Police Commissioner to look into reported allegations that Aust and NZ have been spying on Fiji

Police Commissioner, Ben Groenewald said he will look into the reported allegations that Australia and New Zealand have been spying on Fiji.

Groenewald said the Police and the government will definitely be looking into this.

He also said it is premature to comment at this stage and he does not want to jump to any conclusions.

Groenewald also said that these are allegations at this stage.

Prime Minister, Voreqe Bainimarama has maintained over the years that New Zealand and Australia have been spying on Fiji.

Meanwhile the Sydney Morning Herald said the Wikileaks documents show that Australia’s top‑secret electronic espionage agency, the Australian Signals Directorate and its NZ counterpart, the Government Communications Security Bureau, spy intensively on Pacific island countries, harvesting communications from Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Nauru, Samoa, Vanuatu, Kiribati, New Caledonia, Tonga and French Polynesia.

The Australian and NZ signals intelligence agencies intercept satellite communications and under-sea telecommunications cables, and share the “full take” of telephone calls, emails, social media messages and associated metadata with each other as well as their “5-eyes” partners, the US National Security Agency and the British Government Security Communications Headquarters.

The study highlighted the importance of mobile phone networks for intelligence collection because such networks were the Fiji military’s “tactical” preference ahead of radio networks and a “poorly maintained and very limited military computer network.”

The Australian government has repeatedly refused to comment on specific disclosures from the papers leaked by Edward Snowden.

However last year Prime Minister Tony Abbott insisted that Australia would not use intelligence “to the detriment of other countries.”

According to the NZ Herald, Australia and New Zealand collaborate closely on South Pacific spying operations.

A July 2009 report said GCSB staff had provided all their information on Fijian communications to the Australian DSD’s Military Support Unit that year.

This was “to provide a Target Systems Analysis on the Command, Control and Communications of the Fijian Government.”

It also said that up until now, GCSB's major targets in the Fijian Government and the Fijian military have kept a preference for Vodafone services but they were increasingly shifting to Digicel cellphones.

The report said this strongly suggests there was a listening post in the New Zealand or Australian high commission in Suva targeting local mobile calls.

NZ Prime Minister John Key, who is also the Minister of National Security and Intelligence, has argued that the GCSB is needed to protect New Zealand from terrorism threats such as those emanating from Islamic State (ISIS).

Bainimarama has preferred not to comment.

However he has always maintained that the two countries were spying on Fiji.

He had said in earlier interviews that there were no secrets in what the government was doing after 2006 and the reforms that were implemented were necessary for the people of the country.