What the hell is going on with the SIS and IGSI?

Today in Question Time Winston Peters continued his excavation of the SIS's 2012 raids on the Fijian Democracy Movement - and in the process uncovered serious problems within either the SIS or their patsy Inspector-General. According to Peters (and he tabled the documentation to prove it), one of the targets of the raids, former Fijian Cabinet Minister Rajesh Singh, complained to the Ombudsman about his treatment. In accordance with section 17C of the Ombudsman's Act, the Ombudsman forwarded the complaint on to the Inspector-General of Security and Intelligence back in July. The problem? Key stood up in the House today and told us all that no complaint had been received.

There are two possible explanations for this. One is that the Inspector-General has ignored or mislaid a complaint passed on by the Ombudsman's Office. The other is that the SIS muppets lied to their Minister in an effort to make the problem go away. Neither is a very comforting explanation, suggesting either that the intelligence "oversight" system is fundamentally broken, or that the SIS is unwilling to accept its jurisdiction (or that of their Minister to oversee them). We have here a potentially very serious breach of human rights - an illegal detention without any statutory authority. And that deserves a proper investigation, not the usual SIS/IGSI whitewash.