Fitzsimons Jeanette: Motions — Nuclear-Free Legislation—20th Anniversary 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Motions — Nuclear-Free Legislation—20th Anniversary 
[Volume:639;Page:9764] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I want to honour the countless thousands of New Zealanders over a generation who brought about the 1987 New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone Disarmament and Arms Control Act. I note in passing that the Act covers not just nuclear weapons and nuclear disarmament—which of course is the most important part—but also nuclear energy generation with the recognition that there is a close connection between the proliferation of nuclear energy and the proliferation of nuclear weapons and that the technologies are quite closely connected. 
 I honour those people who wrote submissions marched on countless marches in the street wrote to and met with politicians passed motions at Labour Party conferences for 10 years before the Act was passed and sailed their little boats and even their windsurfers into the paths of visiting nuclear submarines and ships—and even stopped one in its tracks in Auckland harbour. I honour those who took part in the royal commission on nuclear power and managed to defer a technology that was about to be built and those who organised the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Campaign for Non-Nuclear Futures . I honour Greenpeace and those who organised Campaign Half Million and collected a third of a million signatures—the largest petition in New Zealand’s history at that stage—at street stalls by door-knocking in schools in churches in sports clubs and in businesses. 
I note in passing that that organising work was done by the Values Party in the 1970s the ancestor of the Green Party. It was done anonymously so that the important work would not be contaminated with a political label. Nevertheless that is where the leadership in those days came from. I want to honour those who designed posters researched leaflets and advocated sustainable energy alternatives. 
I returned to New Zealand in 1974 after 7 years in Europe to find New Zealand in the midst of a decision as to precisely where to site New Zealand’s first nuclear power station. The citizens of New Zealand stopped that. This was a genuine citizens’ movement that compelled Parliament to act. So I commend not just Parliament and the Government of that time whose actions were crucial but the citizens who made it happen. 
I remember that in 1983 Helen Caldicott had been visiting and lecturing around the country about how close we were to the imminent risk of nuclear war. The Union of Concerned Scientists had moved its doomsday clock to 4 minutes to midnight. On 6 August 1983 Hiroshima Day  Aotea Square at the end of Queen Street in Auckland was crammed with people preparing to march up Queen Street. A woman turned to me and said: “What a good idea to have a march on Hiroshima Day.” and I said: “Yes there are certainly more people than we’ve had for the past 20 years.” She said: “Oh do you mean people have done this before?”. It was a moment in history when the work of people for decades came together and fired the public imagination. 
I also recall that in 1997 on the tenth anniversary of the legislation as a new member of Parliament I introduced as a member’s bill the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone Extension Bill which set out to fill the gaps in the 1987 legislation. There are some gaps. Not many people realise that although nuclear weapons are prohibited from our 12-mile zone one can actually station and fire a nuclear weapon 13 miles off the coast of New Zealand or that although nuclear-powered ships are prohibited from our harbours they are not prohibited from cruising along our coast a very short distance out. We have a responsibility to protect 200 miles of our economic zone to protect our fisheries and to protect the environment in that area. Unfortunately the Government at the time did not proceed with the bill although it did allow the bill to go to a select committee and we had an intense debate with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which hauled out all its big guns and managed to kill the bill that would have filled those gaps. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: It had something to do with UNCLOS. It’s international law Jeanette. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: There were many different ways of reading the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and we had very good legal advice from international lawyers that the convention was compatible with the bill. 
So there is a lot of work to do to eliminate nuclear weapons to implement the test-ban treaty to disinvest our superannuation savings from nuclear weapons production and to finish the job of protecting our economic zone.