Motions — New Zealand Cricket—Tour of Zimbabwe

I move, That this House, noting with grave concern the oppression by the Government of Zimbabwe of its own people and its gross violation of human rights, calls upon New Zealand Cricket to abandon the proposed Black Caps tour to Zimbabwe, and urges the International Cricket Council to exclude Zimbabwe from international tours while gross human rights abuses continue in that country. The Government of Zimbabwe launched its abhorrent so-called “operation clear out rubbish” campaign on 19 May. It is estimated that more than 700,000 people have been made homeless or jobless, and that another 2.4 million have been affected to varying degrees. The victims represent some of the most vulnerable people in Zimbabwe. The New Zealand Government has long been outspoken against the growing authoritarianism and abuses of the Mugabe regime. We have spoken out about the corruption of the election process, the abuse of human rights, and the undermining of a free judiciary and media. We have condemned the mismanagement of a corrupt and self-serving regime that has destroyed the country’s economy and left 80 percent of the people unemployed. We deplore the near-halving of the life expectancy of Zimbabweans to 33 years.

This latest action, with the so-called “operation clear out rubbish”, prompted the UN Secretary-General himself to send a special envoy to Zimbabwe to assess the situation. Her report, released over the weekend, said that the Zimbabwe Government’s campaign to demolish homes and displace people is a disastrous venture, which has been carried out in an indiscriminate and unjustified manner, with indifference to human suffering and, in repeated cases, with disregard to several provisions of national and international legal frameworks. Noting that the operation had precipitated a humanitarian crisis of immense proportions, the special envoy called for it to stop immediately.

It is against that background that the New Zealand Government, along with, I understand, most political parties in this House, has continually urged New Zealand Cricket to abandon the Black Caps tour of Zimbabwe. Most New Zealanders agree that playing cricket in Zimbabwe at this time of profound crisis is deeply inappropriate. New Zealand Cricket has undoubtedly been placed in a difficult position by the International Cricket Council. New Zealand Cricket is obliged either to carry out the tour or to face crippling financial penalties, some of which would be payable to Zimbabwe. The New Zealand Government has asked the International Cricket Council to cancel the tour and to change its rules so that tours can be called off on the grounds of gross human rights violations.

The International Cricket Council has refused, and has made it clear that the imposition of penalties on New Zealand Cricket could be avoided only by the passage of legislation here in New Zealand making the tour to Zimbabwe illegal. The Government is not prepared to support such legislation. Freedom of passage to and from this country is a basic right enjoyed by New Zealanders. Two wrongs do not make a right, and abrogating these particular rights is not an option for us.

This motion calls on the International Cricket Council to act now in the interests of cricket and of the international reputation of the council. The New Zealand Government has also been in dialogue with a range of countries, urging that pressure be brought to bear on Mr Mugabe and his Government to stop the destruction of homes and to restore good governance and the rule of law to Zimbabwe.

This is the time for leadership from the wider international community. The United Nations Security Council and the Commission on Human Rights should not stand back. We also urge Zimbabwe’s neighbours in the Southern African Development Community to condemn the home clearance campaign by the Mugabe regime. We call on countries supporting that regime through military and other forms of assistance to cease such assistance.

Through this motion the New Zealand Parliament urges New Zealand Cricket and the International Cricket Council to heed the call of public opinion in New Zealand and around the world, and to abandon the Black Caps tour of Zimbabwe.

The National Party supports this motion moved by the Government today. We are a party that very much values freedom and choice for individual New Zealanders. This motion calls on the New Zealand Cricket administration to exercise its choice in support of the many citizens of Zimbabwe who have no choice and, it would seem, very little freedom.

No one could fail to be moved by the punitive and oppressive actions of Zimbabwe’s current leader, Robert Mugabe. The allegation, as outlined by the Prime Minister, that he bulldozed some 65,000 homes simply because they were occupied by people who had opposed him in last April’s elections is abhorrent to all New Zealanders. Human rights groups have estimated that hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans have been displaced by his actions. Such actions surely call into question the legitimacy of the Mugabe regime.

In supporting this motion, we do not hold out much hope that the International Cricket Council will remove Zimbabwe from the international touring programme. The problem is that too many of the countries that sit on the International Cricket Council are without the experience of freedom and choice that New Zealanders take for granted. But, in supporting this motion, the National Party demonstrates that we are not complacent about the ideals of freedom and choice for New Zealanders. In supporting this motion, we affirm those values. For that reason, we will not support legislation to ban this tour.

Should New Zealand Cricket choose to progress from Namibia to play the test series in Zimbabwe, then it would be our fervent hope that the New Zealand team remained safe throughout its stay in that country. We appreciate that the team has considered various protest actions that it might take when in Zimbabwe, but we recognise that Mr Mugabe has imposed laws carrying a 20-year prison term for anyone who criticises him. It is our hope, then, that in the days ahead New Zealand Cricket will reconsider the merit of it putting its players in such difficult circumstances.

We will be supporting this motion.

New Zealand First would support any action by the United Nations in respect of the Mugabe regime, but the effect on sport of cancelling the cricket tour would be extraordinarily serious and envelope many innocent people. The future of New Zealand’s holding the Cricket World Cup would be in jeopardy, and the future of New Zealand’s holding the Rugby World Cup would be in jeopardy, as would the right to play sport of people like Cara Black, who has come here from Zimbabwe to play many, many tennis tournaments in this country. And all the time trade with Zimbabwe is not affected. I notice that China has come out in support of Robert Mugabe, yet we as a country have two parties obsessed with signing a free-trade agreement with China.

There are three of us in this Parliament who remember what Sir Robert Muldoon said about Robert Mugabe 25 years ago. He, of course, was pilloried by the Labour Party at the time, and by the usual card-carrying members of the Labour Party working in the media. There is nothing so antiseptic as the statement that he was right, but about Robert Mugabe he was right. Twenty-five years later on, with the enormous human tragedy that has occurred in that country, we have learnt to regret some of the rash judgments we made about that person at that time.

New Zealand First supports this motion in so far as it expresses abhorrence of the behaviour of the Mugabe regime, but we are concerned at the perceived hypocrisy when it comes to the question of sport. Sadly, many nations suffer from despotic, inhumane regimes, and we play sport with them. The question is how are they really different from Zimbabwe under the Mugabe regime. The answer is they are not, but because of their size and influence we blind our eyes to the facts, head off to play sport with them, and, in fact, welcome our association with them. All we in New Zealand First are asking is that, rather than posturing and posing, why we do not—for the first time on this issue—try to be consistent.

I rise on behalf of the ACT party to condemn Robert Mugabe, his tyrannical regime, and the oppression of Zimbabweans for years now. We opposed Robert Mugabe from day one, because it was clear that he was a socialist dictator and a tyrant. What we do not agree with is this motion. We will oppose this motion because it is all a bit precious for this Parliament to stand up and call upon New Zealand Cricket to abandon its “proposed tour”. Well, actually, the team has gone. It is on the tour now.

We go back to fundamental rights that every New Zealander should have. The first is that New Zealanders should be free to travel wherever they choose. The second is that New Zealanders should be free to play sport with whomever they choose. New Zealanders have those freedoms, which set us apart from tyrannical regimes where Governments tell people what they can and cannot do.

Mr Peters is quite right. If Parliament and our Government are to start deciding who can play sport with whom, because we do not like the particular policies of a tyrant, where does it end? I am sorry to inform the Prime Minister that Mr Mugabe’s regime is not the only one in the world we have trouble with. Many, many regimes are oppressive and take away the individual rights of their citizenry.

The ACT party says that it is up to New Zealand Cricket to make the decision about whether to tour, and it is in the best position to do so. We should remind ourselves that the 10-year tour programme was developed and made public 4 years ago. Everyone knew that this tour was on the cards. It was only at the last minute—heading into an election—that it became a political issue that politicians here in New Zealand thought they might make some hay over.

We should think very carefully about the costs we have imposed on New Zealand Cricket by throwing the tour into uncertainty; and not just on New Zealand Cricket, because other sporting codes, hoping to host tours here to New Zealand, when they go to win the rights to host a sporting event will have the concern that our Parliament, or our Government, might decide that one of the potential participants is not to be allowed here. So yes, the ACT party condemns Mr Mugabe and his regime, but we oppose this motion for the reasons outlined.

The Green Party strongly supports this motion. It is the least that this Parliament should do. Back in April, when I wrote to the Prime Minister asking her to do everything in her power to stop the Black Caps’ tour of Zimbabwe, she said that personally she would not be seen dead there but “The government does not tell them where to tour or where not.” So the Government has come a long way since April. Today’s motion, by calling on New Zealand Cricket to abandon the proposed Black Caps’ tour to Zimbabwe, recognises that our sporting heroes are about to become pawns in Mugabe’s power game. The road to this point has been long and tortuous, but nothing compared with what the people of Zimbabwe have had to put up with over recent weeks, months, and years.

The motion falls short of banning outright the Black Caps’ tour. That contrasts with the Government’s excellent decision to ban the Zimbabwe team’s visit to New Zealand in December. Of course that team should not come here while Mugabe continues to brutalise his people, but why is our cricketers’ right to play cricket in Zimbabwe inalienable, yet their right to play cricket with the Zimbabwe team in New Zealand is not? For all the Government’s good initiatives, such as raising the Zimbabwe situation with the G8, the IMF, and the UN Security Council, its failure to stop the Black Caps from leaving New Zealand, although stopping the Zimbabwe team from coming here, could be seen as a double standard. Unless today’s motion does lead to New Zealand Cricket withdrawing the Black Caps, it will be seen as our waving a wet bus ticket at Robert Mugabe. It matters not that bus tickets, wet or dry, are of little use in Zimbabwe at the moment because there is no fuel for its buses to run on.

Mugabe has already made it plain what he thinks of New Zealand’s diplomatic initiatives through our Ambassador to China, who claims that China has rebuffed New Zealand’s attempt to ask that regime not to prop up the Mugabe regime. Mugabe’s belligerence and the immorality of the International Cricket Council led the Green Party to conclude that the only way the tour could be stopped was to pass legislation making it illegal for the Black Caps to go to Zimbabwe. We did not propose that legislation lightly, but neither do we believe that it breaches our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Unfortunately, our Prime Minister labelled it Mugabe-style legislation, even though she knew it was nothing of the sort because freedom of passage is not threatened. We have confirmed that the bill is consistent with our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act with a legal opinion from Russell McVeagh.

The question now remains whether today’s motion does constitute a clear directive, as required by the International Cricket Council. If it does, then New Zealand Cricket could pull out and abandon the tour without fear of penalty, which was our objective all along. I hope that the Government will convey that the overwhelming view of this Parliament is that the tour should not proceed, that it tells Martin Snedden promptly of that view, and that he in turn will instruct his players to return to New Zealand. It is time to call the International Cricket Council’s bluff on this issue. The Indian Government did not pass legislation to stop its team from going to Pakistan, but unfortunately Phil Goff asked the International Cricket Council what he should do, rather than telling it what we are going to do.

We say that it is all very well to play by the International Cricket Council’s rules, but if the rules are rigged against fair play, then we must make our own laws. The International Cricket Council talks a lot about the spirit of cricket. What the people of Zimbabwe face, I say to Mr Franks, is an illegitimate dictator masterminding a deliberate campaign of genocide against his own people. If that does not infringe the spirit of cricket that the International Cricket Council holds so dear, I do not know what does. The UN report that the Prime Minister referred to states that Operation Drive Out Trash is a disastrous venture that has left 700,000 people homeless or jobless, and it demands that those responsible be punished because it has been carried out in an indiscriminate and unjustified manner. So I ask which is the greater evil: suspending the right of New Zealand Cricket to send a sports team to Zimbabwe, or letting Robert Mugabe and his henchmen continue to destroy the hopes and dreams of a nation?

All too often we are powerless in the face of Government oppression and human tragedy. With Zimbabwe, we can make a difference. When Norman Kirk sent the frigates Otago and Canterbury to Mururoa in 1973, he did not expect the French Government to stop nuclear testing overnight, but that symbolic protest galvanised our nation and changed the course of history. Stopping the Black Caps’ tour would be another symbolic gesture. It would not stop Mugabe and his atrocities overnight, but it would help to end his reign of terror, and it would help the people of Zimbabwe—all Zimbabweans, both black and white—to be able to sing with hope, rather than with despair, Henry Olonga’s song that starts: “This land our land is our Zimbabwe, a land of peace for you and me, Once born in pain and segregation but now we live in harmony.”

The ultimate right of any New Zealander, as a free citizen, is the right to be able to travel abroad without molestation or restraint by the New Zealand Government. It is a different matter, as far as New Zealand’s protection of its international borders from people it might regard as undesirable, for whatever reason, is concerned. Therefore, we in United Future say that the New Zealand Government should not be party to legislative action to prevent the tour to Zimbabwe from occurring.

Zimbabwe, under Mugabe, is a country in a parlous state of affairs. Democracy has been stifled. Human dignity is being trampled on daily. A man who was regarded briefly in the early 1980s as the saviour of his nation, now stands as its ultimate destroyer. We have no truck or tolerance with that type of behaviour. But it is a different matter to say that the best way of showing our abhorrence of his trampling on human rights is to trample on the rights of our citizens to exercise their freedom of association with others. As I said earlier, New Zealand can and should restrict entry to its country by teams representing Zimbabwe and standing up for the Mugabe regime.

An earlier speaker tried to draw a parallel between Norman Kirk and the frigates sent to Mururoa in 1973. I would observe that on that occasion when the frigates were sent, I think the words he used at the Devonport wharf were that it was to be a silent, accusing finger. The frigates were not sent to impede the carrying out of those tests—reprehensible as all New Zealanders thought they might be. So the suggestion that the passage of legislation and the banning of the New Zealand cricket team from going to Zimbabwe is somehow a parallel activity, I think grossly exaggerates the case.

In the circumstances it is entirely appropriate for this Parliament, on behalf of the citizens of New Zealand, to express its view on whether this tour should take place. It is clear, as one moves around New Zealand, that the vast majority of people in this country are not in favour of this tour occurring, and do wish to see the Black Caps and New Zealand Cricket rethink the position they have taken. In those terms it is therefore entirely appropriate for this Parliament to express its view in the way it is intended in the motion that the Prime Minister has moved. United Future will support that motion, but we do not favour any restrictive action that in effect says to the people of Zimbabwe: “We are right with you, and we’re going to show how far we are with you by indulging in precisely the same tactics that we are protesting against occurring in your country.” That is hypocrisy. That is unacceptable.

I earnestly hope that when the New Zealand team gets to Namibia, and has the chance to reflect upon the situation it is about to embark upon, cooler and wiser heads will prevail and the team does decide to come home. If the cricketers do continue with their tour, then obviously it has to be the hope of all of us that they do so in peace and safety. I cannot wish them well for the tour, but I hope that when they return home it is safely and without damage to their physical presence, although their reputation as a team and as a sport will have suffered considerably.

The Progressive Party strongly supports this motion. It notes also the Government’s intention to prevent a tour of New Zealand by a Zimbabwean cricket team later this year.

I have played cricket for much of my life, including for the parliamentary eleven over many years, and I love the game dearly. But it is hard to think of worse circumstances in which a national cricket team from this country could tour Zimbabwe. In expressing the view to the New Zealand and international cricket authorities that the tour by the New Zealand cricket team to Zimbabwe should be abandoned, I am sure the House does not wish to punish either our own cricketers individually or New Zealand Cricket collectively. They are not the cause of Zimbabwe’s miseries. I would, however, like to point out to Mr Peters that those of us who were around in the late 1970s and early 1980s remember well the comment about Mugabe “coming out of the trees”, as was so nicely put by the former Prime Minister Mr Muldoon. The same people, of course—the same Government—described Nelson Mandela as a terrorist. So those kinds of jibes did nothing to uphold black leadership that was good; it just blackguarded all black leadership, regardless of merit.

The real message from this House today should be solidarity with the suffering, starving, and oppressed people of Zimbabwe. There will, of course, come a time of reckoning for Mr Mugabe and for those who have assisted in his criminal actions. Zimbabwe is suspended from the Commonwealth. The International Criminal Court is now in place in The Hague, with jurisdiction over crimes against humanity committed anywhere in the world. So Robert Mugabe and his fellow torturers should be careful where they travel. In the United Nations, pressure is building for some sort of collective action. In Zimbabwe itself there will come a time—and we all hope, no question, that that will be soon—when Mugabe’s dictatorship will be held to account for its crimes and abuses.

Our national cricket team tours under the protest of this House and the people of New Zealand. My earlier intention was that this Parliament should discuss on a non-partisan basis whether there might be agreement by legislative means to prevent this tour from taking place. That discussion proved impossible, not least because of the shortage of time to give proper parliamentary and select committee consideration to important issues such as the rights of New Zealanders to leave their own country. There are lessons, however, about the proper consultation and consensus-building processes that I sincerely hope will be learnt by all who seek cross-party support on important issues like this in the future.

The Progressive Party still, however, supports this resolution as a means of at least sending a message. We acknowledge and deplore the suffering in Zimbabwe, and we want to see that the rules of international cricket will allow for the cancellation of a tour to any country where there are gross human rights abuses.

The Māori Party supports the report and recommendations of the special envoy to the United Nations. South Africa has now responded, and we are satisfied with that response. New Zealand must apply the same consistency of action towards all countries where human rights are being abused. Will we condemn other countries and stop sporting tours there, where human rights abuses continue?

The Māori Party condemns human rights abuses wherever they occur and we do not support the motion.

A party vote was called for on the question that the motion be agreed to.

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I seek a clarification of the vote. We heard clearly from the Hon Winston Peters that he was opposed to the motion, but his party voted for it. Was that intentional or was that—

That is not a point of order. Would the member please sit down. The party has voted.

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. My point is really to do with that. The member has another 6 days left in this House and it is rather late in one’s career to start grandstanding, but if he does, he should try to get his facts right.

Thank you, Mr Peters. At most, that is a point of information, but it is not a point of order.