In 2018, I was the CEO of Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Ruanui. It was revealed that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment had contracted a private firm, Thompson and Clark Investigations Ltd, to spy on Ngāti Ruanui and our allies who were fighting seabed mining permits off the South Taranaki coast. This demonstrates how deep the systemic problems are. A bureaucratic culture which allows for intelligence agencies, let alone Public Service departments, to spy on non-violent political campaigners is fundamentally rotten.