Locke Keith: Crimes and Misconduct (Overseas Operations) Bill — First Reading 
Locke Keith: Crimes and Misconduct (Overseas Operations) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7575] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 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.