Donald Rod: Motions — New Zealand Cricket—Tour of Zimbabwe 
Donald Rod: Motions — New Zealand Cricket—Tour of Zimbabwe 
[Volume:627;Page:21950] 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 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 700000 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.”