The government is batting away suggestions the FBI's new office in Wellington aims to counter China, despite that claim being made by the agency's director.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation director Kash Patel - a Trump appointee - on Thursday announced the opening of a new dedicated attaché office in the capital.
An official statement was accompanied by a video, in which Patel said the issues New Zealand and the US worked on together were "some of the most important global issues of our times".
Top of the list of those issues was: "countering the CCP (Chinese Communist Party)" in the Indo-Pacific region. Other issues included countering narcotics trade, cyberintrusion and ransomware and protecting citizens across the world.
FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson also told the Daily Mail the opening was a "historic step" in strengthening the working relationship with New Zealand including to "confront the growing threats of our time emanating from the Indo-Pacific - particularly from hostile nation-state actors like the Chinese Communist Party".
Patel told the newspaper the FBI had "a strong relationship and collaborated closely with our counterparts in New Zealand for years".
He was first spotted at the Beehive on Wednesday, and the statement confirmed he had met with the Minister Responsible for the spy agencies GCSB and NZSIS Judith Collins, Police Minister Mark Mitchell, and Foreign Minister Winston Peters.
FBI director Kash Patel at the announcement of the standalone FBI office in Wellington. Photo: OLA THORSEN
Collins not expecting 'any response at all' from China
Collins said it was an "excellent" meeting with "a lot of good discussion around the need for the FBI and our intelligence agencies, as well as police, to work even more closely together".
"The upgrade of the FBI presence here into an office that reports through to Washington DC, not through to Canberra, has got to be a good thing ... we were the only one of the Five Eyes partners that did not have an FBI office here - we had people, but not a full office.
"You know, we just love being in our own office."
Collins said New Zealand was "fortunate to be part of Five Eyes" given it had a population the size of Alabama: "we cannot do everything by ourselves".
She pushed back on suggestions the office was a response to China's influence, saying it was "about the transnational crime that we see, the increasing influence of major drug traffickers across the Pacific, but also interference in countries' systems - particularly when I look at some of the gun-running sort of type behaviour that we know goes on the Pacific from transnational and global criminal outfits".
When it was pointed out Patel himself had referred to China, Collins said: "well, I don't respond to other people's press releases".
"That's up to him, he doesn't answer to me," she said.
Collins said the US was "very focused on fentanyl" and knew New Zealand was focused on disrupting methamphetamine trade.
"We know that we do have international criminals ... let's just understand that our security agency is also involved in this. We're not going to single out any particular country."
When pressed on China's warships being sent near New Zealand waters, and launching intercontinental ballistic missiles into the Pacific, she said the FBI was "focused on parts of that but not all of that - I mean, obviously it's not Defence ... the point is that it's a US decision and we're happy to support it".
She did not expect "any response at all" from China to the news.
"This is our country, our sovereign right to do what we do."
The secrecy around Patel's travel to New Zealand was for security reasons, she said: "the US, actually, they've made their own arrangements and so consequently we've obviously respected that".
From left Police Minister Mark Mitchell and Minister Responsible for the GSCB and NZSIS Judith Collins with FBI director Kash Patel at the opening ceremony for a dedicated FBI law enforcement attaché office in Wellington. Photo: OLA THORSEN
Peters rejects 'narrative' around China
Winston Peters said the new office was "a really serious utility added to our crime fighting capacity in the Pacific, and crime and drug dealing and narcotics is an awful scourge, and we've got to get on top of it, so it's great news".
He said the subject of China had not been raised in their meeting.
"We never raised that issue, we talked about the Pacific, what we could do to improve the law and order situation, the great concern that Pacific countries had and that they needed help, and that we need to be part of the solution."
Peters pushed back when asked how China might view it: "No, no, look, we're not going to run to your narrative, that's a waste of our time."
He said his 40-minute meeting with Patel on Wednesday took place at "about the same time as the tsunami warning went off", which the FBI director heard.
"We all did, but then he realized that when I told him we are a country that put 70 DART bouys throughout the whole of Pacific to give us all the alerts in the world."
'I like him' - Mitchell
Mark Mitchell said that as well as meeting with Patel alongside the other ministers, he had also spoken with the director privately.
"I like him, yeah. He's very down to earth, very aware and across the issues that we're facing, very aligned - for us, we've got a big methamphetamine problem obviously that we're dealing with as a country, they've got the same sort of issues.
"He's got right behind his bureau, he's got his agents back out, highly active doing their work. So, yeah, I was very impressed with him."
Mitchell said the new office was not a sign of "growing ties" with the US, saying "we've got very strong pre-existing relationship".
"We should be working right across our Five Eyes partnership - especially for me and law enforcement and public safety, it's really important. We have a responsibility out to the Pacific as well, they are really suffering and buckling under the pressure of Class-A drugs and methamphetamine so I think that it's a very positive step."
He referred questions about whether it was related to China to Peters and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
"All I'm doing is speaking from my position as minister of police that it's a really good step and a really positive step for us to have a permanent FBI liaison office set up here in New Zealand."
Whether the office would have New Zealanders staffing it was an operational matter that police would work on with the FBI, he said - but the benefit of having it was that the FBI was "very good at law enforcement".
"They've got very good intelligence networks in terms of the countries that are peddling and sending methamphetamine down to our countries, so ... there's lots of different areas that our law enforcement officers can work and collaborate together to try and make sure that we're safe and the Pacific's safer, and ultimately, the United States is safer as well."
Seymour rubbishes Greens' call to exit Five Eyes
With Labour leader Chris Hipkins out of Wellington, deputy Carmel Sepuloni said the announcement was a serious one and had come "as quite a surprise".
"I personally haven't received an explanation, and I think that the general public are going to be wanting to know what the rationale is for this."
Green Party national security and intelligence spokesperson Teanau Tuiono was disappointed to see the office set up at all.
"Just no. We're not another state of the United States, we shouldn't be allowing foreign powers to set up shop like this, we don't like that, we don't like that at all ... it flies in the face of our independent foreign policy."
Tuiono reiterated the party's position that New Zealand should exit the Five Eyes intelligence sharing group.
"Our policy is we don't like Five Eyes, we think we should step away from Five Eyes, and if you look at what's happening around the world as well with the chaotic nature of the Trump regime, more and more people around the world are looking to build alliances in other ways."
Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour said the US was "a long and strong friend of New Zealand" and having an FBI office "doesn't really change that, it just strengthens the relationship".
His response to the Greens' stance was dismissive: "We need to make sure that we understand the world that we're living in which is not the safe one that we'd like it to be.
"The idea that New Zealand would pull out of an intelligence sharing agreement with Britain, America, Australia and Canada, I mean - who do they think our friends are in this world?"
