Crimes and Misconduct (Overseas Operations) Bill

I move, That the Crimes and Misconduct (Overseas Operations) Bill be now read a first time. I will propose that the bill be referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee. This bill will allow New Zealand to exercise criminal jurisdiction over New Zealand police personnel and civilians serving as part of a non - United Nations deployment. Although it has particular relevance to the imminent deployment of New Zealand police personnel to the Solomon Islands, it will also apply to police or civilian members involved in any future non - United Nations deployment.

New Zealand, at the request of the Solomon Islands Government, has, as part of a Regional Assistance Mission, joined with Australia and Pacific Island countries to assist the re-establishment of law and order in that country. This action will allow the Solomon Islands to rebuild its Government infrastructure, restore its shattered economy, and provide a better standard of living for its people.

The necessary legal provisions sanctioning the deployment of the Regional Assistance Mission were passed unanimously by the Solomon Islands Government on 17 July 2003. That was followed by the signing of a status of forces agreement on 24 July 2003. Under that agreement, members of the visiting contingent, including those from New Zealand, will have full immunity from legal proceedings in the Solomon Islands for any acts or omissions carried out in the course of official duties. In practical as well as legal terms New Zealand, not the Solomon Islands, will have jurisdiction over New Zealand personnel for such acts.

For acts or omissions that fall outside official duties, the situation is different. In that situation, the Solomon Islands will give up jurisdiction only if the sending country can, under its domestic law, exercise jurisdiction over its personnel overseas. Currently, under New Zealand law, we can exercise jurisdiction over our armed forces for offences committed overseas, under the Armed Forces Discipline Act. Similarly, we can exercise jurisdiction over police serving as part of a United Nations force, under the United Nations (Police) Act. However, similar provision does not apply to police personnel or civilians serving in non - United Nations operations. In the absence of such jurisdiction, police and civilian personnel deployed to the Solomon Islands who commit offences outside their official duties could be subject to prosecution and possible imprisonment in the Solomon Islands.

This bill will address the gap in our legislation. It will allow New Zealand to exercise jurisdiction over police and civilians serving in overseas operations, such as that under way in the Solomon Islands, in a similar manner to that exercised over armed forces personnel, and over police serving under United Nations operations. The enactment of this bill not only would minimise possible exposure of the New Zealand police and civilian members to prosecution and imprisonment in the Solomons, but also would have application to any similar non - United Nations type of operation. Enactment of this bill would also ensure that those deployed would not have impunity in respect of offences committed in the course of official operations or outside their official duties.

The bill itself takes the form of a stand-alone statute similar in form and content to the United Nations (Police) Act. Under the bill, it would be an offence for any police or civilian member of an overseas operation to do or omit to do anything outside New Zealand that would have been an offence had it been committed within New Zealand. The bill will also ensure that members of the police engaged in such operations are subject to the disciplinary processes that apply to members of the police in New Zealand. The bill will be retrospective and, once passed, deemed to have come into effect on 24 July 2003. This takes account of the limited time between the establishment by the Solomon Islands Government of the necessary legal framework covering the deployment, including the signing of the status of forces agreement, and the need to pass the necessary legislative amendments proposed by this bill.

Because of the ban on creating retroactive offences, under section 26 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, the bill has also been vetted by the Attorney-General. The Attorney-General has advised that this bill is not considered inconsistent with the rights and freedoms contained in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The retroactive effect of the bill is seen as a justified provision, because the important objective of the bill is to protect New Zealand personnel from possible exposure to a legal system that may be incongruent with the standards applicable in New Zealand. It also ensures that our personnel do not have impunity in respect of offences committed outside their official duties.

The Government wishes that priority be given to the early enactment of this bill, so that our police and civilian personnel serving in the Solomon Islands can enjoy the same protections as the armed services, and as other police personnel serving in United Nations operations, already enjoy under our law, and consistent with international practice for these sorts of operations. I commend the bill to the House.

If there was ever a bill that proved the failure of a State—the Solomons, that is—the Crimes and Misconduct (Overseas Operations) Bill would have to be it. What we are saying, in essence, is that New Zealand will retain jurisdiction over the police and all other persons serving in the peacekeeping operation. Normally, when people—police and so forth—are posted overseas, they are subject to the jurisdiction of the host State. In this case we are saying no, for the very good reason that the Solomons is a failed State.

That raises several concerns, not so much about the bill but about the issue generally. One of them is why we let the situation deteriorate to the point where the State totally failed. We deployed 10 police officers over a period of years, knowing full well right throughout that time, because of the reports that were being received back in New Zealand, that they were unable to reverse the situation. I have heard Mr Goff say time and time again in this House that the Solomon Islands police themselves were part of the criminal enterprise that was running that country. Mr Goff would acknowledge that. We were sending our police officers to work with their police, even though we knew that their police were, effectively, part of a criminal enterprise. This issue had been pointed—

💬 Hon Phil Goff: No, that is not the case. Now the member has got it wrong.

I am not suggesting our police were part of a criminal enterprise, but that does suggest that we knew, whilst our police officers were there and trying to make a difference, that that was a vain hope. We knew that a long time ago.

So I say to the Government that in the future, particularly in our region where we have special responsibilities, we cannot wait as long as that—to the point that a State has so comprehensively failed that we have to bring in a rushed bill. And this bill is rushed; weeks after the deployment, and after the Government has had plenty of time to think about the issue, we are now faced, in a sense as a matter of urgency, with producing a bill, because we know as a fact that the courts and the police of the Solomons are thoroughly corrupt. They are part of a criminal enterprise, and we could not trust our service people, our police officers, and our civilians to be subject to their jurisdiction. We must retain that jurisdiction.

There has been an extensive series of articles in the New Zealand Herald, which I am sure that many other people have read, about the state of our defence forces. This whole issue in the Solomons brings it to a head. I know that the Government will say that, back in 2000, it did a review that said the defence forces should be reshaped so that they were more focused, more effective, and more able to do their job. That seemed, on the face of it, to have some merit. But over the last 4 years that this Government has been in office, there have been more and more deployments. Admittedly, some of those were not able to be foreseen, but the Government had the example of East Timor, and it knew of the huge stretch that that deployment imposed on our defence forces. Since 11 September 2001—nearly 2 years ago now—our forces have had to be sent to Afghanistan, to Iraq, and now to the Solomons, and who could possibly say that the deployment to the Solomons was not predictable?

We know that our defence forces, based on this Labour-led Government’s deployments, are stretched to excess, and that is now leading to a crisis of confidence within the defence forces themselves. There are huge rates of turnover, complete failure to maintain critical skills, and people leaving through sheer frustration. They are being burnt out. In other countries, something was done about that. Australia increased its defence budget. The United States increased its defence budget. So did Britain, and so did most countries in Europe. Which country has not done that, and which country, almost on a pro rata basis, has been deploying more people overseas than ever before? It is New Zealand, and this Government has a terrible crisis on its hands, which it is ignoring. We have seen the level of funding dropping and dropping while the tempo of deployment is increasing and increasing, until now we have tremendous burnout.

There are some sensible solutions that the Government could take—solutions that would fit within the Government’s own paradigm. For instance, we could have three frigates. After all, the Government sent our only two frigates to the Gulf this year. We have all seen the photographs on television of Te Mana and Te Kaha stationed in the Gulf of Oman at the same time—just yesterday, one of those frigates, the Te Mana, returned. For that time there was not a single combat naval vessel owned by New Zealand, under our sovereignty, anywhere near New Zealand. In fact, our frigates were 6,000 miles away from New Zealand. So, from the evidence of the Government’s own deployments, it needs to understand that it has to change its thinking and increase the spending on things we use. That, after all, was the message that came out of the Inquiry into Defence Beyond 2000. It was to increase spending, increase investment—people, equipment, and so forth—in the things we use most. Well, we have news for the Government: it is using the frigates a hang of a lot, so it should buy more of them. It is as simple as that.

It is a similar case with the Army. We know that East Timor was a huge stretch on the Army. We have sent the Army to Afghanistan, we have sent it to Iraq, we are now sending it to the Solomons, and smaller groups of army personnel are scattered around the world. Again, I urge the Government to make the investment, to recruit more people, pay them more, and equip them more, because we are using them more. It comes back to the Government’s own paradigm. The Government needs to spend money, to make investments in those parts of our defence forces we use most. [Interruption] The junior Government whip will probably be unaware that one-third of New Zealand’s entire helicopter force will now be based in the Solomons. One-third is a huge percentage. What happens if there is another requirement for that force? What will we do? Nothing? I guess that is the Government’s answer.

Again, I say to the Government that by its own paradigm, and by its own experience, which perhaps it did not anticipate before 2001, it has to make the investment in those parts of our defence forces that it is using the most, but it is failing to do that. We are the only country in the Western World that is dropping expenditure and not making those critical investments that are needed right now. I ask Government members whether we would be able to use light armoured vehicles in the Solomons. What is the answer? What will the next speaker for the Government say to that? We are using our helicopters, we are using our soldiers, sailors, and airmen, and they are not being replaced in the way that they should.

In terms of the whole issue of the Solomons, this bill of itself is an indictment on the Government playing catch-up. It rushed this bill in, thinking: “Oh gosh, there’s a gap here. We’ve got to fix it.” Well, that is true, it does have to be fixed, but it is not the only thing that has to be fixed; there is a whole range of things that have to be fixed in relation to our external commitments, and the Government is failing to do that. This bill should be the wake-up call on the much deeper and wider deficiencies that exist within our foreign policies and within our defence forces, and it is time the Government got real.

The United Future party will support this bill for three reasons. Firstly, it makes good common sense, and United Future supports policies that make good common sense. Secondly, it will protect New Zealand citizens who are in a position where they are exposed to huge risk. It is important for us as a country to protect New Zealand citizens who offer their help in international situations. Thirdly, it demonstrates a cooperative approach between the Solomon Islands, New Zealand, and Australia. It is a situation where all three countries are in agreement about the way in which their citizens should be protected. Therefore, this is not something that we are endeavouring to foist on some foreign Government, but something that other Governments welcome and are entirely in agreement with.

Although New Zealand’s current role in the Solomon Islands is not entirely unique, it is certainly an extraordinary position. It is rare for a country or a group of countries to be invited to enter and take control of another country. The fact that the Solomon Islands has asked New Zealand and Australia, principally, to do that is a sign of its respect for, and confidence and trust in, New Zealand and Australia. However, it raises a number of new issues.

It is important for New Zealand that we do not go beyond the mandate that the Solomon Islands has given us. Our job is to help to restore the rule of law. I commend the Government for the cautious approach it has taken throughout the debate on this. It has chosen not to rush into things. It has waited for a formal invitation, for the documentation, the legislation, to be signed off in the Solomon Islands, and for an agreement to be reached and signed off, instead of taking precipitous action.

Further, it is important for us to act speedily but effectively. Conflict situations are notoriously unpredictable, and, in this instance, nobody can predict just how long our people in the Solomon Islands will be committed there. But our job is to work as effectively and speedily as we can, and then to pull out of the Solomon Islands and, hopefully, allow its people to continue to govern their own country for themselves. In that respect, we as a country truly are a catalyst in this instance. We are going to go in, change things, exit, hopefully entirely intact, and bring all our people home again without any loss. When we do exit from the Solomon Islands, we hope we leave a country that is much changed, but that is no longer under the influence of outside powers.

For the personnel involved, it is a difficult job. It is a job with tremendous risk, not just physically but legally. We know that that country is currently subject to lawlessness. We know that the legal authorities have proven untrustworthy, and we have heard reports of backhanders by police and general corruption. The law is being abused. The question for New Zealand has been how to protect our personnel in this situation.

This bill started with the Solomon Islands Facilitation of International Assistance Act, which was passed on 17 July. Originally, under clause 17 of that bill, the Solomon Islands was going to give complete immunity from legal proceedings, both criminal and civil, to personnel involved in the operations of assisting countries. If that had gone ahead, this bill would not have been necessary. However, the Solomon Islands indicated that it was going to amend the draft bill prior to its introduction, to grant immunity only where the offence that had been committed by a person from an assisting country had occurred in the course of the operations, or where the assisting country could exercise jurisdiction over that person. It is the latter provision that has made this bill necessary. I do not agree with National’s comments that this bill could have been brought in a lot earlier; it was only because of the changes to the Solomon Islands Facilitation of International Assistance Bill, prior to its enactment, that New Zealand moved to ensure that it could exercise jurisdiction over its own personnel.

Currently, we have the Armed Forces Discipline Act, which covers our armed forces when they are deployed overseas, and which gives them the necessary protection. The United Nations (Police) Act gives similar protection to our police, but only when they are acting under the auspices of the United Nations. That is not happening in this case, and therefore, without this bill, our police would not be covered. Moreover, because there is a possibility that New Zealand civilians may be involved in the reconstruction of the Solomon Islands, our civilians would also not be covered. Under this bill, police and civilians will be subject to the law of New Zealand with regard to any activities that they undertake whilst in the Solomon Islands.

There are some problems that arise with this legislation. The first is the fact that it brings an inconsistency between Solomon Islands law and New Zealand law, and where there are differences between the two countries’ law, it will inevitably be the case that two people may be treated differently. A New Zealander and a citizen of the Solomon Islands may carry out an activity together, but receive different treatment under the hands of legal authorities. There may be offences in the Solomon Islands that are different or non-existent in New Zealand. So some inconsistency could be caused through this. However, that has to be balanced against the lawlessness and corruption that currently exist in the Solomon Islands. As I said, New Zealanders are considerably at risk, and they need to have confidence that they will not be subject to false arrest or abuse by law enforcement agencies in the Solomon Islands, and that, at least, that aspect of their willingness to go and assist the Solomon Islands will be taken care of by their own Government here. This bill does that. Despite the inconsistency, given the situation we find in the Solomon Islands it is United Future’s view that it is legitimate that, effectively, we take control of, and have jurisdiction over, our own people, despite the fact that they are in a foreign country.

Of course, that is not unusual either. Diplomatic immunity has existed for a huge length of time, and it provides similar protection to diplomats who are in foreign countries. In that case, one hopes that the diplomats will act to a very high moral standard. That does not always happen, as we know, but nevertheless there is an expectation that it will occur. The onus is, therefore, on the New Zealand Police and any civilians who are there to meet a high standard. Because they will not be subject to Solomon Islands law, it is important that they are honourable in all their dealings and do not prove to be an embarrassment to New Zealand.

The second issue is the retrospectivity of the legislation. We know that our people have already been deployed, and the bill is backdated to when they were deployed. However, that has been signalled, and the changes have been signalled, for some time, and United Future does not believe that the fact that there will be some degree of retrospectivity is a factor of concern, because it is minor.

The third issue is the fact that this bill will also cater for future situations—it could cater for a new Bougainville, of course—and there needs to be an exercise of caution that when we get into other situations, we do not find ourselves in a situation where there is inconsistency between New Zealand law and the law of another country, where the other country is in fact in a functioning state. However, the tenor of the law is that the overseas operations by New Zealand contingents involved in the affairs of other countries will occur in situations where they need help in order to regain a lawful state. In that respect it is very likely that, whenever this bill is enforced, similar situations to the one that we find in the Solomon Islands will apply. United Future therefore believes that this is a common-sense measure, and we are pleased to support it.

I indicate New Zealand First will support the passage of this bill through to the select committee for further analysis, but I do have to ask a couple of questions. The first one that comes to mind is this: if we need this law now in order to cater for our non-uniformed and uniformed members of the Defence Force and the police force who are deploying to the Solomons, what have we been operating under for the last year or 18 months, or however long it has been since we have had 10 New Zealand police officers serving in the Solomons—what has the situation been? Is this Government so slack, so lax, and so incompetent that it has not actually considered that issue before today? It would appear so.

I want to come to the issue of why our forces are there, what it is that we intend to do, and the realities of the situation that New Zealand faces right now. I say to the honourable Wayne Mapp that it was good to hear the speech he delivered today. The last time that we discussed the Solomons in this House, I rose for New Zealand First and gave our party’s very strong position on the realities of the deployment and what it means, and on the appalling state of affairs that we have within our Defence Force and our police force. I was labelled as churlish and petulant by the all-knowing Minister of Defence, Mr Mark Burton, who then proceeded to compliment Wayne Mapp on his wonderfully generous speech to the Government. I note with pleasure Mr Mapp’s speech today, which once again focused on the realities that New Zealand First brought to this House.

💬 Richard Worth: Damascus!

He has had a road to Damascus experience, says Mr Worth.

We need to be honest in the House today when talking about the Solomons and the mission that we are giving our Defence Force and police personnel to carry out on our behalf, in our name. The truth of the matter is that this Government is in no position to be sending New Zealanders on such a mission, without first revisiting its commitments in other parts of the world. We all know that this Government has committed Defence Force personnel to Afghanistan and to Iraq, but there are questions that should have been asked before it made that decision, which was clearly motivated by Helen Clark’s desire to shore up flagging relationships in the US as a result of her bad-mouthing the President of the United States. Helen Clark made that decision without any advice, or indeed, if she did get advice, without any recognition of the problems that were pending in the South Pacific—specifically, the problems that still persist in Papua New Guinea and the problems that we have known to exist in the Solomons for years.

Indeed, since this Government has been on the Treasury benches it has known full well, from representations made by Fletcher’s and many other businesses that operate in the Solomons, of the appalling state of lawlessness that has existed there. And what has it done in response to that? It has done absolutely nothing. I have a friend who worked in the Solomons, and who had also soldiered in the Middle East and in Oman with me. He has been telling us of the appalling state of affairs in the Solomons for years, and of the difficulties faced by New Zealanders there. How can we have a situation whereby a business manager in the Solomons—a New Zealand national; a citizen of this nation—was murdered, the police knew who did it, and the police were driving around in stolen cars? That happened 18 months to 2 years ago, and this Government did nothing—not a thing.

💬 Stephen Franks: A New Zealand diplomat died in the Solomons.

A New Zealand diplomat was murdered in the Solomons, yet this Government has only just registered now the need to send some people there to help.

This Government is absolutely pathetically useless when it comes to security issues. This Government takes great credit for buying 105 LAVIIIs that we do not need. That is $750 million down the lav. The Government has bought those for itself against the advice of the Secretary of Defence, against the advice of the Chief of Defence Force, and most notably against my advice, which I tendered to the Government privately long before it signed up to the deal. It went ahead and bought them on the basis of a private discussion between itself and Major General Dodson. Curiously enough, we all know who was advising this Labour Government behind the scenes on its defence policy, do we not? We do not talk about it, but we know it.

💬 Hon Tony Ryall: Who?

Well, the Government certainly spent a lot of time talking to people like Piers Reid and Major General Dodson, did it not? So we have ended up in a situation whereby the Government pats itself on the back for having bought all those wonderful vehicles, while totally ignoring the stresses and strains that it brings on its personnel in terms of receiving them and bringing them into service.

Therein lies the problem. This Government, in deploying these people to the Solomons—police and Defence Force personnel—has absolutely no understanding of the stretch that it is putting our defence forces to. Yes, we will get a little kudos around the world, and maybe that will go some way towards helping Helen Clark, when she finishes leading the Labour Party, to become Kofi Annan’s successor. I think that is what she has her eye on, and she may well get a good reputation in the United Nations for having stretched our Defence Force personnel in order to pander to her political needs. But the reality is that we should take a good, cold, hard look at the staffing levels of our Defence Force.

I ask this Labour Government how many of its members would be prepared to pack up their bags, leave their families behind, go overseas and serve in the Solomons, come back from there, and then 3 months later pack their bags and go to Afghanistan? They do not need an answer to that question, because the truth is that not one of the members of that Government has ever worn a uniform—not one. Government members have no understanding—

💬 Hon Annette King: I did. I had my dental nurses uniform.

I am sorry. The Minister was a dental nurse, and she looked good in that uniform, too. I hear that down in Courtenay Place they all want to see her in her nurses uniform again. But that is by the by. The point is—

💬 Hon Annette King: So what’s wrong with dental nurses?

The Minister was a lovely dental nurse, and she should go back to being one. That is how Labour members treat the issue of the defence forces: with frivolity and humour, and by diverting attention from the issue. The point is that our defence forces are stretched, and not only are they stretched totally—

💬 Jill Pettis: And that is how patronising that member is towards women.

Here we go. Jill Pettis is really on her bike at the moment, is she not? She should read her own papers—the papers given to the Government by the Defence Force—that state that Defence Force personnel are suffering from stress. People are being subjected to burnout, and people are being elevated to levels they have not been trained for. Do I not recall this Government making big about its employment relations, about how it looks after staff, and about how it is worried about people who are subject to stress—except, it would seem, when they are in uniform?

This Government does not give a toss. It hands out medals that may have cost $10 or $15, and attends parades all over the world, in exotic places like Paris, Gallipoli, Turkey, and Cassino. But when it came to the hard-core business of putting up the pay of defence personnel in 1 year, it took this Government 4 years to do so. In the 4-year period that it took this Government to do that, the drift out into civvy street was substantial. This Government is not in a position to recover from that. It has got rid of the air combat capability and watched people leave the Air Force in droves. That is not over. As more disgruntled Air Force people hit the 20-year superannuation mark they will march too, and the problem will be compounded.

I have not even talked about our overstretched, overworked, under-resourced police force that this Government has just totally ignored, even though the Police has more money and more personnel. Given the level of crime in this country and the soft, mealy-mouthed policies of this Government, our police are more overworked than ever. To slice off the most experienced and valuable people and send them to the Solomons, without making commensurate adjustments, is totally irresponsible.

This Government has a lot more to answer for. Many, many more articles, such as those that have appeared in the New Zealand Herald in recent weeks, will appear about our forces all over the world, and those articles will eventually bring this Government to account for its failure to recognise the needs of our Defence Force and our police force. I ask members to mark my words on that.

I rise on behalf of the Green Party to support this bill. We support the commitment to the Solomons. This legislation will help to make sure that the people who go over there—the police and other civilians, as part of the Government commitment to the Solomons—abide by the law. There is not a very functioning legal process in the Solomons at the present time, so it is appropriate, in negotiation with the Solomon Islands authorities, to have this application of New Zealand law to the people who serve over there.

However, I see this in practice as only a temporary measure. We do not want to establish a precedent that people who go to work in positions in Government departments, either in the Solomons or anywhere else, are in any long-term, regular, or normal sense responsible only to the law of New Zealand and the courts of New Zealand, rather than the laws and the courts of the country they are in. The quicker that we can move to a situation where there is a proper justice system in the Solomons and where people who have committed offences can be tried there, the better it will be. The situation is somewhat different with the military, which does have its own law. When military personnel go on operations like this they have a State of Forces Agreement, as has been developed with the Solomon Islands, and the military law applies to them under those agreements.

If our main purpose in going to the Solomons is to help the people of the Solomons to gain more control of their own destiny—to create democratic institutions, to truly express their culture and ways of doing things, and to develop their economy and all their social institutions—then we have to be careful not to be too patronising, and not to be the great white fathers or mothers who go over there. There has been much more of a debate in Australia than in New Zealand around this commitment. Under John Howard, the Australian Government has made all sorts of strange statements about the reasons that it is going to the Solomons—that is, it is about combating international terrorism, gunrunning, drug-smuggling, and these sorts of other things that we do not really see in the Solomons. A lot of the stuff that the Australian Government talks about is just mythical, but it fits its world view at the present time to believe that there is a terrorist under every bed and that we have to have military forces, police, new security laws, and everything else. Part of the rationale of the Howard Government for going to the Solomon Islands fits into that. If we start to talk about the situation in that way, and say we have to situate our police and military over there because of the danger of terrorists and the effect they will have on us, and so on, then we are operating from the basis of the self-interest of the bigger powers—in particular, Australia in this case—rather than in terms of helping the Solomons Islands to increase its capacity to determine its own future.

It has been a problem right from the beginning of colonisation in the Solomon Islands that there has been too much domination of that country by outside interests. Even in the period since the Solomons has had its independence, the economic influence of outside powers has increased. The Solomon Islands is very rich in resources, in terms of logging, bauxite, gold, and all kinds of minerals, palm oil plantations, and so on. It is high in terms of natural resources, but many of those natural resources are effectively under the control of foreign companies. The plantation area—the local shareholding—is quite small. During the Asian economic crisis of 1997, the Government in the Solomons at the time was pressured by overseas forces to implement one of those tightening one’s belt approaches, and to sell off more State assets. That put the country into a bit of a downward spiral, and contributed seriously to the problems we see in the Solomon Islands today.

With this commitment and the people covered under this bill, we should increase the capacity of the Solomon Islanders themselves, by helping them to become more skilled and to cover all the functions that they need in the civil service, and in health, education, and elsewhere. One concern I have about the Australia – New Zealand commitment, particularly as it may be applied by the Australians—and obviously there have been some tensions between Australia and New Zealand over the nature of this commitment and its extent—is that I am a bit worried that we could get the balance wrong. A number of Australians and New Zealanders, as part of this operation, will go into ministries like the Treasury. On one level that may help, in terms of making sure that the procedures are there and that there is not the same ability as before for corrupt practices to take place. However, on the other hand, if the Australians and New Zealanders who go into those jobs in the Treasury and other Government departments then start to determine the economic policy of the country, and perhaps apply the Howard approach of much more deregulation, privatisation, and all those sorts of things, that would not be in the long-term interests of the Solomon Islands people.

We have to realise that the Solomon Islands is an extremely diverse country. There are about 120 different tribal groups, and about as many languages as that. We should not see the tribal nature of social life as a problem. Sometimes people look at it from a white Western viewpoint, and see it as a problem. When a country like the Solomons spirals downwards and conflicts develop, and in particular the armed conflict that has developed in the Solomons, that can result in tribal loyalties being expressed in that conflict. However, we have to look at the strong tribal traditions in the Solomons and at the commitment of people to help others in their tribes as being basically their way of doing things, and as something that we should help them build on in a very positive way. It is a positive, not a negative, thing. In so far as we can help through this commitment to establish more law and order and due process, and just encourage that to happen, then we do not want to think of our economic assistance to the Solomons as being just about establishing Western interests and institutions on top of a tribal structure. Instead, we should utilise the tribal structure, which the people want to develop, and help them to develop their tribal economic institutions, as many of the aid organisations do that go from New Zealand to the Solomons. Organisations like the Christian World Service have had people over there recently, working out how to help at the grass roots with their aid work. Under the definitions used in this bill, I hope those non-governmental organisations will not be covered by this legislation, because we would move into quite a grey area if we were to say that non-governmental organisations that are separate from the Government are covered by New Zealand law in the way that this bill proposes.

Another point is that if we are serious about helping the Solomons, we have to look at the trade issue, and provide real markets in New Zealand for Solomon Islands products—for example, the products of cooperatives of Solomon Islanders. The Trade Aid organisation in New Zealand has provided a market for Solomon Islands honey. We have to assist in that way, and not just help the Solomons to restructure its economy in the way that some Western interests may like it to do.

In summary, I think that what we are doing, essentially, is helping the Solomon Islands people to determine their own future, and not trying to dominate the country in any longer-term sense.

On behalf of the ACT party I rise to welcome this bill. We will support its referral to the select committee. The Crimes and Misconduct (Overseas Operations) Bill is intended, in a nutshell, to extent New Zealand law to cover not only New Zealand armed services personnel overseas in peacekeeping operations but also police and civilians serving as part of the peacekeeping, or nation building, or whatever other euphemism we give for this gunboatexercise. What we have, of course, is the crumbling of a series of fond beliefs and misconceptions that Mr Keith Locke has simply recited.

The idea, of course, is that supposedly this is some kind of simple restoration of law and order. In the terms of the definition in the bill it is to cover people who are in a group participating in duties involving peacekeeping, the maintenance or restoration of law and order, or functioning Government institutions, or similar activities, whether or not in conjunction with personnel from one or more other countries. In other words, this has been tailored for the purported objectives of the Solomon Islands exercise. It is also said to be general—that is, it will be a standing piece of law that can apply whenever the Government is sending New Zealanders overseas for an exercise like this.

But what concerns me is that the thinking and the care that has gone into this seems to be about as shallow as the care that has characterised our attitude towards the Solomon Islands for the last 10 years. When the Solomon Islands Government, while it was still recognisable as a normal, functioning Government, asked New Zealand for assistance, it asked us, as I understand it, for 20 or 30 policemen. It saw that it had a serious problem and that a threshold point was being crossed where its own police force could descend into the best and most well-equipped tribe of bandits around. It wanted a critical mass of policing assistance.

What did New Zealand do? New Zealand applied the sort of nonsense theory that Mr Keith Locke just expressed—in essence saying: “If you people look at your indigenous institutions and build on them, and work within your conventions, and if the colonial oppressors have gone, the natural peace, order, and good government inherent in your institutions will assert themselves, and therefore we will send you one policeman.” So they sent one poor New Zealand policeman. A very experienced and successful man in New Zealand was sent up there to do an absolutely impossible job, and, as I understand it, came near to a nervous breakdown. He was a diligent and sensible man, he tried to do what he was asked to do, and it was completely beyond him. New Zealand scrimped. We were given the invitation to help, at a time when we could have helped without the expense we are now coming to.

Now the Australians and the New Zealanders between them are going to have 2,000 people in that country. It would be recognisable immediately by one of our 19th century forebears as a colonial operation. Indeed, as I look at this piece of law, I see that it is not very dissimilar to the instructions that Hobson was given when he was sent from Sydney to the Bay of Islands. He was told to go and assert British law over the lawless whalers, sealers, timber merchants, and other settlers. He was told to try to avoid interfering too much with the natives unless he could get the natives to agree that British law would apply across them all.

Here we go again, so-called “nation building”, applying our own law to our own people, getting their agreement that ours is the law that will govern, and that their courts and their institutions will not govern—and we think we are going to go and build a nation on that basis. No exit timetable has been arranged. There is no idea of how we are going to do it without cultural imperialism. Because this is not a simple failure to pay the Government servants. This is not a simple failure to back up a judge or the courts. This is a complete failure of a set of institutions that simply do not cope with the notion of “nation” when there are so many languages and cultures.

It is extremely hard, as we in New Zealand know, to run a nation without grave tension when there are two cultures contending, let alone over 100 cultures contending. The idea that we are going in to bowl in there, write a few instruction manuals, hand over, and walk out, is laughable. We should be looking at this law and asking: “How will our people really interface with locals? What will happen when the locals want to avail themselves of the law we are applying to our own people in that country? What will happen, for example, with the civilian employees, who are locals and an integral part of our operations, and who do not want to be left to the tender mercies of their own non-institutions?”.

Those are the common experiences of people engaged in enterprises like this, where tribalism, nepotism, and the tradition of strongman governing is simply not compatible with the fond ideas this Government is sending our people off with.

I look, for example, at the rather simple and crude mechanism. It simply says that our people over there will be subject to our law if he or she does any act outside New Zealand that if done or committed within New Zealand would constitute an offence—whether or not it constitutes an offence under the laws in force in the place where it occurs. What does that not cover? For example, our people are, presumably, going to be putting up buildings, structures. Do they have to comply with the Resource Management Act? Do they have to worry about getting a certificate of fitness under the Building Act? How can they do it? There is no inspecting structure there.

What about when they are called upon to deal with the people who are breaching the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, in relation to those dolphins? Are they going to be liable? Will the “greenies” here in New Zealand pursue New Zealand – law offences against them for having failed, as policing authorities in that area, to stop what is clearly an offence in New Zealand? Who has thought of these issues?

We are in a colonial exercise, and we get this primitive, little piece of law that says: “Let’s pretend it’s a little piece of New Zealand wherever these folk of ours are.” Well, all right, let us pretend, then look at some of the nonsense law that is going to apply. In many respects, these New Zealanders in the Solomons would probably rather live under Solomon Islands law. They would not have to deal with the Privacy Act. How does a body conduct the kind of policing exercise that these folk are going to have to do, the kind of intelligence gathering they are going to have to do, and comply with our nonsense privacy law? Yet that is what this bill says: they will be committing offences if what they are doing would be an offence in New Zealand.

This is a very crude exercise. I wonder whether anyone went back and looked at the much more sophisticated exercises that one would find in colonial office records of 140 years ago—because they would be a better precedent than this primitive little piece.

I look also at some of the other things that might be needed for the benefit of our service people over there, who, in good faith, are doing what needs to be done and is practical at the moment on the ground. For example, they can be arrested without the consent of the Attorney-General. Obviously the Attorney-General’s discretion is seen as the protection for these people against an unwanted prosecution. I would not want to be relying on the protection of the Hon Margaret Wilson. I would not feel that that was much protection when some politically correct offence was being lodged against these folk. However, it is not needed to arrest them. Then, once they are arrested, it appears that no further proceedings may be taken until the consent of the Attorney-General to a proceeding has been taken. What about habeas corpus? What about a bail application? One is not allowed to take any further proceedings until the consent is obtained. Meanwhile they are mouldering up there on what might be some absolutely trifling offence. This is a typical piece of quick knee-jerk reaction—a copy of the four-decades-old facilitation for the United Nations. It has been copied and thrown in without any realisation that this is the very first stage of some very complex redefinition that New Zealanders will need of their relationship with the countries that we are now poking our nose into.

We are not only stretching our legal, conceptual, and foreign policy resources in doing this; as Ron Mark said, we are actually stretching our physical resources. These people are being sent to the Solomons on this exercise while we will have people paying blood money in Iraq to apologise for the Prime Minister’s gaffes.

This bill is meant to be about the New Zealand officers deployed in the Solomons. That has not stopped members of the Opposition getting up and using this bill as an opportunity to attack the Government over a deployment in connection with which, when it was originally discussed in this House, the spokesmen on defence, and leaders of parties, were falling over themselves to try to look like the biggest statesmen in this Parliament. Instead, what we have been subject to this afternoon is that member after member has got up and used the opportunity to attack Government defence policies, even though those same parties, when in Government, did nothing to lift the capability of the New Zealand Defence Force.

This Government coming into office in 1999 has been forced to do that, and reverse the cycle of decline in defence spending that the Opposition parties presided over when in office. They would be bleating and complaining that this Government was not involved in the Solomon Islands. Now that our forces are involved in the Solomons we get speeches like that from Mr Franks accusing us of being on some sort of colonial operation. Mr Mark said we had wasted our time and sat on our hands while all these things were going on—despite the fact that we are working in concert with the Australians. He was not accusing the Australian Government’s approach to the Solomons, but he could not wait to bag his own country in terms of the commitment that we have made to the Solomon Islands.

The approach taken by Opposition speakers has been absolutely opportunistic and not about trying to support the men and women who are working in our country’s name in the Solomons right now. That reflects on those members when one considers the way—when this House is packed and the gallery is full—they cannot wait to act as though they are the greatest statesmen ever to have been in this Parliament.

Mr Mark also said that the involvement of the New Zealand Police in the Solomons would cause trouble because New Zealand had rampant crime, and our police numbers here would be affected. That is despite the fact that there is full funding available to replace police officers who will not be in New Zealand as a consequence of the deployment, and establishment numbers and police stations around New Zealand will remain at the same level as they are. This is good legislation. It reaffirms our commitment to the Solomons. I think it is about time we rose above petty politics.

During the 10 minutes that Government members were allowed to speak, a car was broken into in Auckland. Every 9 minutes, a car in this country is burgled. Every 20 minutes, a car is stolen. We have a massive shortage of New Zealand police on our streets. We have reports that one can wait 2 days before a police officer will ring one back about a burglary. We had a situation when a man crazed on methamphetamine robbed a pub in south Auckland; the man had to be reported to the police three times. Only when he slaughtered three people at the Returned Services Association in Panmure did the police do anything about it.

That is the crisis of policing in this country today. The human cost is people’s lives. The human cost is the misery and disruption when a car is broken into every 9 minutes in this country under this Labour Government. What is the response of the Labour Government? “Let us send 40 of our most needed public servants to the Solomon Islands.”! I say this: it is all very well to put that as an issue of concern, but let us not forget what is happening here at home. The Solomons is a very dangerous place. One needs the skill and expertise of a military force there; one needs more than the police.

Those police officers should have stayed at home fixing crime and solving crime here in New Zealand. The situation is near crisis point. In Auckland, only a few weeks ago, there were 130 vacancies for front-line staff. What is the consequence of that? It basically means that car crime and much street crime are no longer being investigated. People in west Auckland whose cars have been broken into have been getting letters from the police saying: “Thanks for registering your complaint. We do not have the resources to investigate this complaint any more.” Information that was tabled in this House 2 or 3 weeks ago shows in parts of Auckland one is waiting in excess of 24 hours for a police officer to respond to a burglary complaint. Remember the Minister’s proud boast that someone would be there within half an hour? Well, the reality for most people in Auckland and the rest of the country is that it is a very long time.

In other parts of the country we have lawlessness driven by drug-crazed gangs. What is the Government’s solution? It is going to take police officers from the districts that are under pressure with gangs, and send them to the Solomon Islands! The priority should be here at home. In parts of this country there is the dreadful situation of more and more violent crime coming from methamphetamine—

💬 David Benson-Pope: Is the member saying that the National Party would not help the Solomons?

I tell that member that in his city, crime is out of control. The figures the Government will release at the end of this month will show an increase in violent crime in his city. It will show that the reduction in burglary has all but disappeared. It will show an increase in car conversion and car crime in this country. In fact, one of the closest advisers of the Minister of Police told the media that car crime is an epidemic in this country.

What are we going to do about it? Well, the way that one fixes car crime is to have a strong police presence in the community. Sending 40 of our police officers to the Solomon Islands is no way to maintain a strong police presence in this community. That is why I tell this Labour Government that this is the least of its worries. I tell those members that 65,000 New Zealanders have signed a petition that says they do not like the way Helen Clark and the Labour Government are dealing with the seabed and foreshore issue. Half a million New Zealanders will be given the opportunity to vote on whether that Government should be entitled to deal with the seabed and foreshore issue in the appalling way that it is doing. I say that that is the least of Labour members’ worries.

Those police should be here in New Zealand maintaining law and order in our country because we have so many problems here. Let me tell members what the crime statistics will show at the end of August. They will show that violent crime is at its third record level in a row. So that is 3 years of increases in a row. It will show that car crime in parts of New Zealand has risen by up to 25 percent. It will show that in parts of Auckland less than one in 17 burglaries is solved. It will show that in parts of North Shore a car will be broken into every 9 minutes—as in the rest of the country. That is what the stats will show. One way to improve that is to have a much stronger police presence—and sending 40 police officers to the Solomons is not the answer. The Government, though, should be complimented on at least one small piece of consultation—

💬 David Benson-Pope: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. It is rather embarrassing to have to listen to this completely irrelevant attack on the Government’s policy on police, when clearly the bill is about intervention in the Solomon Islands. The member should be ruled out of order

Probably the best thing to do is ignore that silly little point of order. This bill does cover the police and the various responsibilities they will have under misconduct or neglect of duty, and it is inherent in the bill that it is talking about the police team in the Solomon Islands. So it is quite legitimate for Opposition members to say, about the Solomon Islands, that we do not believe that this is the best use of the New Zealand police. We would rather have those officers here in New Zealand, in this community, reducing crime, because it is out of control. The statistics at the end of this month will show that crime is out of control.

The Government can do all it likes to try to argue that the New Zealand Police has not spent its budget, so it has had plenty of opportunity to get money. That is the wimpiest argument I have ever heard. In fact this Government is underfunding the police. On a per-head of population basis the funding is dropping. There are fewer resources available, and less effort is going into targeting the hot spots, but that is desperately needed. The National Party says this Government cannot be relied upon or trusted to support the police in a way we would expect. If the Government really wanted to support the Solomons community by sending a strong New Zealand Police force, it would not send only 40 officers. We have gang problems all around this country—

💬 David Benson-Pope: Why don’t we hear about National’s policy?

We would have cops on the streets focusing on street crime—the stuff the Labour Government has given up on. We think it is unacceptable that in the 1 hour we have been debating this bill, six cars will have been broken into, and only one of those crimes will ever be solved. We think it is outrageous that in the 1 hour we have been debating this bill, three cars will have been stolen, and we will be lucky if one is ever returned to its owner. This is just not good enough, because it is the sort of street crime that is getting out of control under this Labour Government. This side of the House says we need those police in our country, because that is the most pressing concern of the communities that need to be assured there will be appropriate law enforcement for them.

I am going to break with the precedent set by the previous speaker and actually talk about the bill before the House. In case that member wants to know, it is called the Crimes and Misconduct (Overseas Operations) Bill. I admit to being a bit confused about the National Party’s position on this bill, because the speech we have just heard from the Hon Tony Ryall was quite different from that of his colleague Mr Wayne Mapp. Although I understand that there are issues in their caucus at the moment, I suggest that communication is still important, and they should engage in it.

What Mr Ryall did not say, of course, was whether the National Party supported the deployment to the Solomons. I also profess to be a bit confused that whereas the National Party constantly bleats to this Government about the importance of being a responsible member of the international community, it does not seem to want to support operations in our own backyard. New Zealand has always played an important role as a peacekeeper and protector of democracy in its backyard—the Pacific region—and I am proud of that.

This bill will minimise the exposure of the New Zealand Police and civilians to prosecution in the Solomon Islands, but, obviously, it will also apply to any similar non-UN type of operation in the future. Although we hope we will not have to enact the protections this bill provides beyond the deployment to the Solomons, unfortunately there may be occasions when a similar non-UN operation is called for, and these protections will guide that mission as well. I commend this bill to the House.

The member who has just resumed her seat is new in the House, and I will give her a little bit of advice: she should not be so cheeky to senior members of this House, because it is likely that in 18 months she will not be a member anyway.

The Government whip is right about one thing—for a change. He said that this bill is about intervention in the Solomon Islands, and he is right. The bill makes provision for bringing under the purview of New Zealand jurisdiction those officers of ours who have been committed to the Solomon Islands and who are not already covered by the provisions that normally cover members of the Defence Force—namely, the police. I want to commend the speech made by my colleague Tony Ryall, because although it is all very nice that we are sending our police over to the Solomon Islands, at the same time the Government should make sure that we have sufficient police to tackle the problems here in New Zealand. Clearly, they are not doing that.

The issue of intervention in the Solomon Islands throws up the bigger picture, and that is the fact of the matter. Of course it is important for New Zealand to be there. Located as we are in the Pacific, one of our first responsibilities is to ensure our regional security, and that we must do in conjunction with Australia. I am only disappointed that we waited so long to stand up and be counted and show that we do understand our responsibilities in the region, and that if there ever were an area of the world where we should be first in, it is our own region. That is a fact—other countries further afield look to New Zealand and Australia to take the lead in places like the Solomons. My regret, as I said, was that we did not show some leadership earlier, and particularly considering that we have a very fine track record of dealing with similar situations.

Our track record in dealing with the Bougainville issue, under the leadership of the Rt Hon Don McKinnon, was absolutely exemplary. It was done for the right reasons, and in a way that gave us the leadership on that issue, and it is only right and proper that New Zealand shows leadership. What I cannot stand is the sight of lots of photos of Ministers on the other side sending away so many of our young men and women to hot spots overseas, but with so few resources. Those Ministers love photo opportunities; they love waving to the military—and to the police, no doubt. They love to shoot up to Cairns to say: “Bye, bye. Away you go. You’re doing a great job.” But that is not the way to approach those kinds of missions. These things have to be planned. As I say, our first responsibility is to our region, and where that is also possible, then further afield.

But this Government has shown—and there is a lot of public comment, so it is not just my words—that it is not averse to using our Defence Force as its own personal toy, for its spin, and to cover up the gaps in its defence policy. For proof of that one need only look at the New Zealand Herald of Thursday, 31 July: “Ex-chief savages defence policy”. How he managed to keep quiet when he was running the show is a tribute to his integrity. But now that he is not there, he can come out and speak the truth. Air Marshal Carey Adamson says that defence policy is being decided “on the run”. How shameful is that for our men and women in the military? “The Labour-led Government,” says the Herald article, “has sent forces to Afghanistan, committed soldiers to the reconstruction of postwar Iraq, and is assisting an Australian-led mission to end unrest in the Solomon Islands.” “What worries me’’, Carey Adamson states—[Interruption]—“is that we seem to be going pretty heavily on peacekeeping, but we’re not doing a lot of the professional training episodes. If you’re throwing away training just so you can go and do some peacekeeping…then the overall capability starts winding down.”

Minister Burton’s response to that was so weak as to be laughable. Apparently, he said that peacekeeping deployments had “helped to raise capability levels in the Defence Force.” What on earth does that mean? What would a “peacenik” know about it, what would raise capability levels in our Defence Force? Absolutely nothing! It is a tragedy that we have a Minister of Defence who thinks he can tell the former Chief of Defence Force, Air Marshal Carey Adamson, what raises capability levels. [Interruption] Again, on the weekend the New Zealand Herald stated that Labour was “running scared on defence”. It had a major editorial that absolutely underpinned what I said earlier, which was that this Government loves the photo opportunities.

💬 Lindsay Tisch: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I draw your attention to page 51 of Speakers’ Rulings. There has been a barrage of interjections from the senior whip. They are unfounded and just a continual stream of nonsense. Under Speaker’s ruling 51/5, I ask that that member give our speaker a fair go with her speech.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member is quite right. The member will be heard in silence.

This Government loves the photo opportunities. Its Ministers love to have photos waving our soldiers, our men and women, bye-bye, and sending them off to hot spots in the Solomons and further afield—dangerous hot spots I might add—and without proper resources. In fact, what resources we have cannot make it there anyway, because the four Hercules are grounded. It is absolutely shameful that this Government treats our military in that way. It uses the military for its own purposes, to fill in the cracks in its defence policy and foreign policy. The Prime Minister made gaffes in relation to Iraq, so what did she do? She sent some personnel over there. Iraq is a highly dangerous spot, and so are Afghanistan and the Solomons.

When we are dealing with that sort of turmoil around the world, we cannot afford to have defence policy being made on the run in the way that this Government is doing, and in the way that Air Marshal Carey Adamson said it was doing. Who, indeed, would know better than him? He headed our military for some years, and kept his integrity. He remained quiet while he headed the organisation, but now he is able to come out and tell the truth for what it is. It is not only the Opposition parties saying that; it is someone who knows.

The Minister of Defence has the temerity to tell Air Marshal Carey Adamson what he thinks raises the capability of the military. What a laugh, coming from a “peacenik” who in his former life protested in peace marches, and now comes here and tells us that. What an insult that he should be running the Defence Force and telling Carey Adamson what his job is. Government members might sit there and laugh and bring these bills to the House, but they cannot run away from those things that are being said, like the newspaper headlines “Ex-chief savages defence policy” and “Labour running scared on defence”. That is the truth of the matter. Those things underpin the bill that now sits before us, so a simple intervention is actually not that, at all. This Government has perpetrated a huge failure in defence policy on this country.

Bill read a first time, and referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee.