massive restructuring of attitudes and personnel in all three groups.
Sadly ALL governments. This is only the tip of the iceberg.
The leaked IFPI report from Hollywood prove Dotcoms innocents. He should be reimbursed. The IFPI report shows the World's largest file hoster Megaupload hosted insignificant percentage of infringing links, 5 other United States companies still exist and yet they didn't get raided? why?
i support an independent inquiry.
Any enquiry is going to expose every politician and PM NZ ever had. There are so many skeletons it will be better than watching the most far-fetched TV drama. Bring it on. Labour needs to be careful, as does Winston, as all the dirty washing will come out related to them too. Bring it on, TV news is so boring, will make a very exciting change! We'll all be on the edge of our seats.
Agree.
Remember Margaret Wilson? She appears to have done the most damage.
This PC lot.
Megaload was valued at US$1 Billion before this happened
Any claims if not extradited are going to be significant to say the least