Graham Kennedy: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGraham Kennedy: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 28 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:2950. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green):The Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee’s annual review of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s performance and operations for the year ending March 2014 is before us today. The role of the ministry as stated in the committee’s report is it “promotes and protects New Zealand’s interests overseas. It provides advice on international relations works to advance and protect New Zealand’s security and trade interests administers New Zealand’s overseas aid programme”—so says the report but this leaves much unexplored. It does not make clear the extent to which New Zealand in the 21st century regards the promotion and protection of our interests as dependent on global competition or global cooperation—“punching above our weight” to quote various Cabinet Ministers triumphantly returning home. It implies that the Government regards the international community as a potentially threatening environment.The report addressed five major areas: the security situation in Iraq our work on the Security Council Syrian refugees trade negotiations and diplomatic immunity. These are all important issues but the annual review is selective and therefore significant for what is omitted. If this is the legislature’s annual review of the executive’s conduct of our international relations we have a long way to go before we have a comprehensive world view. Where for example is the acknowledgment that the world is now in a global ecological crisis? Where is the recognition that the global population will have increased sevenfold in two centuries after 100 centuries of stable numbers? Where is the recognition of the pressure this is placing on the planetary resources—the scientific work on the planetary boundaries beyond which we cannot proceed if we are to pass on a sustainable world to the next generation having breached four of the nine such boundaries already? Where is the recognition of the latest finding by scientists that there is now a 10 percent chance of the global temperature increase exceeding 6 degrees Celsius which would simply make the planet uninhabitable for human and most forms of advanced life—a 10 percent chance?If these issues seem too huge and too abstract for the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee of the New Zealand Parliament to address then the question has to be asked: who will address them? Who in New Zealand will address the future of the planet and the fate of New Zealand as a result? Who is responsible for New Zealand’s role in the collective task of global policy-making? If it is not our foreign affairs parliamentary committee who is it?I have just returned from Europe as part of the Speaker’s tour: France Ireland Northern Ireland Poland and Germany. It was a useful visit and the delegation learnt a great deal. One of the main lessons was the sophistication with which European parliaments address foreign policy. They deal with global and regional issues with serious intent: climate change Security Council reform Ukraine the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant Iran and refugee migration. They are all dealt with in each Parliament’s committees in greater depth than we do it here. And how is the global climate change dealt with here in New Zealand? In the Local Government and Environment Committee.A related issue is the debating style of the parliaments over there. The very physical nature of their debating chambers facilitates consensus through their hemispherical nature and the central podium in the front from which MPs address all colleagues including their own. This compares favourably with our own adversarial structure with two main front benches directly facing each other in trench-warfare style which gives rise to some fairly puerile behaviour from time to time and dysfunctional decision-making. Democracy would I suggest be enhanced by the simple expedient of a bit of carpentry here in the House. Just as we jettisoned the British electoral system in favour of the German model so we should change the British carpentry for the European model.So I suggest three improvements for our democracy: change the physical nature of our debating chamber into a hemispherical shape hold an open debate on foreign affairs once every quarter and ensure that the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee is responsible for specified global issues including the global commons such as climate change planetary boundaries weapons of mass destruction and others.