The Labour Party has accused the Government of deciding to send troops to Iraq on the basis of superficial advice, Radio New Zealand reports.
Its foreign affairs spokesperson David Shearer said advice provided to Prime Minister John Key about the emergence of Islamic State in Iraq failed to cover all the factors responsible.
The advice from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet's Security and Intelligence Group was obtained by Radio New Zealand under the Official Information Act. However, the reports have been heavily censored and other reports withheld.
David Shearer said he could not understand why so much of the advice had been withheld.
“We've got a document which is supposedly unclassified yet there's page after page after page which is completely blank and it seems to me that's, that's ridiculous and begs the question: one, whether there's something to hide or two, their analysis is so, is so weak that they didn't want to release it,” he said.
“Some of the redacted parts might have more in-depth analysis but on the basis of what I've read it is a very superficial analysis on which we have based the decision to deploy troops.”
Green Party international affairs spokesperson Kennedy Graham is added that the Prime Minister should have released more of the advice he had received.
“They do simply become descriptive of the rise of ISIL (Islamic State) in 2014 and to the extent they have any analysis it's simply to blame it all on the Iraqi Prime Minister and if that's all the assessments that have been done I think the advice to Prime Minister John Key is dangerously skewed.”
