Estimates Debate — Vote Foreign Affairs and Trade

I rise to speak on behalf of the Green Party, and particularly of our human rights and foreign affairs spokesperson, Keith Locke. The Greens want the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and of course the ministry, to be focused on promoting human rights around the world in a more systematic and bold way than they are now. Labour has gone considerably further than the preceding National Government on human rights issues, but sometimes it baulks at the final hurdle.

We have seen that over the last month on Zimbabwe. The Government has taken a strong stand against the Zimbabwean cricket team coming here in December this year, because of the inhumane, repressive actions of the Mugabe regime, and the Government will not be giving visas to a visiting Zimbabwean cricket team. The Prime Minister also moved a strong motion today condemning the Black Caps’ cricket tour of Zimbabwe. However, if that does not shift New Zealand Cricket and get it to go to the International Cricket Council to get out of its Zimbabwe contract, then stronger action is needed.

Only the Green Party is pushing for that stronger action in the form of a draft bill that would make the Zimbabwe tour technically illegal, and provide a token fine on New Zealand Cricket of up to $50,000. That would definitely get New Zealand Cricket out of its International Cricket Council contract. Our bill would not infringe on any person’s right to travel, but would just put a token sanction on New Zealand Cricket for going ahead with an official tour in the same way that economic sanctions, which New Zealand has enforced in the past on several countries, put some legal restraints on businesses trading overseas.

On China, the Government has spoken out against some of the actions of the one-party Chinese regime more than the previous National Government did. However Labour has been fairly timid about pushing for the right of the Tibetan people to self-determination, and it does not acknowledge Taiwan’s right to self-determination. In both cases, the Green Party is not advocating independence but is just promoting the right of the people themselves to determine their own constitutional structures. Our co-leader, Rod Donald, sparked a wave of support across New Zealand when he held up a Tibetan flag outside Parliament Buildings during the visit by the head of the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China. The Green Party strongly upholds the rights of all Chinese people who stand up for their rights of free speech and organisation, and the right to religious freedom. The Falun Gong meditation group, for example, is severely put down in China today. Many thousands of their group have been arrested and even killed. One of the reasons our Government’s human rights promotion is a bit weak is that trade interests are often seen as pre-eminent. The Labour Government is very keen on getting a free-trade agreement signed up with China, and although that does not mean it goes completely quiet on human rights, it does mean that it is treading too softly.

In Burma, MPs representing the democratic party were forced into exile when the military junta cancelled the result of the 1990 election, won overwhelmingly by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. The visiting MPs were pushed for an economic boycott of Burma. I recognise that this Government has sanctions on visits here by members of that regime, but the Government should go further. This is one of those areas where the Greens think that the Bush administration is actually doing better than New Zealand—wash my mouth out! It bans imports from Burma, and it bans investment in Burma. Standing up for democracy in our region is particularly important, and is perhaps the real test. It is relatively easy to speak out against the repression in Darfur, which is so far away, and when we do not have much in the way of political or economic relations with the Sudan.

The test in our region and in the Pacific today is how strongly we speak out for democracy in Tonga. There is a big divide in Tonga between the monarchy, which runs the show, and the people who vote in each election mainly for candidates of the human rights and democracy movement. Over the last couple of months we have seen big protests in Tonga over corruption and for higher wages for civil servants. The Green Party backs the people of Tonga in their struggle to achieve democratic government, economic justice, and an end to corruption. It will require a strong Green presence in the next Parliament, and perhaps in the Government, to get Labour to speak out much more strongly for human rights in Tonga and elsewhere.

I am very happy to speak to Vote Foreign Affairs and Trade, as it includes NZAID. But before I do, I want to make reference to the capability review carried out by the State Services Commission working with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, because I am really concerned. Over the last few weeks and months we have heard this whole story about tax cuts, and we have been told that the simple way to fund tax cuts is to cut the bureaucracy. Those who tell us this refer to the bureaucracy as “pen-pushers”. They totally forget the bureaucracy that represents us overseas—our diplomats, whom we call on absolutely in times of urgency. I will refer to that in a minute.

The capability review was done. As a result of the capability review, which is referred to in the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee’s report on the estimates, a 5-year funding package was designed to enhance the ministry’s capability in areas crucial to Government security and prosperity priorities. I would like to know whether, if any party but Labour forms a Government, it will honour such funding that has gone into protecting New Zealand’s interests.

There were five main areas of increased funding. One was simply remuneration. If we are asking people to do trading deals, we need them to be good lawyers. If we are asking people to define the marine areas between Australia and New Zealand, we need them to be good international lawyers. They do not come cheaply, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has to compete out there with private enterprise and overseas organisations. Remuneration meant that we were losing a number of really highly qualified people into areas of private enterprise.

We also need good infrastructure. By that I mean that it is too easy to bomb undefended buildings owned by embassies in some of the more exciting places around the world. Therefore, we have to protect the people who work for us overseas. Some of them had not been well protected. Their infrastructure had been left to run down. It was very important that we dealt with that.

This includes information technology. I could take members into some of our overseas embassies and find the room that contains the machine that sends messages overseas, and the axe that is on the wall in case this room is invaded—I saw it in Vienna—in which case one takes the axe to the machine and breaks it down so that the information cannot be coded and sent back to New Zealand. Information technology inside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—

💬 Darren Hughes: I bet the National Party caucus wishes it had that system.

It may well do. This information technology really needed to be updated. Quite seriously, we had people unable to communicate with each other easily inside our foreign embassies.

Then, of course, we have training, particularly training in languages. The world is increasingly getting smaller, but the languages are still different. Under a previous Government, language training was savagely cut. We have replaced that training. We have restored the capability of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. This is called public service. This restoration of ability is in danger from parties that say they will cut the public service. They have talked only about not cutting some things in health and education, but this is a public service that is in danger of being cut in return for $30, $13, or $6 a week for some people—maybe.

Then we come to the question of understanding how crucial it is to have a solid public service in, for instance, our response to the tsunami. The phones went bananas when that tsunami happened. Thank goodness we used the Red Cross out there this time. But I came into the department 2 or 3 days later and found 30 or 40 people working on the books, taking down details from the Red Cross to check where New Zealanders were in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc. They were doing that as overtime work, I suppose one would say, but they surely were not getting overtime. That sort of consular work needs to be supported and upheld by a ministry—that is, public service.

Another area in this vote is disarmament. It is mentioned again in the estimates, because we have put in funding of $1.2 million sought for contributions to the G8 global partnership. Some of that money is there to make sure we do not have people out there selling nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction such as chemical weapons, taking them from places like Russia and redistributing them around the world.

That is why New Zealand has contributed money for the destruction, with the support of the Russian Government, of chemical weapons inside the former Soviet Union. That is valid work. It is work about peace. It is work about building and holding a nuclear-free world. That is something we hold to very, very strongly—not just in the Labour-Progressive Government but in New Zealand.

There is no way our nuclear-free status will be gone by lunchtime. That would absolutely fly in the face of a commitment we have made and stood for on the international stage for so long, and on which we have been honoured for the work we have done.

Then I think about multilateralism. One of the reasons why we did not go into Iraq and join the coalition of the willing is that that was the antithesis of multilateralism. That was countries deciding to go in on their own, with a few friends. They were a strange variety of friends. They were countries that really wanted to be friends because it would probably be to their financial advantage to be friends. New Zealand did not do that. We have been challenging—and New Zealand citizens have been challenging—Dr Brash to say whether he would now go, or whether he would have then have gone, the unilateral way rather than the multilateral way of working within the United Nations systems. That is what we are on about, and that is what we support and work with.

The multilateral system, though, requires an extraordinary amount of hard work, and it requires support. As the Minister with responsibility for working with the disability sector will know, one of our ambassadors in New York chaired the committee on the disabilities treaty—I cannot think of its exact name—that is being worked on, and won us enormous kudos around the world for his ability to listen to and work with disabled members of the international community in looking for a system of human rights. That same ambassador also won us enormous kudos for his work with the small Island States, particularly at the conference in Mauritius following straight on from the tsunami. Then, of course, we have the kudos we get from the work of other ambassadors such as our disarmament ambassador in Geneva, who has recently coordinated the New Agenda Coalition and chaired the conference on disarmament. Such people know and believe in multilateralism, and New Zealand flags have flown high because of their work.

Finally I come to NZAID. NZAID, a new baby on the block, is a semi-autonomous agency. It sits on its own and has worked out where it goes. Right now we have a report out there internationally saying how good it is, but asking us to please give them some more money. Well, in the estimates we have. We have made an increase of 23.5 percent—an extra $60 million.

There are numerous examples of the achievements we will be making and working on as we focus on negating poverty in the Pacific. All New Zealanders should be proud of these ministries and the work they do. They should be funded seriously, as we have demonstrated we will do, and as we as a Government have done.

I want to take a brief call because this is an important debate and it is not one that always attracts a great deal of attention—not that I hold myself up as an authority on foreign affairs issues, but it is something I have a particular interest in.

💬 Shane Ardern: Thank God for that!

Unlike Mr Ardern, who has never been much further than the farm gate, nine members of my family have given service to this country, and they have contributed in many ways. So, because of that connection, I do maintain an interest in foreign affairs issues.

This issue has been very prominent in the media recently, and more so because of the huge uncertainty coming from the Leader of the Opposition, Don Brash, about the position the National Party would have taken in regard to Iraq. This is not a light issue. This is about sending combat troops overseas. This is about sending our sons and our brothers. I am a parent. I have a 33-year-old son who would be old enough to be conscripted or required to go if the situation were exacerbated, so we have a personal interest in these types of matters.

What was glaringly obvious to this country was that Don Brash clearly cannot be relied upon in a time of crisis. Did anybody feel like saying: “Gosh, this man makes me feel safe.”? Did anybody feel like we felt when Tony Blair came on the BBC after the first tragic bombings in London, where he made us feel safe? Did we feel like that when Don Brash was on TV being interviewed and he was equivocating, vacillating, and could not give a straight answer if he tried? No, we did not feel safe. We saw him on television and we thought: “God help us!”, because he did not make us feel confident.

It got worse, because Mr Brash then went on television the next night and tried to clear the situation up, but he did not make the position very clear at all. In fact, it got worse. People became more embarrassed. It was one of those situations where one says: “Oh please, God, let him shut up—this is so embarrassing!”. It was like that.

That man is not good in a crisis. In a time of international and national crisis, we need to know that the person who is in charge gives us confidence and that that person knows what he or she is talking about and what he or she is doing. That person needs the ability to lead. That man could not lead a shadow, and he made us feel very much afraid that there are some people who will be misguided—innocently, in many instances—into thinking that that man could lead. That man could not lead a shadow.

One of the other issues that is of huge concern to us is his vacillation in regard to our position in Iraq, because it is not Mr Brash and the chaps over there who are going. They are not capable. But many young people in New Zealand would be capable of going. They are the young people who would be going. They are the young people, I have to say—and I am not saying this too emotively—who would have been home in body bags by now because, as sure as night follows day, we would have suffered casualties.

That was the man who would have sent people away without any certainty or confidence about why he was doing it. They are huge decisions to make; they are not decisions that one seeks information from one’s advisers on. They are issues where one builds up a lot of personal experience and knowledge before one sends mothers’ sons away to be shot. I do not have any confidence in Mr Brash’s position on Iraq, at all.

The National Party is making a big mistake about its position on New Zealand’s nuclear-free policy. It is very worrying and very dangerous.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Justice