Goff Phil: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 12 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1571. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):There are many issues that could be discussed during this debate—the housing crisis in Auckland or the Government’s willingness to put $130 million into a profit-making casino but not into providing a decent public transport system—but today I want to focus on foreign affairs. I want to do so because tomorrow the Iraqi Foreign Minister Dr Ibrahim al-Jaafari visits New Zealand. There is no doubt this is a carefully stage-managed event. Dr al-Jaafari is coming here because he has been asked to come here to formally request the assistance by way of boots on the ground of New Zealand troops in Iraq. It will be so carefully stage-managed that I can tell you now what the response of the Prime Minister will be: “We have listened to his request and we will consider it carefully.” It will come as a surprise to no New Zealander that this is simply designed to soften up public opinion for the deployment of New Zealand soldiers to Iraq which most New Zealanders over a period of time will come strongly to oppose.You see it really is a charade because we know that the decision has already been taken by the Key Government to deploy New Zealand soldiers in Iraq. We know that notwithstanding the promise made by Mr Key before the election that there would be no New Zealand ground troops in Iraq—a promise made and not reversed until safely after the election. How do we know that the Government has already made the decision? We know it because John Key told Tony Abbott. He told him that we would have 40 to 100 New Zealand troops committed to Iraq. At the same time he was telling New Zealanders that no decision was made. That is dishonest. He told the Australians he told the Americans and Gerry Brownlee went and said it to the then Secretary of Defence. John Key told the British but he did not tell New Zealanders.John Key is treating New Zealanders with contempt. You know I watched yesterday during question time when he had a hard question to answer about differences of opinion between Mr Joyce and Mr English and he said that he would listen to both the children. That was very patronising and you could see the looks on the faces of his senior colleagues but that is exactly what he is treating New Zealanders like—children. They are not adult enough to know. We will tell them when they need to know when we actually have no time for debate and the decision is already taken. In the United Kingdom of course John Key went further. He was in a BBC interview—actually being done by one of my former students Lucy Hockings—and he was very upfront in a way that he is not in New Zealand. He said yes we will be sending troops there notwithstanding the human costs because that is the price of the club. For the first time we got the real reason why we will be deploying New Zealand troops to Iraq and putting them in harm’s way. It is not for human rights reasons not even for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) but because that is the price of being in the club.That is the same club that John Key and Bill English wanted us to join in 2003 when the United States launched the invasion of Iraq. I remember it well; I was Minister of Foreign Affairs. I had Bill English ask me questions about why we were not supporting the invasion why we were not part of it why we were not working with our friends and allies and John Key said exactly the same. I wonder whether they now think back with shame about their comments because history has proven that that invasion was not simply a disaster that cost tens of thousands of human lives but a disaster based on a lie. Colin Powell said to me when I was Minister of Foreign Affairs that the worst thing that he ever did was to go to the UN Security Council and say that the United States invaded because of weapons of mass destruction. I believe him; he was a decent and honourable man. But that disaster spawned the existence of and support for ISIS today. Without the 2003 invasion there would be no basis for ISIS to exist in Iraq. That was the price of a decision made without thinking through the consequences gung-ho—maybe for all the right intentions; I do not know but it was the wrong decision.Every Western intervention in that region has ended up achieving the opposite of what the objective was whether it was Iraq or Libya. Libya is in absolute chaos at the moment. Yes it was easy to get rid of and easy to hate Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein. They were evil bad people. But what are the consequences of your actions? The West has never learnt how to achieve good results other than by going in with guns blazing and ending up achieving exactly the opposite after enormous loss of human—and mainly civilian—lives. John Key and Bill English were wrong in 2003 and they are wrong now. They are doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason.You know New Zealanders do understand sacrifice. They understand that there are times when we have to put ourselves on the line and that there are sometimes costs that we have to pay for the preservation of our society and our democracy. But what they demand quite rightfully is to know that we are doing the right thing for the right reason that we have thought it through and that there are achievable objectives that will flow from the sacrifice that might be made. We are not doing this for the right reason. Gerry Brownlee was absolutely right in condemning as unfortunate his own Prime Minister’s statement about being part of the club—very courageous Minister very courageous. He backtracked very quickly and maybe that was not a show of courage. But the fact of the matter is that it is not the right thing to do it is not for the right reason and sadly it will not achieve the objectives that we are looking for.I heard the Prime Minister sounding quite passionate about human rights in the House this week. That is the first time ever I have heard him speak in that manner. But I wonder where the Prime Minister was when it came to condemning the actions of Bashar al-Assad who has slaughtered more than 100000 of his own people and again created the foundation for the existence and the creation of ISIS in Syria. I wonder where the National Government is on Boko Haram and condemnation of that. When I hear the Prime Minister talking about beheadings I wonder why he said not a word about the routine stonings and beheadings under sharia law by Saudi Arabia. We condemn rightly ISIS for beheadings—and we run the flag at half-mast for the King of Saudi Arabia who presides over a regime that kills in a brutal way hundreds of people for reasons and causes that would not even be against the law in our country.There are some questions that should be put to Dr al-Jaafari and they are these—and I hope that the Minister of Defence and the Prime Minister ask these questions. Why should we have confidence in putting New Zealanders at risk to go to Iraq when the Iraqi army has performed so poorly? Why should we believe that we can make a difference when the United States has invested $25 billion and thousands of American trainers—to produce an army that remains corrupt incompetent and poorly led? Why is it that the first time the Iraqi army went up against ISIS it collapsed and passed its advanced American weapons to ISIS? Why is it that the Peshmerga have defeated ISIS in Kobani with a fraction of the support that the Iraqi army has been given? Why is it that American money is being spent to fund 50000 soldiers in Iraq who do not exist? The money is being put into the pockets of the elite in Iraq. Why is it that they expect us to do for the Iraqi army what the Iraqi army cannot and will not do for itself? Those are the questions that John Key Murray McCully and Gerry Brownlee ought to be asking Dr al-Jaafari tomorrow and if there are not good answers to those questions we should not be putting New Zealand lives at risk for a futile purpose. Let us help with humanitarian aid. The $30 million we will be spending on troops can do a lot for the 13 million refugees from not only ISIS but also al-Assad and the Shi’a and Sunni militias.