John Battersby & Damien Rogers
Published in National Security Journal on 20 October 2026.
DOI: 10.36878/nsj20261020.07
Download full PDF version – New Zealand’s Intelligence Professionals: People Without a Profession (449 KB)
International literature reports a significant growth in educational offerings in
intelligence studies globally as well as moves toward the professionalisation of intelligence practice over the last two decades. Such developments have been significantly more subdued in New Zealand where higher education and training are much less coordinated, facing ongoing fiscal challenges and with moves to professionalise the intelligence sector having stalled. This study draws on intelligence sector respondents and gives voice to a range of concerns expressed by them as to their place as intelligence professionals across a spectrum of law enforcement and regulatory agencies in New Zealand. As pessimistic as this article is about the current state of New Zealand’s intelligence practice, it exposes clearly where improvements could be made and uncovers a noted practitioner desire to bridge the gap between themselves and academics.
Keywords: Intelligence, Education, Training, Transparency, Professionalisation, Five Eyes
Introduction
Our research project sets out to examine New Zealand’s intelligence professionals and the role which postgraduate education in intelligence studies plays within that field. The postgraduate level was decided on because we assumed most intelligence practitioners were recruited from degree-qualified pools of individuals, and a significant portion of our students’ study with us part-time while working in their intelligence roles. Therefore, the design and delivery of our courses is aimed at the professional development of existing intelligence practitioners. This study matters to us because it seeks to evaluate if we as educators are delivering in the 21st century what we need to.
New Zealand is largely absent from international literature on intelligence education, so this study casts light on the New Zealand experience and examines it closely to reveal what its own practitioners make of their educational and professional development. It is not uncommon that international studies of Five Eyes do not place much emphasis on New Zealand’s role in that arrangement, assuming perhaps because we are small, we are irrelevant.1 This study asserts our relevance albeit in the educational space. Many of the basic techniques of analytical tradecraft are common across Five Eyes and beyond, and therefore New Zealand’s experience is worthy of consideration, not neglect. Furthermore, our positioning of this paper in National Security Journal is deliberate. It enables us to speak directly to our intelligence and organisational audiences and their executive masters as well as to intelligence academics, in New Zealand and elsewhere, who are concerned with the future of intelligence studies and education.
We are extremely grateful to those participants who offered their time, expertise, and reflections to make this study possible. As a result of their cooperation and engagement we were able to find that international growth in educational offerings in intelligence studies2 as well as moves toward the professionalisation of intelligence practice, have been much more subdued in New Zealand than is apparent elsewhere.3 We also found that, while education in intelligence studies is practical and valued here, participants recognise that its full potential is stymied by ever-present fiscal challenges, varying understandings of educational value among intelligence managers, as well as a lack of intelligence-literacy at New Zealand’s organisational senior management and executive levels. It is also clear from this study that the lack of a centralised or coordinated structure to training, education and qualification, compounded by on-going economic constraints, means intelligence professionalisation in New Zealand is currently regressing rather than progressing. The educational requirements of intelligence professionals are recognised by our respondents as likely to be significantly improved by a better integration, cooperation and understanding between practitioners and academics. Indeed, they exhibit a strong desire for this. But agency culture, New Zealand’s historic lack of intelligence transparency and shrinking academy are currently militating against any improvement in the relationship between scholars and practitioners. In a world with increasing uncertainty, geopolitical risk and transnational criminal activity, in which intelligence capability is more necessary than it ever has been, we assess New Zealand’s intelligence capability is under-valued, under-trained and under-educated.
Dr John Battersby is Senior Fellow at the Centre for Defence and Security Studies, Massey University, Wellington. Dr Damien Rogers is an Associate Professor in International Relations and Security Studies at Massey University, Albany. An abridged version of this paper was presented at an Intelligence in History Workshop, Macquarie University, 13-14 August 2026. The authors acknowledge the valuable feedback from conference participants.