Risk
and Resilience: Introducing John Key’s “Free Thinkers”
Chris
Trotter
A Good idea - Or What? John Key's appointment of ten "free thinkers" to let him know what he doesn't know about national security is yet further proof of this Government's unwavering commitment to excellence in public relations.
6
November, 2014
FREE
THINKERS! Wow! How very different this National Government is from
its predecessors. Can anybody imagine Rob Muldoon appointing a group
of “free thinkers” to help him identify the potential security
risks confronting New Zealand in the 1980s? Crikey! Imagine what a
group of “free thinkers” might have been able to do in relation
to the Springbok Tour of 1981. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it
again: this is a National Government like no other!
So,
who are these free thinking New Zealanders? And what mix of talent
and experience has Prime Minister Key assembled among the ten members
of his new Strategic Risk and Resilience Panel (SRRP). If the Panel’s
main function is to “imagine the unimaginable” and to inform the
Government of all the things that it doesn’t know it doesn’t
know, then let’s take a look at what they bring to the table?
Let’s
start at the top with Ian Fletcher, currently the head of the
Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB). I must confess that
the man responsible for maintaining the security of government
communications would not have been my first choice in the free
thinking stakes. Indeed, the less free such a person is with his
thoughts about such matters the better – I would have thought.
But, maybe the PM knows something about Mr Fletcher’s job that the rest of have yet to be old?
But, maybe the PM knows something about Mr Fletcher’s job that the rest of have yet to be old?
Then
there’s Sir Peter Gluckman, the Prime Minister’s Science Advisor.
This looks like a better choice – although Sir Peter’s
association with what some are calling an exercise in muzzling the
Government’s scientist critics – people like Mike Joy – does
rather militate against freedom of thought. Doesn’t it?
What
about Therese Walsh? Well, as the Chief Executive of the 2015 Cricket
World Cup, she clearly knows a great deal about the organisation of
sports fixtures. Exactly how that knowledge might usefully contribute
to “imagining the unimaginable” isn’t immediately obvious.
Perhaps she’s learned the knack of envisaging what the rest of us
simply can’t imagine: a consistently good New Zealand cricket team!
That really would be a boost to our national security!
Karen
Poutasi, head of the NZ Qualifications Authority, was obviously
chosen to improve the quality of the nation’s spies. Who could
question her ability to imagine a new and improved iteration of the
New Zealand SIS agent? One whose culinary sights are set slightly
higher than the ordinary meat pie, and for whom the contents of
Penthouse magazine holds not the slightest interest.
And
who better than Keith Turner, the chairman of Fisher & Paykel, to
anticipate the dastardly plans of Islamic State engineers to adapt
the electronics of his firm’s washing machines to some devastating
new purpose? The potential threat to the nation’s delicates and
coloureds is huge. We could be facing terror in every laundry; mayhem
on every clothesline! Isis meets Elba is just too awful to
contemplate.
Now,
as everybody who watches Boardwalk Empire knows, when Al Capone was
eventually brought down it was not by a Thompson sub-machine gun, but
by the ineluctable laws of double-entry book-keeping. In this
respect, panel member, Richard Forgan, from the global accounting
firm PWC, clearly has much to contribute. Perhaps he’ll be able to
have the Islamic State arrested for tax evasion?
Hugh
Cowan sits on the Earthquake Commission. When it comes to imagining
everything that can possibly go wrong, he’s a good man to have
around. Hugh knows, from bitter experience, that what the government
(and the rest of us) don’t know can be, quite literally,
earth-shattering.
Lieutenant-General
Rhys Jones, the former head of the NZ Defence Force, is already very
good at imagining the unimaginable. He was, after all, able to
imagine that New Zealand’s award-winning war correspondent, Jon
Stephenson, might be foolish enough to jeopardise his international
reputation by claiming he had been somewhere he hadn’t, and met
someone he didn’t. That Lt-General Jones wasn’t able to go on
imagining such nonsense indefinitely might be considered a weakness.
But at least he has proved that imagining things that never happened
is a crucial element of the NZDF’s skill-set – one that
Lt-General Jones is now very well placed to pass on to his colleagues
on the SRRP.
Helen
Anderson is a director of Niwa, Branz and DNZ. In a world as
festooned with abbreviations and acronyms as the “intelligence
community” she should fit right in. Keeping one’s thinking free
of unnecessary words and phrases can only improve the SRRP’s (which
Ms Anderson must surely be referring to already as “Syrup's”?)
overall effectiveness and efficiency.
Speaking
of which, one can only applaud John Key’s appointment of
Productivity Commission chairman, Murray Sherwin to Syrup’s
distinguished membership. Ensuring that New Zealand gets more
national security ‘bangs’ for its Treasury ‘bucks’ can only
be a good thing. Can’t it?
So,
there you have it. The Prime Minister’s free-thinking panel. Those
of you who are disappointed that the SRRP does not include people
like ‘New Zealander of the Year’, Dame Anne Salmond;
investigative journalist, Nicky Hager; former Court of Appeal
Justice, Sir Edmund Thomas; TPPA opponent, Professor Jane Kelsey; or
that other tireless campaigner for our national sovereignty, CAFCA's
Murray Horton; must understand that when John Key talks about “free
thinkers”, he is not talking about those thinkers determined to
keep us free.
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