Cam Preston's protests against Southern Response could become heated, as in this protest in 2013, but were staff really at risk?

EDITORIAL: The thought that Government-owned insurance company Southern Response hired private investigators to keep an eye on disgruntled Christchurch earthquake claimants will have left a sour taste in many mouths.

The story was told by Newshub journalist Patrick Gower this week and if you ever doubted that the Government is taking the claims very seriously, consider that the State Services Commission immediately launched an inquiry into whether Southern Response breached standards of integrity and conduct.

The Crown poured more than $1 billion into Southern Response, which was formed to take over AMI's insurance work in Christchurch after the 2011 earthquake. It soon became a target of protests and wider dissatisfaction, and was colloquially dubbed "Southern No Response".

Whether or not the nickname was fair, it was expressive of the dark, volatile mood of the community in the immediate post-quake era. In that context, a state-funded insurance company spying on traumatised and vulnerable earthquake victims added insult to injury.

Newshub discovered that three years of spying, which ran from 2014 to 2017, cost Southern Response nearly $180,000. Gower stressed the point that taxpayers were covering the bill of fellow taxpayers being spied on.

Thompson and Clark Investigations provided "situational awareness" of people including Cam Preston, a Christchurch man with a quake-damaged home who organised protests against Southern Response. Preston was shocked to learn he had been investigated, particularly as Southern Response warned police that Preston was a danger to staff, even comparing him to Russell John Tully who killed two people in the Ashburton Winz office in 2014.

It may seem reasonable that the Ashburton incident made public servants nervous and it demonstrates the high levels of tension between the insurer and the insured in Christchurch at the time. The Press reported in 2015 that police visited Preston at the urging of Southern Response, which claimed his communications with the company had become "threatening and intimidating" – a claim Preston strongly denied.

We learned from Gower's report that it was Thompson and Clark that told Southern Response to put "pressure" on police to talk to Preston.

Christchurch company director Peter Glasson is another who discovered he was spied on, along with potentially hundreds of others who were at meetings believed to have been infiltrated by Thompson and Clark, where claimants discussed taking a class action against Southern Response. Glasson was also shocked to learn that Thompson and Clark has since destroyed the information it gathered about him and others.

Thompson and Clark has previously been accused of spying on animal rights and environmental activists, the latter on behalf of state-owned energy company Solid Energy.

One would be naive to imagine that insurance companies never use private investigators to research clients. But this is not an instance of an ACC claimant with a sore back caught painting the roof. Instead, Glasson, Preston and others were organising legal protests and community meetings.

Some transparency is urgently required, as Greater Christchurch Regeneration Minister Megan Woods has said. A State Services Commission inquiry is an appropriate response. We should also learn how many knew about Southern Response's use of private investigators, including at a political level.