Australians also interested in Bradford

Published: 8:45AM Friday June 26, 2009

Source: NZPA

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Australians also interested in Bradford (Source: NZPA)

Sue Bradford - Source: NZPA

New Zealand's SIS was not alone in spying on Green MP Sue Bradford when she was a teenager - the Australian intelligence organisation also checked up on her.

The Australian Security Intelligence Agency (ASIO) asked the SIS for information about Bradford when she applied to travel to New Guinea on a university trip in 1970.

The SIS told its Australian counterpart she had been arrested after a scuffle with police and had taken part in an anti-war sit-in, The Dominion Post reported.

She was allowed to travel to New Guinea - under Australian rule at the time.

Bradford requested the return of her SIS file after fellow party member Keith Locke did the same and made parts of it public in February, revealing he was monitored from the age of 11 because of family ties.

Bradford's file is mainly based on her unemployed rights activist days of the 1980s and 1990s.

It outlines her association with the Communist Party of New Zealand, Socialist Action League and Workers' Communist League - all deemed at the time by the SIS to be subversive organisations.

It includes a lengthy pile of media stories, documenting various protests she was involved in, along

with arrests and storming of high-level meetings.

Although hundreds of pages long and containing information dating back to 1968 when she was a sixth former, the file was an abbreviated one, Bradford said.

More than 300 documents could not be seen in full for security reasons.

Some of the information surprised her.

"There is a lot missing, it is very random ... and there are weird things such as them saying I went on a trip in the 1970s to China - but I didn't," she said.

"I guess it gives me a bit of an insight into the limited efficacy of their spying activities."

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