Vetter-in-Chief: Rebecca Kitteridge has a legitimate role in identifying potentially dangerous vulnerabilities, such as drug and alcohol addiction, in candidates for senior roles in the civil service. Where the SIS veers away from legitimate "vetting", however, is in its role as the state's ideological gatekeeper. When it comes to senior civil service positions, it is still very much a case of "anti-capitalists need not apply".
THAT THE SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE (SIS) has failed to
protect the privacy of the people it has “vetted” is no surprise. Information
is power, and what is the SIS if not the official gatherer of the information
needed to keep the core institutions of the state secure? It will take more than criticism
from the Inspector-General of Intelligence to persuade the SIS to give up its
role of keeping potential security threats as far away from the
Government’s doors as possible.
Ideally, the whole notion of security vetting would be
insupportable in a nation whose laws prohibit discrimination on the grounds of
political belief. The persistence of the practice offers proof that Capitalism is still ready, willing and able to defend itself.
If you’re one of those who find it difficult to accept that
our civil service is dedicated to the preservation of the capitalist status
quo, then try this thought experiment.
A left-wing coalition government is elected on a platform of
enacting root-and-branch reform of New Zealand’s economic system. The new
government’s overall goal is the eradication of social inequality through
radical changes to the prevailing fiscal and workplace regimes. The government
announces that a major purge of the civil service will be necessary for its
reforms to succeed. Accordingly, all present and prospective members of the
senior echelons of the civil service are required to submit themselves to a
comprehensive vetting process.
Senior bureaucrats found to have strong
neoliberal sympathies are dismissed from their positions immediately.
Neoliberals seeking employment in the reformed civil service are weeded out as real, or potential, threats to New Zealand’s national security. By the end of the purge, scores of
civil servants have been advised that, having failed the SIS’s vetting
procedure, their services are no longer required.
Now imagine the outrage that such an exercise would
precipitate. Newspaper editors would thunder their disapproval. Leading law
firms would announce their intention of challenging the purge in court. Civil
rights advocates would prepare to stage protest demonstrations against the
Government’s “Blue Scare” tactics. All of the defence mechanisms of capitalist
society would be mobilised to ensure that the system’s ideological guardians
remained in place.
Clearly, it would be next to impossible to purge a
capitalist society like ours of its official defenders without being accused of
abandoning democracy itself. And yet, we tell ourselves that democracy
remains unimpaired in a country which actively discriminates against those who
threaten to bring anti-capitalist ideas into the upper-echelons of the state
bureaucracy. Why do so many of us simply accept that the SIS, having subjected
such individuals to the most rigorous vetting, is justified in recommending
they not be appointed to senior civil service posts?
That question was much easier to answer during the Cold War.
(1946-1991) Back then it was entirely possible that state servants harbouring
strong sympathies for the cause of International Communism and/or the Soviet Union
might feel moved to pass on sensitive political and economic information to
their ideological soul-mates. The national security implications of appointing
such persons to sensitive positions could not (and were not) ignored.
National security concerns were also raised in regard to
civil servants’ sexual orientation. While homosexuality remained legally,
morally and socially unacceptable, gay civil servants were acutely vulnerable
to blackmail.
In the twenty-first century, addictions to prohibited
substances and/or alcohol can make state employees similarly biddable. It
is, therefore, difficult to argue against some effort being made to uncover
such vulnerabilities prior to appointing someone to a position where nationally
important and highly confidential information is regularly circulated and
discussed.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the decriminalisation
of homosexuality has, however, removed the most obvious justifications for SIS
vetting. The background checks undertaken by today’s security personnel should,
accordingly, be restricted to identifying drug and alcohol abuse.
Discrimination based upon a civil service job candidate’s political beliefs is,
surely, be a thing of the past?
Don’t you believe it.
Today’s civil service, and most of our society generally,
functions in an environment of aggressively enforced ideological orthodoxy.
Neoliberalism is, without doubt, the most pervasive and effectively defended
ideology in human history. Not to be a neoliberal in the early twenty-first
century, especially in the upper echelons of the dominant public and private
bureaucracies, is to risk career death. To openly espouse ideas hostile to
neoliberalism is to make that career death certain.
The SIS stands as the last line of defence against the
occasional incompetence of those specialist recruiting agencies entrusted with
delivering short-lists of acceptable candidates for senior positions in the
civil service. Personality tests, CV checks and exhaustive interviews with
referees can usually be relied upon to filter out all the ideologically
inappropriate applicants. Should the commercial gate-keepers prove derelict in
their duties, however, Rebecca Kitteridge and her team of “vets” stand ready to
protect the key institutions of the capitalist state from the deadly virus of
dissent.
This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Saturday, 9 April 2016.
