Shirley Ken: Financial Review Debate 
Shirley Ken: Financial Review Debate 
[Volume:607;Page:4177] 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (Deputy Leader—ACT NZ) 
: 
 I will address the situation of our defence forces and the appalling run-down we have seen in their capacity. I note that a former ACT member of Parliament Derek Quigley did a very good report for this Government when it first came to office but what has it done? The Government has sat on its chuff and not even attempted to implement the good advice it received. I notice that even now Terence O’Brien the head of the strategic advisory body is calling upon the Government to rethink its position on this country because surely we are living in a very changing and dangerous world at this time. We have the member for Hastings chirping away like a canary. I invite him to listen to some of the reality and the lack of performance from his Government. 
The one capital item to speak of that this Government has embarked on is $800000 for some 105 light armoured vehicles. I have asked a number of parliamentary questions and I am not getting responses. I understand that one cannot load one of those vehicles into a Hercules our main transport plane without first stripping it down. One cannot put the armament ammunition rations and the crew in the same plane—a second plane would be needed. It is very questionable as to whether the plane could take off if it were fully loaded with one light armoured vehicle. That was the one big capital splash this Government made and it would seem to be a very spurious one. 
New Zealand does have very important security needs but perhaps the greatest concern of all to the people of New Zealand—and I hope to this Chamber—is the way this Government has decided not to support our traditional allies and is instead hiding behind the swirling skirts of United Nations prevaricators. It is the first time in my life time that that has happened. It is following countries such as France which is the only country that has actually sent terrorists to attack New Zealand. Yet in the name of multilateralism this Government is happy to hide behind those swirling skirts. It is nonsense for the Prime Minister to say we will not act unilaterally. How can the 20 nations forming the coalition of the willing—which include all our key traditional allies—be called “unilateral action”? That is what this Prime Minister and this Government would try to have us believe. 
I do not believe any thinking person looks forward to war or actually wants war. Even at this late stage it would be nice to think that war could be averted although that does look possible now. The reality is that military intervention is sometimes both necessary and inevitable to remove a real and imminent threat to secure freedoms and to achieve enduring peace. There are times in life when one has to be prepared to stand alongside those who are prepared to defend the values one believes in. History has taught us many times that the use of force is often the necessary price of liberty. In the words of Edmund Burke that great 18th century Scottish philosopher and British parliamentarian “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” Few outside Iraq would openly dispute the fact that Saddam Hussein is a dangerous megalomaniac who has held on to power by brutally suppressing his own people through torture and terror. Most within Iraq hold that same view but certainly not openly. They do not have that luxury. 
It is all very well for this Government to say it supports the policies of containment and what the UN has done to date. Does it realise that UNICEF one of the UN’s own bodies has reported that on average 60000 Iraqi children under the age of five have died as a direct consequence of the economic sanctions? Over 12 years 720000 Iraqi children have died which is over and above the baseline deaths that existed. That is the policy of containment under the United Nations. The lesser of two evils would be to go in and remove the cause of that suffering and misery rather than trying to claim that the containment policies have been a success because they have not—that is the point I make. Many hundreds of thousands of people have died because of the inability to act. That is really what Edmund Burke was telling us way back in the 18th century. 
The Prime Minister is saying we should just tell Saddam Hussein we will wait a bit longer. We should give him one very very last warning. It has been 12 years and 19 resolutions from the United Nations Security Council have been flouted. The now famous Resolution 1441 passed unanimously last November was meant to be the final warning and serious consequences were to follow if it was ignored. Now the Prime Minister herself says it is debatable whether that authorises military intervention. She may think it is debatable; I think it is pretty clear. Even if it is debatable why has she and her Government decided to interpret it to mean that they have to give a final last warning to Saddam Hussein? The time for reckoning is with us. Unfortunately we have decided we will not stand with our traditional allies. I believe that is very very regrettable. 
I cannot understand the position of the Greens in this Parliament—and to her credit I do not think the Prime Minister can either. The Greens are saying we must uphold the UN resolutions but are then saying that even if there is a UN resolution they will not support military intervention. In other words they are not prepared to uphold the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council. If one is not prepared to uphold the resolutions then why on earth pass them in the first place? That is precisely the position of Germany with Gerhard Schroeder and why? At the elections last year for the Bundestag he was competing for the left vote with the Greens—and let us remember that it is the head of the German Greens who is the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Bundestag. They campaigned that even with a UN resolution they would not condone or support military intervention. In other words they along with France signed Resolution 1441 in bad faith because they had no intention of upholding it. 
That is really the point that needs to be made. We come to a situation where we either have the scenario of a united and functioning United Nations or the scenario of a divided and irrelevant United Nations. It is clear that under either of those two scenarios the strategic interest of New Zealand is to stand alongside our traditional allies. Regrettably this Government has decided not to do that.