Condolences for people of Haiti
Our heart-felt condolences go to the people of Haiti today.
Over the Christmas/ New Year holiday period, we looked on in shock and horror as this fragile and poverty stricken country crumbled in a devastating earthquake.
It seemed so unfair that one of the poorest countries in the world should fall victim to a natural disaster of this magnitude.
Port au Prince is an earthquake prone capital just like Wellington.
But we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars earthquake-proofing our civic buildings.
Haitian buildings look less stable than matchbox houses.
So why was there no solid infrastructure in Haiti?
The simple answer is that Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world and we are not.
The real tragedy for Haiti is that before the earthquake hit, the government of René Préval had committed itself to a huge program of development.
The international community, led by former US President Bill Clinton, had got behind Haiti.
A huge program was about to begin.
Finally, this country was on the right road for growth after years of dictatorship and corrupt government.
Then the earthquake hit.
Today, the international community - including New Zealand - must pick up that action plan again.
We must listen to the people of Haiti.
It is my heartfelt hope that the government will represent New Zealand and decide to play a role in that recovery phase, no matter how small our part.
We can help decide if Haiti will have a future of growth, or will return to abject poverty.
The decisions the international community make today really matter.
When NGOs and governments go in to build temporary housing and offer shelter to the thousands of homeless, we must make sure that these are built in areas where there is long term economic potential.
Because temporary housing has a habit of becoming permanent.
Not all the building should be in earthquake prone Port au Prince, for example.
Build shelters that can be expanded if the temporary dwellings end up being more permanent.
I would hope also that New Zealand will be a strong voice in the international community for jobs.
Because what the Haitian people need after the immediate relief effort is done, is jobs.
When the international community, NGOs and governments move in to help re-build the roads, the power stations and the buildings - use Haitian labour. Give the people jobs.
By all means, bring in the skilled labour Haiti doesn’t have – but Haiti doesn’t just need ‘doctors without borders’, it needs architects and engineers and accountants without borders.
Use the people of Haiti to build, and give them a living.
New Zealand will do much for the people of Haiti if we advocate for this approach to development right from the beginning.
This has been an unimaginable tragedy for Haiti. The re-building of this country must now be seen as an opportunity for a country and a people who deserve a better future.
Sending NZ SAS to Afghanistan
The Progressive Party was established only after a policy disagreement over intervention in Afghanistan. So we have passionate views about this issue.
And today we believe we must continue to support stability in Afghanistan, but the days when we should have combat troops there are over.
In 2002 Progressive supported New Zealand involvement in Afghanistan because the situation there at the time represented a clear and present threat to the civilised world.
Al qaeda had just committed a terrorist atrocity in the United States.
I was acting prime minister the day it happened.
One of those killed in the US attacks was a New Zealand citizen.
I sent a message to the US President saying New Zealand saw the attack as an attack on not only the United States, but on all civilised society. And I promised New Zealand would stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States in resisting the terrorist attacks, and we kept that promise.
The al qaeda threat was a global threat.
The Taleban responded to those attacks by giving al qaeda shelter.
In the football stadiums where election rallies are being held today, the Taleban were then carrying out mass executions for their perverted political ends.
The world could not stand by and ignore what was being done to civilisation.
The Secretary General of the UN at the time said: “The only way to win against terrorism is to organise a common international action. The main point is that the fight be led within the framework of the United Nations on the basis of the two Security Council resolutions and the General Assembly resolutions.”
That UN agreement to intervene is crucial.
International law makes it clear that the only grounds for military intervention are self-defence or UN-sanction. And so UN authority for the Afghanistan intervention was vital to ensure it complied with international law.
Once that was decided, our involvement was to send provincial reconstruction teams.
We also sent the SAS.
Their work is not soft. Willie Apiata’s Victoria Cross is proof of that.
But you cannot send children to school and sick people to hospital, and you cannot develop economies and end poverty, when terrorists are doing their best to kill and to threaten entire communities.
So I supported SAS involvement in Afghanistan to help reconstruction. My party exists because of it.
But it’s not an open-ended commitment. What we cannot support is involvement that tries to take sides in the feudal infighting in Afghanistan today. There are layers of sides in Afghanistan. We can’t pick one over the other.
We can help the country to clear itself of al qaeda, however. We must have United Nations authority to do so. We must have a firm base in international law.
But we cannot just walk away.
That would give not only Afghanistan, but northern Pakistan to the Taleban and to other ideological extremists.
Pakistan is a nuclear state. I don’t like that it is - but it is. And it is teetering dangerously. The consequences of a nuclear state like Pakistan becoming even more unstable are too dangerous to tolerate. The whole world has a strong interest in making sure that doesn’t happen.
The best contribution we can make is to support stability in Afghanistan. Therefore we should offer to be there and to help.
But I do not support doing so through a continued combat role for the SAS in Afghanistan.
We have pulled our weight there. We have spent over $180 million on military assistance and aid there.
This is a debate about the kind of assistance we offer. Our contribution today has to be towards rebuilding, and helping strengthen the Afghan National Army under democratic control following the elections later this week.
Matt Robson speech: Towards an Arctic Nuclear Weapons Free Zone
Towards an Arctic Nuclear Weapons
Free Zone
Towards a Nuclear Weapons’ Free World
Hon Matt Robson
Address at
Copenhagen Pugwash Conference
10-11 August 2009
We live in an unbalanced world in terms of what humanity needs and what humanity gets. That means we live in a world of contradictions.
Billions of our fellow citizens live without adequate, shelter, food or clothing. Over 2.5 billion human beings, 40% of the world’s population, have to try and live on less than US$2 per day. They lack adequate health care, if they get it all, and have little quality education. The great majority in this situation live in the so-called developing world. But a sizeable number who go without also live in the richest countries.
The world’s richest individuals have a combined income greater than that of the poorest 416 million.
Yet those whom Bob Dylan called ‘the masters of war’ have determined that rather than meeting these basic needs of humanity ,that military spending will take priority and that that spending needs indeed to increase.
The internationally respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported in June 2008 as follows:
World military spending grew 45 percent in the past decade with the United States accounting for nearly half of all expenditure. Military spending grew 6 per cent in 2007. And that growth continues.
In 2007 $1.338 trillion was spent on arms and other military expenditure, corresponding to 2.5 per cent of global Gross Domestic Product, or GDP – or $202 for each of the world’s 6.6 billion people.
The United States spends by far the most toward military aims, officially dishing out $547 billion last year, or 45 percent of global expenditure. Britain, China, France and Japan, their next group of big military spenders, lag far behind at just 4 to 5 percent of world military costs each.
In 2008, eight nuclear weapon states possessed almost 10,200 operational nuclear weapons. Several thousand of these nuclear weapons are kept on high alert. When all nuclear warheads are counted – operational warheads, spares, those in both active and inactive storage, and intact warheads to be dismantled, the nuclear armed states have 25,000 warheads.
So we know where the weapons of mass destruction that George Bush went looking for in Iraq are located. Those WMD's were right under the noses of George and Tony. Not with rogue states and terrorist groups but in the military installations of the largest and most powerful states and a number of them in the fragile ecosystem of the Arctic region.
SIPRI concludes that the 5 nuclear states defined by the NPT in 1968 - China, France, Russia, the UK the USA - are all in the process of deploying new nuclear weapons or have announced their intention to do so.
The de facto nuclear weapon states of Israel, India and Pakistan, and probably North Korea, are proceeding apace to develop missile systems that can deliver nuclear weapons.
In the decade to 2008 military spending in Eastern Europe went up 62 per cent. North America 65 per cent, the Middle East by 62 per cent, South Asia by 57 per cent and Africa and East Asia by 51 per cent each.
This escalation has of course been a bonanza for the Merchants of Death. Sixty-three of the hundred top weapons firms are in the USA and Western Europe. In 2006 their sales were reported as $292.3 billion. In the economic recession, they are not reported as having any great financial problems.
Joseph Stieglitz and Linda Bilmes in their wonderful research for the “Three Trillion Dollar War”, published in 2008, estimated that the USA had spent three trillion dollars on George Bush and Tony Blair’s war against Iraq. They asked how this enormous sum could have been used beneficially in the USA and the wider world.
For the USA alone, they say:
A trillion dollars could have built 8 million additional housing units, could have hired some 15 million additional public school teachers for one year; could have paid for 120 million children to attend a year of head start; or insured 530 million children for health care for one year; or provided 43 million students with four – year scholarships at public universities. Now multiply those numbers by three.
They then go on to calculate the effect if the money or even a fraction of it, for the war had been devoted to development goals for the poorest countries:
For sums less than the direct expenditures on the war, we could have fulfilled our commitment to provide 7 per cent of our gross domestic product to help developing countries – money that could have made an enormous difference to the well-being of billions living in poverty today ... two trillion dollars would enable us to meet our commitments to the poorest countries for the next third of a century.
How to redress this imbalance of expenditure?
If a referendum was held of the world’s peoples on whether military expenditure should be greatly decreased and for the abolition of all nuclear weapons in favour of the goals set out by Stieglitz and Bilmes my money would be on the bet that a thumping majority would vote yes.
Our task at this conference is to be part of a movement to mobilise humanity so that that referendum becomes a reality and a movement of solidarity across the globe grows and its voice becomes one that cannot be ignored.
Nuclear weapon free zones are a vital tool in developing that voice so that that voice becomes a powerful political force.
Creating an Arctic nuclear-free zone will be an important part of building that political force will redress the imbalance with the Antarctic and will provide an important impetus to the goal of the total abolition of all nuclear weapons.
The Southern Hemisphere
When all the countries of Africa below the equator are committed to the Treaty of Pelindaba, and that is almost complete, then every country in the southern hemisphere will be free of nuclear weapons.
This means the Pacific countries, those in Asia, Latin America and now Africa have committed themselves to rid not only their own territories of nuclear weapons but also to being part of the overwhelming number of countries committed to their total abolition.
We in New Zealand, at government level, and among the people, have long supported the call not just for a southern hemisphere nuclear weapons free zone but one that incorporates adjacent areas as well.
We are well aware that the indigenous peoples of the Pacific, in the north and south, have led the way in our region to be nuclear-free. Their territories and waters were the testing ground for the nuclear powers and they suffered terribly and continue to suffer from the effects of radiation and forced relocation.
All of Latin America, Central and South, and the Caribbean are nuclear weapons free zones.
And at the Antarctic, that area so important for the whole planet, a nuclear weapons free zone, a military free zone, has been in place since the Treaty of Antarctica of 1959. It is unimaginable now that humanity would accept nuclear weapons or any military activity in this precious heritage area for the earth.
The Madrid Protocol of 1991 to the Treaty of Antarctica has reinforced the Antarctic’s peaceful status by proclaiming that it is a natural reserve and the only activities permitted under international law are those devoted to peaceful purposes, scientific research and protection of the environment. Mining exploration is prohibited.
It is more than time, 50 years later that Antarctica is balanced by its polar opposite at the Arctic, equally important for the survival of life on this planet. The Arctic must be declared a nuclear weapons free zone for the sake of humanity for the sake of the world’s ecosystem. The wheel does not have to be reinvented. The model to achieve this goal exists in the Treaty of Antarctica and over 50 years of adherence by the whole world to its provisions.
And that NWFZ for the Arctic is what this conference will set its sights on
Checking in all nuclear weapons at the Equator
Earlier this year I had an enforced stay in a hotel in Hong Kong. To pass the time I watched a John Wayne special – 5 westerns. In one of the B-grade (or possibly C-grade) films, John Wayne, as sheriff, and Dean Martin as his deputy, battled lawlessness in a frontier town. One of their key methods was to ensure that all and sundry at the precincts of the town handed in their guns. They could pick them up on the way out.
This reminded me of my suggestion as a Minister to the, inaptly named, Conference on Disarmament at Geneva in early 2000.
Remembering the westerns I had seen on so many Saturday afternoons as a child, where they practised the John Wayne method, I suggested to the nuclear powers represented at the conference that it would be a big step forward for disarmament if they committed to check in their nuclear weapons at the Equator before entering the Southern Hemisphere.
Exactly how this would work in practice, and how the weapons would be stored and safeguarded, I had not worked out at that stage. But I am sure that those mere details could have been prescribed.
Needless to say my proposal did not receive a warm welcome from the five declared nuclear powers of the NPT, in particular the United States. One representative accused me of trying to undermine NATO with my proposal. I replied that I hadn’t had that intention but now that he mentioned it i thought that was probably a good idea.
I can advise however, that in talks with the representative of China he did state that China would commit to such a policy and that China would respect the NWFZ status of the Southern Hemisphere if all other countries did.
How do we get to our goal for the Arctic?
First of all we should remember what a step forward it would be to the goal of the NPT of abolishing all nuclear weapons if the Arctic gained the status of Antarctica.
Then we should remember the patient building and mobilising of public opinion that went into creating the NWFZ that now exist, including the most recent one in 2006 in the central Asian States.
The key is mobilising public opinion, by committed parliamentarians, peace groups, environmental groups and the mass organisations. Support can then be built nationally, regionally and internationally.
Modern technology, as events in Iran have demonstrated once again, can give the wings of Mercury to this movement. To say that someone was twittering was once an insult. Now it makes the most powerful politician quake to hear the word.
Enormous support is also building for such zones in Central Europe, East Asia and the Middle East.
In regard to the Arctic, the only Arctic states that are not already nuclear-free are the United States and Russia. That of course presents a huge obstacle. These two super powers are expanding both their military, commercial and exploratory activity as global warming relentlessly frees up large areas that were previously frozen and made access difficult or impossible.
Norway’s Foreign Minister was reported in the Guardian newspaper recently as saying that:
“The rise in temperature across the Arctic is twice the world average. Soon there will be no summer ice – that will open up new routes and new strategic issues for the world...”
And those strategic issues include the greater military presence in the Arctic, including a nuclear armed presence on submarines, aircraft and bases, as countries position themselves to take advantage of newly accessible mineral resources and a new sea route at the top of the world.
Fortunately we do no have to start from zero to try and make the call of the 2007 Canadian Pugwash group for an Arctic NWFZ a reality.
Already a Seabed Treaty forbids the stationing of nuclear weapons on the Arctic Ocean floor. The majority of Arctic states are nuclear weapon free. The majority of states are trying to work cooperatively on the key environmental questions.
But as international lawyer Donald Rothwell has pointed out:
“The current Arctic environmental protection regime is based around a collection of customary international law, fragmented multilateral and bilateral legal instruments dealing with some arctic issues, and global international instruments that have an impact in the arctic. Currently there is no unifying connector for these various components of international law which have specific and general application in the arctic. Unlike Antarctica, there is no regional infrastructure based on international law to facilitate or promote cooperation and the development of new international law.”
Our job is to work towards getting that unifying connector and to develop that new international law.
We need to work closely with all the ecological activists , as so many of us do, who are highlighting the fragility of the Arctic, the disaster that is global warming and the need to give the Arctic the type of protection that Antarctica already has.
The declaration that comes from this Conference needs to be a mobilising document that goes out by every conceivable means so that the twitter becomes a clarion call for action.
Our parliaments across the world, our mass organisations, our scientists and youth leaders and the organisations of indigenous people can take up this demand to add the Arctic, which is the heritage for all humanity and pivotal to the survival of life on the planet, to the existing and growing zones which are free of that blight on humanity – nuclear weapons.
McCully to return to pork barrel NZAid
"He should just set up a Department of Bribes and be done with it said Matt Robson.
"Being part of MFAT was exactly the problem with NZ development aid before we separated it out into a specialist division."
"It was staffed by junior diplomats on their way up or older diplomats on their way out. There was no specialist department. The programmes were in a muddle. We gave aid to two super military powers- China and India. Why? To peddle influence in their capitals not to help the poorest people. It is to that obscene policy that McCully is obviously attracted.
"Phil Goff as Foreign Minister and I as the Minister responsible for Aid deliberately separated out development aid from Foreign Affairs as it was largely being used as a fund used for New Zealand’s foreign policy aims not to help the development, in a systematic way, of the world’s poorest policy.
"Under National aid money was used by Foreign Affairs to win the support and votes of tyrants like Suharto of Indonesia and the King of Tonga. It was used to give retirement jobs like the head of the Commonwealth to ex National MPs like Don McKinnon.
"NZ Aid was a progressive step for NZ ," concluded Matt Robson.
The future of New Zealand’s overseas development aid
Loaves and Fishes cafe, Wellington.
10.25AM Friday, 27 March 2009.
Progressives have a special interest in this issue.
My colleague Matt Robson, the Progressives deputy leader, was the aid minister responsible for setting up NZ Aid.
I want to talk to you about why poverty should be the focus of our aid and development efforts.
And I particularly want to address the suggestion that we should switch our focus from poverty to economic development.
I used to be minister of economic development. So I have some insight into what is involved in an economic development programme.
Economic development is not something you can impose from the top.
You don’t go into a region, or into an entire country, and say: ‘this is how you are going to develop your economy.’
It doesn’t work. It never works.
I’ve listened to comments saying we should make our aid efforts benefit New Zealand companies.
This is profoundly wrong.
We don’t give aid to benefit New Zealand companies. We do it because we are good global citizens.
New Zealanders have always been good international citizens, prepared to shoulder our burden in the world. More New Zealanders have died in overseas wars as a proportion of our population than nearly any other country because we are always prepared to do more than our bit.
Trying to sell more of our exports to the poorest countries is not much of an economic strategy.
We are not going to develop export markets for New Zealand by focusing on how much we can sell to the poorest people in the world.
We should certainly be open to trade with the least developed countries of the world.
But trade reform alone, while necessary, is not sufficient.
The last government allowed tariff free access to products from least developed countries as far back as 2002.
I was bitterly attacked from the left for that. The Greens and a number of trade union leaders were strongly against it.
But the truth is - the proportion of imports from least developed countries hasn’t changed since then.
We haven’t been swamped by imports as critics claimed we would.
It also hasn’t been the pathway to prosperity for the poor countries, as some advocates claimed it would be.
You have to do much more.
We have to focus on much more than economic development or even aid itself.
If you focus only on economic development then in a country like the Solomons you would try to aid more value from the trees being extracted there. But there is much more to do than that.
We are talking about countries where a total billion people live in conditions we associate with the fourteenth century deprivation.
Bringing them out of poverty requires a focus on good government, on transparency and ending corruption.
More money is stolen from Africa every year by corrupt governments than the world gives the entire continent in aid. It gets stolen and put in western banks.
If we simply stopped Western banks from being used to hold the stolen proceeds of looting in Africa by corrupt political leaders, it would have the same effect as the overnight doubling of aid budgets.
A focus on economic development doesn’t even look at this issue - a focus on poverty does,
A focus on poverty requires a focus on post-conflict recovery.
Not much is going to be done about poverty in a country ruined by civil war, where any money that comes in gets spent on strengthening the military, where communities are at constant risk of attack and where the spoils of victory are distributed to one side or the other.
Focusing on these issues is crucial - but you cannot do a good job of that if you focus on economic development alone.
In the last year, trillions of dollars of wealth has been destroyed all over the world as financial markets collapse.
Governments everywhere acknowledge this economic crisis and they are scrambling to make an urgent and drastic response.
Why aren’t the billion people living in poverty an urgent global crisis too?
We could have fixed their problem forever for a fraction of the amount lost in the global financial crisis.
The entire annual aid budget of the world is less than the amount lost by some of those failed merchant banks and gigantic corporations alone.
We have the means to end global poverty.
What we lack is not the means, but the will.
NZAid embodies our will to reduce global poverty.
Smashing NZAid, setting the clock back to the past, is a hugely backward step and it interferes with our ability to fight poverty.
It is a mistake, the National government should not go down that road and we should not allow them to do so.
Focus aid on poverty elimination
Jim Anderton is a former economic development minister, and Progressive party deputy leader Matt Robson set up NZAid when he was overseas development minister.
“The poorest billion people in the world live in conditions we associate with fourteenth century deprivation. Bringing them out of poverty requires a focus on good government, on transparency and ending corruption,” Jim Anderton says.
“More money is stolen from Africa every year by corrupt governments than the world gives the entire continent in aid. It gets stolen and put in western banks. If we simply stopped Western banks from being used to hold the stolen proceeds of looting in Africa by corrupt political leaders, it would have the same effect as the overnight doubling of aid budgets. A focus on economic development doesn’t even look at this issue - a focus on poverty does.
“A focus on poverty requires a focus on post-conflict recovery. Not much is going to be done about poverty in a country ruined by civil war, where any money that comes in gets spent on strengthening the military. Focusing on these issues is crucial - but you cannot do a good job of that if you focus on economic development alone.”
Jim Anderton says it is profoundly wrong to make assistance to New Zealand companies the focus of our aid effort.
“We don’t give aid to benefit New Zealand companies. We do it because we are good global citizens. Trying to sell more of our exports to the poorest countries is not much of an economic strategy. We are not going to develop export markets for New Zealand by focusing on how much we can sell to the poorest people in the world.
“We should certainly be open to trade with the least developed countries of the world. But trade reform alone, while necessary, is not sufficient.”
Maori Party sides with disgusting humanitarian abuse
Progressive leader Jim Anderton is disgusted that the Maori Party has sided with appalling humanitaran abuses by blocking a motion in Parliament that expressed concern about the dire humanitarian situation in Northern Sri Lanka.
The United Nations estimates that since January 200,000 civilians have fled their homes, 4,500 have been killed and 12,000 wounded. The Red Cross has helped over ten thousand wounded civilians caught up in fighting between Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE).
Today Jim Anderton asked parliament to pass a motion expressing concern about the dire humanitarian situation in Northern Sri Lanka, asking that civilians be spared and calling on respect for international humanitarian law. All parliamentary parties were given a copy of the notice of motion in advance. Only the Maori Party stopped it being adopted.
“The Maori Party’s behaviour is outrageous,” Jim Anderton said.
“The situation in Sri Lanka is dire. There is very little we can do from here, but one thing we can do is express support for the civilians caught up in fighting.
“No one is being asked to take sides. But parliamentarians were asked to express concern, they were asked to express support for allowing civilians to leave the combat zone, they were asked to condemn violence against civilians leaving the combat zone and they were asked to respect international humanitarian law.
“What on that list could any reasonable person be opposed to?”
The motion read:
That this House, notes its deep concern at the dire humanitarian situation in Northern Sri Lanka and calls upon both the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE) to immediately stop hostilities to allow those civilians in the combat zone to move to safety, condemns all acts of violence and intimidation which are preventing civilians from leaving the conflict area, and calls on both sides to respect international humanitarian law and to protect and assist the civilian population in combat zone, as in the internally displaced persons (IDP) camps.
Comparing Tamils with Te Whiti is not credible
“When I heard Ms Turia on Waatea Radio comparing the two leaders - one from Sri Lanka fighting for a separate Tamil homeland – and the other well-known and revered New Zealander, Te Whiti - and the lesser known Tohu Kakahi, I did a double-take,” Jim Anderton said.
“Ms Turia said that Prabhakaran’s 33-year war for a separate Tamil homeland in Northern Sri Lanka had its roots in British colonial policies which disenfranchised the Tamil mana whenua from their land and when non-violent protest didn’t work, the Tigers turned to military action.
“Prabhakaran, their leader was a proponent of violence from the outset and remained so the whole of his political life. The ‘military action’ that Ms Turia talks about included pioneering the suicide belt as an instrument of assassination and terrorism, and as result of which many innocent civilians and bystanders suffered horrible deaths.
“Te Whiti and Tohu Kakahi’s greatness comes from their embrace of passive resistance, which preceded Mohandas Ghandi, and it is the kind of role model which Ms Turia and the Maori Party should be promoting particularly for young Maori, rather than the record and actions of perpetrators of mindless violence which always leads to more violence, not less,” Jim Anderton said.
See also here.