Police advised a planned new extremist alert system - now scrapped, was needed to help identify or avert potential security threats, as well as to connect the dots and analyse what they were seeing. Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
Police warned their Minister that ditching an extremist alert system risked leaving them and security agencies unable to prevent a terrorist act.
"Current systemic vulnerabilities of agency information silos and inability to 'join the dots' will remain," police told Mark Mitchell in February.
But a few months later, the government pulled the plug on setting up a $40m public reporting system, though this was at odds with the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the mosque attacks.
Budget 2024 had not given it any money.
Ministers told the public that existing reporting systems were sufficient.
But several months before that, police had told Mitchell they were not sufficient.
"Existing reporting channels (such as Police's 105 line) do not address the current systemic vulnerabilities of agency information silos, which means agencies cannot easily 'join the dots'," they said told him in April.
If a new system was not set up, then the "inability to 'join the dots' will remain".
"Police prefers discontinuing work rather than continuing to progress with the risk of no guaranteed funding," police had told Mitchell, saying they had got $13m from the previous government, but this was not enough.
This is revealed in briefings newly released by police.
Muslim and other communities had told them that without a system, people might not report disturbing or extreme behaviour, "leaving agencies unaware and unable to intervene to prevent an act of terrorism or violent extremism".
The government in August told the public the work was not going ahead because existing threat reporting channels were sufficient, and the investment would be reprioritised.
However, a $1.5m police business case in August 2023 concluded the new system would plug two particular holes:
"Agencies are not getting enough information from the public early enough for them to identify or avert potential threats."
And, "Information may not be joined up or analysed in time for threats to be identified before they materialise."
The government had also said the police would embed the work into their routine "business as usual".
But police had already told Ministers they were under far too much financial pressure to do that, facing a $180m deficit (Budget 2024 later gave them $120m towards that).
"Police cannot progress this work as business as usual (BAU) or within current baseline funding," the agency told Mitchell.
The Federation of Islamic Associations (FIANZ) called it a "hollow promise" that police would pick this up as routine business.
Abdur Razzaq, of the Federation of Islamic Associations Photo: Supplied
"By making such a hollow promise and not being upfront, I think the Minister [in charge of the mosque inquiry response, Judith Collins] was being disrespectful and, much more serious, is that she is taking away yet another key pillar of the Royal Commission recommendation to keep NZ safe," said FIANZ chair of the response to the inquiry, Abdur Razzaq, in an email to RNZ.
Collins declined to comment.
RNZ approached Mitchell for comment.
The police advice to Mitchell followed months of work and screeds of planning.
The Commission had envisaged the system being set up by December 2021 - it saw it as "critical to ensuring New Zealand's national security system is trusted and works for the communities it serves".
But the go-ahead and funding, on top of $13m already assigned to the public reporting system, was deferred by the previous Cabinet in August 2023, till after the election.
By February, the current government had told agencies it would wrap up all the mosque attack recommendations by June, and moved to leave eight of the 44 recommendations undone.
Police warned: "Discontinuing the response to Recommendation 12 will likely be significantly frustrating and concerning for impacted communities who consider a safe and
accessible reporting system is a priority.
"Discontinuing the response will also limit an opportunity to improve how agencies manage and share reports and respond to threats."
The police business case had rejected a "do-nothing" minimal approach, noting it "does not provide any functional improvements to the existing national security framework".
"The proposed investment will significantly improve the way that agencies manage information from public reports, by supporting intelligence discovery to 'join the dots'," a Cabinet briefing said.
Police assessed several options, then opted for a "balanced" and costly one, with a lot of back-office capacity to cut down the chances of a "crucial lead" being missed.
On the flip-side, the system risked collecting too much information, say, from vexatious reports from members of the public, making targets of certain groups; compounded by information being passed up the tree to the spy agencies to hold on to "indefinitely".
The briefings show the Privacy Commissioner cautioned in 2023 that there were "significant" privacy risks that had not been sufficiently dealt with.
Nonetheless, police expressed confidence this would be ironed out as they pressed on.
They had narrowed down what behaviour would meet a threshold to retain or even act on a report: Including the obvious, of actual assaults, through to the much more nebulous behaviour from "individuals with a hostile worldview (e.g. 'us versus them') who make dehumanising or violent statements against 'others' whom they perceive as 'the enemy'. … that normalises the use of threatening or violent behaviour as a 'legitimate' course of action".
They would design a "rigourous" system to counter any over-reach, such as if Māori or other communities were reported on too much, police said.
Police anticipated that 80 percent of calls would be non-starters, but that in 10 percent of cases they would investigate and might pass a report to the SIS, which would retain it under the Intelligence and Security Act - "so that agencies can better 'join the dots' to prevent and respond to emerging national security threats".
Some other improvements to the national security framework have been made since 2020, but several crucial changes recommended by the commission fell by the wayside.
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