Collins Judith: Mercenary Activities (Prohibition) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Collins Judith: Mercenary Activities (Prohibition) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:14245] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 I want to return to the issue of Mr Ron Mark—or as he was Major Mark—in terms of the definition of “mercenary”. I cannot understand why the Government wants to outlaw someone with Mr Mark’s skills from being able to be recruited through the British Government to go and assist the Sultan of Oman in a military-like capacity. What is wrong with that? 
We in the National Party do not want to see private armies around and clearly as a centre-right Government we would not at all condone that. But this legislation goes too far. Dr Mapp has prepared an amendment to this particular provision that would make it plain that Mr Mark’s situation would not be covered by this bill. I ask the Minister in the chair Judith Tizard to look at his amendment. It is a sensible one and it would go a long way towards helping this bill make some real sense. Dr Mapp’s amendment proposes to amend clause 5(2) by adding new paragraph (c) which states: “Within the meaning of subsection (1)(a) if he or she is employed directly within the armed forces of a party to the armed conflict whether or not they are paid more than any other persons of similar rank or specialty.” So that says that if a person is part of the army of a particular country—whether it is Oman Azerbaijan or whatever—he or she will be protected from this legislation. 
We know that this legislation after many years of sitting where it should be—which is in somebody’s filing cabinet—has come about solely because some New Zealanders have had the courage of their convictions and have acknowledged that because of their specialist skills they can go and work in Iraq to help it in its liberation and rebuilding. They say: “I can do that and I can make some money. Good on me!” and they have done that. And that is what this is all about—the Prime Minister has been on television telling those people that they should not do that. Of course if they are actually going to be earning money they do not want to have it all taken off them by the dreadful tax rates we have here. [ 
Interruption 
] That is what this is all about. 
Tomorrow I will visit our SAS troops who will be thrilled to know what this Government thinks of them— 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Because many of them want to do a job. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Exactly. Many of those SAS troops would like to know that at some stage they can go off with their specialist skills and assist in this way. There are not very many jobs out there for people who happen to have certain specialist skills in this area. There are not an awful lot of those jobs in the legitimate workforce in New Zealand. The fact is that we say to those people at age 50 55 or whatever that we do not really value their skills any more and I think that those people are as specialists entitled to use their skills to train others and to be involved in places where they are needed—and good on them. 
We should be proud of the fact that they have skills and that they are sought after. We are not talking about private armies. We are not talking about people who go into other countries and rape and pillage and kill indiscriminately; we are talking about the people—and Mr Mark is representative of them—who use their skills particularly in a legitimate way and are rightly proud of their service and I say good on Mr Mark for doing so. 
This Government is not only soft on crime it is soft on defence. It is tying us up with little-known countries most of which did not exist 20 years ago. We are being aligned with them. We no longer have allies. We have some friends. What we are doing now is aligning ourselves with countries that by and large are not ones we would ever want to be aligned with in a crisis. We would never want to have to stand up and say: “OK New Zealand armies are coming to attack us but don’t worry we have Azerbaijan coming to help us.”