Donald Rod:  
Donald Rod:  
[Volume:622;Page:17318] 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 What has happened to Helen Clark? Where is that fiercely principled human rights campaigner we used to know and love? Why has she turned into a free-trade zealot? Time and again a cynical public tells me that once politicians get their hands on power they sacrifice their principles. I always refute that claim but our Prime Minister’s behaviour in recent times makes me a liar. Yesterday’s events at the ASEAN summit marked the low point. On the same day that Myanmar’s military regime locked up pro-democracy leader Aung San SuuKyi for another 12 months Helen Clark said that Myanmar’s human rights abuses should not get in the way of free-trade negotiations. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: The member has been sitting next to Jeanette Fitzsimons too long. 
ROD DONALD 
: That I say to Mr Mallard is a far cry from the Helen Clark of old. Back in 1994 when she was the newly elected leader of the Labour Party Helen Clark delivered an excellent speech on human rights and foreign policy to the Auckland University Centre for Peace Studies. In it she said: “The maltreatment of citizens of other nations because they hold differing views from those of governing elites is obnoxious to us. Torture and other forms of physical and mental abuse are anathema to us. Most of us expect our Governments to represent our views on violations of human rights wherever they occur and to support appropriate international actions against the abusers.” She went on to say: “The collapse of apartheid did not occur by the 1990s without significant international pressure. In the 1980s in particular that pressure built within the Commonwealth and the United Nations leading to effective sanctions. The systematic violation of human rights in South Africa was eventually taken very seriously by the international community but it took many years for a combination of economic and other sanctions and diplomatic pressure to bear fruit.” Was she right then? Yes she was. Is she right now? No she is not. 
 I am sure that Helen Clark still holds by another excellent statement she made in that speech: “Respect for human rights is a widely shared value irrespective of culture. The fact that it is not shared by authoritarian regimes and elites which sustain them whether they be for example nominally communist fundamentalist Islamic or just plain autocratic does not detract from that. I cannot believe that it is only those with so-called Western values who find repugnant the lashing of a teenager with a rattan cane in Singapore or the years of house arrest of Aung San SuuKyi in Burma. Inhumanity including cruelty and unusual punishment is something which must always be opposed.” To her credit Helen Clark has continued to criticise the detention of Aung San SuuKyi but what impact will her diplomatic hand-wringing have when in the next breath she committed New Zealand to negotiating a trade deal with Myanmar’s oppressive military regime? Helen Clark should reflect on her own words to the 1998 Labour Party conference when she said of Jenny Shipley: “Like Sir Robert Muldoon before her she prefers to build links to oppression while democratic voices are silenced in jail.” 
The Green Party’s concerns about the ASEAN Thai and Chinese preferential trade deals go beyond fundamental human rights being sacrificed for free trade. We are concerned about the New Zealand manufacturing businesses that will go to the wall if they are forced to face unfair competition as a result of tariff cuts. We are concerned about the thousands of Kiwi jobs that will be sacrificed on the altar of free trade. I am not talking just about the end of the textile clothing and footwear sector—as important as that is. I am also talking about the likes of Fisher and Paykel—one of the elaborately transformed manufacturing businesses the Government champions at the forefront of its strategy. 
If Labour removes the last 7 percent tariff on whiteware and New Zealand is flooded with cheap-labour fridges stoves and washing machines from Asia we can kiss goodbye to one of New Zealand’s top manufacturers. Fisher and Paykel is not inefficient it is not bloated by tariff protection but it simply will not be able to compete against multinational corporations that pay Third World workers less than the cost of living and make them work in unsafe conditions. It cannot compete against regimes that tolerate slave labour or forced child labour. I ask Helen Clark to please reread her old speeches before she trades away her principles.