A year after Solid Energy was clearly instructed by the government to cease its anti-democratic activities of infiltrating and spying on environmental protest groups, their preferred "security contractor", Thompson and Clark Investigations, is again trying to recruit spies in the Save Happy Valley Campaign. It could all be a coincidence - TCIL could have another client who wants to spy on this group - but given that Solid Energy is pretty much their only target, I doubt it.
Fortunately, Solid Energy is still subject to the OIA. And they can be the subject of Parliamentary questions. And I expect there'll be a lot of queries using both, to find out whether they're working with TCIL again, or whether they're merely receiving information from them, having used some industry group as a cutout to front their anti-democratic spying campaign. But if it turns out they've been doing anything of the sort, there can be only one solution: the CEO has to go. He's been warned once about contravening the State-Owned Enterprises Act's requirement of social responsibility, and if he's unwilling to comply with the law and clear instructions by the shareholding minister, then he is unfit for the job.
