Editorial: Waihopai trio's logic of the righteous

OPINION: The Waihopai spybase is part of the price that New Zealand pays for a society free and safe enough to allow Father Peter Murnane, Adrian Leason and Sam Land to act on their beliefs.

Electronic eavesdropping is an unpleasant necessity in the 21st century. New Zealand and New Zealanders are part of a world where there are terrorists who have no compunction about murdering the innocent in pursuit of their goals.

Intelligence gathering is a key part of the strategy for combating that, and those who decry installations such as Waihopai are yet to come up with an alternative.

No-one can be certain about the work carried out at Waihopai, except for the intelligence officials and – presumably – some of their political masters. Its opponents make much of the fact it is part of a United States-led network that includes Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom as well as New Zealand, and argue that helping the US Government in that way is wrong. That is naive. New Zealand cannot expect to use intelligence gathered by others to protect its citizens if it does not contribute itself.

There are ironies and curiosities in statements made by the trio. Their successful defence – which may yet be appealed against – to charges of burglary and wilful damage at the base was based on convincing a jury of their genuine belief that the base caused human suffering and that therefore shutting it down, if only temporarily, was legally justified. Mr Leason explained it by saying the group "broke a law protecting plastic to uphold a law to protect human life".

The irony is that such an argument rests on the same sort of confident certainty that convinced former United States president George W Bush and former British prime minister Tony Blair that they were right to go to war against Iraq, convinced as they were of a grave danger to the world from weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Leason was asked whether he considered that New Zealand soldiers then in Afghanistan had been put at risk by his actions. He responded by suggesting that, if the soldiers were rebuilding bridges and schools, as the Government had said, then the risk was minimal.

In reality, his assessment of the risk to New Zealand soldiers' lives could be mistaken, just as Mr Blair and Mr Bush were mistaken about the weapons of mass destruction.

The curiosity is Father Murnane's comment outside the court that "we have shown New Zealanders there is a US spybase in our midst". It is no great secret that there is a base at Waihopai, and nor is there a swell of public opinion against it, though it is a regular target for protesters. A nearby winery even operates under the name Spy Valley, explaining on its website that the brand "is derived from the presence of a satellite communications monitoring station (spybase) nearby, part of the Echelon Global Network".

The truth is that New Zealanders know the base is there, and most accept that it needs to be.

- © Fairfax NZ News