Dear New Zealand Defence Force,

We request the following information for the purpose of participating in the Royal Commission inquiry into the attack on Christchurch Mosques.

Relevant Operative Mentions
1. Copies of NZDF documents, correspondences and addresses (including but not limited to emails, letters, presentations), for periods A, B, C and D, referring to any of the following terms:
a. Arab / Muslim / Islam / Islamist / Islamicist / Jihadist /
b. Terrorists / Extremists / Radical / Far-right / White supremacy

Training
2. What professional cultural advice or training or resources has the NZDF requested or received on Islam or Muslims for periods A, B, C and D?

3. Do all of your staff receive comprehensive cultural intelligence and full competency training and review?

4. Was the counter-terrorism squad trained to deal with a shooter at a place of worship?

5. Did the counter-terrorism squad have any training in how to respond to a mass shooter at a Mosque?

Intelligence Principles
5. What proven intelligence principles is your work based on?

Cultural Advisors
6. Who is the NZDF’s on-hand cultural advisor/negotiator/facilitator for:
a. On-going strategy
b. Emergency Situations

Diversity
7. What is the ethnic cultural composition over the periods A, B, C and D of your
a. senior management
b. senior operational staff

8. What diverse perspectives have been embraced and resulted in reform of organisational culture that promotes diverse experiences and perspectives?

We request information for the following time periods:
Period A: October 2017 – present
Period B: November 2008 – October 2017
Period C: December 1999 – November 2008
Period D: November 1990 – November 1999

For the requests that ask for information from Periods A, B, C and D please note we do not require that all the information come through at once.
We request in order of this priority: Period A, then B, then C and finally period D.
Word-specific requests: please include variant spellings for these. E.g. For a request pertaining to “Muslim”, please include variants such as “Moslem”.

We appreciate that our requests are extensive. However, they are not disproportionate to the significance of the matters we are engaging in with the Royal Commission.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours faithfully,
Mahrukh Sarwar

Dear NZDF/A.J. Wood,

Thank you for your response to my OIA requests. Please find relevant comments and clarifications below.

Firstly, we would like to express our disappointment with your lack of engagement with our requests. You have provided very little information when compared with the information provided by other agencies. For several of our questions you have either refused because the response requires collation or have enclosed earlier responses that have little or no relevance to what we have requested for. We would like to highlight that the requests have been made in the context of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch Mosque Attacks. The need for this information has been further emphasised by a soldier of the New Zealand Defence Force with far-right ties who was recently arrested at Linton Military Camp(1). The public must know what operations, processes and training NZDF has in place to ensure that other members of the NZDF do not pose the same danger of having far-right views, military training and access to firing weapons.

Secondly, as a general question, we ask how the NZDF distinguishes information they would rather not disclose for public relation reasons (both domestically and through foreign relations), and information that is genuinely going to prejudice defence and security of New Zealand. We have noted that in several instances, information has been withheld under section 6 of the Act without any compilation, disclosure or analysis of the information and without providing details for why information is theoretically prejudicial. Under section 19(a)(ii) of the Official Information Act, we are entitled to ask for the grounds in support of the reason for refusal. The High Court has stated that the test in section 6(a) requires evidence (Kelsey v Minister of Trade [2016] 2 NZLR).

Please find comments on your response to each question below. All of the specific responses we have provided below, while arising in the context of individual requests, apply to the requests as a whole.

Question 1
Premature refusal
This information has been withheld under section 18(f) of the OIA. Under sections 18A and 18B of the Official Information Act, you were required to consider whether the reason for your refusal can be removed either by consultation, fixing a charge or extending the time period for a response.Your response simply states that you think an extension of the timeframe would not enable the NZDF to provide a response. We note that failing to follow the steps in sections 18A and 18B of the Act was held by the High Court as unlawful (Kelsey v Minister of Trade).

You have not made any effort to make this information available through avenues set by Parliament. This clearly goes against Parliament’s intent in ensuring ensure agencies engage with the requests before they refuse them under section 18(f).

Context
We note both the historic significance of the Christchurch events and of the need for an initial comprehensive investigation which the Royal Commission and civil society organisations are currently undertaking. Your agency is a primary agency in this regard and we expected from public agencies with your status that the priority of this issue is self-evident, as it is to everyone at large. The question asked would be of interest to numerous legal and other processes in the coming period in response to the attacks. The context of this request would appear to outweigh even substantial inconvenience to your agency.

Period of Requests
We have divided up the requests into four periods for two reasons. Firstly, these periods are relevant as they correspond to significant domestic and international events. Secondly, these periods provided are consistent with the different governance terms in New Zealand. We believe the NZDF and other agencies ought to keep a record of information in accordance with governance terms. This is because these agencies are required to pass on information to incoming Ministers, evident in NZDF’s operational processes (2).

Timely Collation
We understand that our requests may take time to collate. We request that the information still be collated as soon as possible so as to inform the current surge of public resources already going into inquiring into these matters. Your agency’s cost will pale into insignificance in comparison.

We still request this information even if you gather this information very slowly for some extremely extenuating reason beyond the submission date for the Royal Commission Inquiry. This is because, as noted above, the information will also be helpful for researchers and academics.

Practical approaches to genuinely considering this request may include focusing on the order of priority that we have provided and providing us with staggered responses. If needed, your agency can prioritise certain searches as well. You can decide which searches you consider less inconvenient to take on first as per NZDF’s operation processors or resource use etc. We request that you keep us updated on your process.

Accordingly, we are disappointed with the lack of helpfulness of your responses to our requests and your dismissiveness without engaging in any of the clearly stipulated legal processes on such an important matter of public safety and significance.

Questions 2 and 3

Enclosures
We have had a look at the earlier requests enclosed in in your response. We would like to point out that Enclosure Three does not specifically address training regarding Muslims and Islam. It also does not go into detail regarding cultural training and full competency. This is the information specifically asked for in our request.

Furthermore, Enclosure One includes 3 enclosures but you have only made one of these enclosures available to us which is the “Front Line Report”. Please provide the training script and presentation for the “Religions in the South Pacific.”

Follow Up Question
Further to this, what sort of cultural and full competency training is currently being undertaken by the NZDF to ensure no further incidents occur to ensure soldiers do not hold far-right views?

Premature Refusal
You have withheld information that falls within the scope of our request but is not covered by the earlier requests enclosed due to “significant research and collation effort that would be required.” Under sections 18A and 18B of the Official Information Act, you were required to consider whether the reason for your refusal can be removed either by consultation, fixing a charge or extending the time period for a response.Your response simply states that you think an extension of the timeframe would not enable the GCSB to provide a response. Failing to follow the steps in sections 18A and 18B of the Act means you have acted unlawfully (Kelsey v Minister of Trade).

You have not made any effort to make this information available through avenues set by Parliament. This clearly goes against Parliament’s intent in ensuring ensure agencies engage with the requests before they refuse them under section 18(f). This is further highlighted by the fact you have simply attached earlier responses that do not answer the question, instead of engaging with the request.
The NZDF simply refusing to disclose information on the basis of having to research and collate information is an impediment to the OIA process. There is no way for the Muslim community, and the wider community, to engage with the Royal Commission process if key agencies like the NZDF can simply refuse to provide information whenever the questions may be incovenient or require some effort.

Context
As noted above, we do not believe refusing under section 18(f) is appropriate in the circumstances given the significance of the events. The time and resources put towards collation can only be deemed appropriate in the context of what has happened.

Capability of collating
We would also like to highlight that you have already provided some information to others seeking official information and then attached those responses. This only highlights to us the capability of NZDF to provide us answers that directly address our questions (as you have done so for others in the past). We would appreciate if the NZDF responds to our requests rather than attaching earlier responses that fail to answer our questions.

Question 4 and 5
Premature refusal
You have not provided, with sufficient particularity, the nature of the prejudice effect. You have not given any reason for your refusal to provide information beyond citing section 6(a). Please provide further information about why the capability and training of D Squadron (Commando) is prejudicial under s 6(a) of the OIA. Under section 19(a)(ii) we are entitled to ask for grounds in support of your reason for refusal.

Further, you have not engaged with the information to determine what information can be released and what information is actually likely to prejudice the security and defence of New Zealand. Refusing to engage with each piece of information is analogous to the “blanket” approach taken by the Minister in Kelsey, which was held to be unlawful. This approach taken by the NZDF is not in accordance with the text, scheme and purposes of the Act.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours Sincerely,
Mahrukh Sarwar

Endnotes:
(1) https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/1...
(2) https://www.beehive.govt.nz/sites/defaul...