Goff Phil: Urgent Debates — Solomon Islands—Deployment of Police and Military Forces 
Goff Phil: Urgent Debates — Solomon Islands—Deployment of Police and Military Forces 
[Volume:609;Page:6694] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade) 
: 
 I welcome the chance to debate this issue but I have to say what a pathetic contribution that was from the Leader of the Opposition. I would like to hear one member of the Opposition tell this House one substantive point that Mr English made on this debate—because he made no substantive points. First of all could I begin where he ended— 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I point out through you that the member on his feet is quite able to yield to me so that I can explain exactly the substantial points that the Leader of the Opposition is making because it is clear the Minister missed them. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The member knows that is not a point of order. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Let me start where the Leader of the Opposition ended—discussing the question of police. He said that sending 30 police was not affordable and that we cannot do it. I ask that member why it is that in the last year of his Government the police numbers went down but does he not know that there are now 700 serving police officers more in this country than when he lost office? Those are police figures. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: It’s not true. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: If Dr Smith challenges the veracity of that he could ask me to table it and I will table it at the end of my speech if he so desires. There are now 700 additional police officers and from somebody no less than the president of the Police Association in the paper today we had it said that this deployment makes good moral sense and it makes good pragmatic sense. It is good for our members; there will be no shortage of volunteers. They will get invaluable training and experience and they will come back better officers—and they do. They do something for the Pacific and they come back to New Zealand with a better understanding and a better ability to police. There is no question about our ability to afford to make a commitment on that basis. 
Now the big point that the Leader of the Opposition seemed to make was that this was not a police-led deployment and so that was further evidence of division between New Zealand and Australia. Let me quote from the transcript of Alexander Downer the Australian Foreign Minister standing as far away from me as the Hon Annette King is at the moment. He said: “This is not in principle a military operation. We feel though—and the police feel very much—that they need the reassurance of armed peacekeepers on the ground as well.”—and of course that is right. He ends up by saying: “This is essentially a police operation with a guarantee of security from armed peacekeepers; this isn’t a military operation.” So the main point made by the Leader of the Opposition added up to nothing because as usual in this House he is speaking from ignorance. Time and again in the course of this debate he demonstrated his ignorance on this issue. He would have been better not to call for the debate at all. 
This is a very important decision that Cabinet will shortly be making and that the House at the moment has the opportunity to debate—but I have no doubt that the right thing for New Zealand to do is to join with the consensus in the Pacific Islands Forum countries to make a contribution at the request of a small neighbour and fellow member of the forum and to respond to its request at its time of need. 
It was significant yesterday that 16 countries of the Pacific Islands Forum came together to hear at first hand a request from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Solomon Islands about their need for help. It was hugely significant that the response from the Pacific Islands Forum was unanimous. Every country pledged itself to support in principle and where it could in practice the needs of the Solomon Islands. As the Minister from the Solomon Islands said: “This is not a case of our sovereignty being under challenge by inviting people in to help us from outside. This is a request from a sovereign Government.” He could have added that if sovereignty has been lost from the Solomon Islands at all it has been lost because the men with the guns have usurped the authority of the democratically elected Government to the point where that Government cannot govern at all. 
Sitting behind the Minister of Foreign Affairs from the Solomon Islands was the Prime Minister’s principal adviser. He has a bullet wound to his stomach from an assassination attempt. Sir Fred Soaki the former Police Commissioner in the Solomon Islands was assassinated. They know who did it. They arrested the person who did it. He could not be contained because there is no justice or prison system to carry out those functions and he is at large. This is a country where when money is in its Budget armed thugs will surround the Cabinet room and demand compensation payments—demands that have to be met by members of the Government at the threat of their lives. This is a country where the rule of law has so broken down that Harold Keke on the Weathercoast of the island of Guadalcanal can rage murdering more than 50 people burning houses and villages holding people to ransom and torturing people—and the Solomon Islands cannot do anything about it. 
That is terrorism in our backyard. We as a country cannot afford to allow a small neighbour to suffer from this condition and to continue to deteriorate further to the point of being a failed State. We cannot afford that because as we know from Afghanistan a failed State very quickly becomes a haven for drug smugglers arms traffickers people-smugglers—and potentially terrorism. The regional security and stability situation in the Pacific is such that we cannot allow the example of people who choose to arm themselves to extort and terrorise money out of a Government and individuals—yet that is what has been happening in the Solomon Islands for too long. 
Another point the Leader of the Opposition got absolutely wrong was to describe the current situation as the result of ethnic conflict. There was ethnic conflict—very bad ethnic conflict—in the Solomon Islands between the Malaitan people and the people of Guadalcanal a conflict so bad that 20000 people were effectively ethnically cleansed out of the island of Guadalcanal back to their home islands. That problem however was predominantly resolved by the Townsville peace agreement and the international peace monitoring team. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: That’s not true. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: The member might say that it is not true but that is what the Minister of Foreign Affairs from the Solomon Islands says; that is what the scoping mission we sent up there said; that is what the eminent persons group that went up there said; and I think that for once the National Party if it wants to make a positive contribution to a debate ought to do its homework. It ought to seek a briefing from me—which I would gladly give it—because time and again I hear ignorance from the Opposition and that is why it is on 21 percent in the polls. 
The fact of the matter is that the problem is not essentially an ethnic problem at the moment. The problem is a problem of people who are ex-militants using their weapons to intimidate to extort money and to prevent the Government of the Solomon Islands carrying out the basic functions of governance. 
One of the problems that that leads to is that the economy in the Solomon Islands is near to collapse. The banks were all closed at one point because the thugs were extorting money out of them. People will not invest in the Solomon Islands. Why would anyone invest there when there is no rule of law? The Gold Ridge Mine which provided 25 percent of the gross domestic product of that country has been closed for several years. Solomon Islands Plantation Ltd the palm-oil plantation that was once a major provider of employment has been closed. Obviously before that country can get back on its feet economically it needs the restoration of the rule of law. The lack of the rule of law and the collapse of the economy mean that basic social services now cannot be provided by the Solomon Islands Government to its people and that is why I said we are there to help it rebuild its social system. 
Restoring the rule of law is also a means to an end the end being the well-being of the people of that country. When special constables who do not turn up to work get paid but they refuse to pay the teachers the doctors and the nurses and when women go to the hospital in Honiara to have babies and find there are no medical staff there to help deliver a child it is time for the region to come to the assistance of that country. 
 We have tried a number of different ways to help. We currently have police officers in the Solomon Islands. We have a significant aid programme to the Solomon Islands. All of that has been helpful but it has not essentially turned conditions around in that country. To make real change and to avoid the situation of aid going in but no progress being made we have to tackle the question of the rule of law which is why New Zealand willingly joins in the Pacific consensus that states that there should be a police-led deployment backed by armed peacekeepers. It should be backed by armed peacekeepers because police go in essentially to do a policing task. The military cannot do the task that the police are trained to do. It is a specialist task. But our police officers and police officers from Australia Samoa Fiji Papua New Guinea and other countries would be under threat unless we had a back-up of armed peacekeepers. 
Hopefully those peacekeepers will not be required. The general sense coming out of Honiara at the moment is that the thugs who find it so easy to extort and intimidate individuals because they have the guns will be somewhat less courageous when confronted with an armed and disciplined force backing up a police force that will do its job and ensure that the corrupt and criminal elements in society are dealt with—as a country would normally do—through effective justice and corrections systems. We need the police there and we need the armed peacekeepers as a guarantee. It would be irresponsible to put police officers in there without the protection and without the clear message to those criminal elements that if they pick up a gun and fire it the people they are firing at will be in a position to retaliate. 
So we need the police and we need the armed forces but beyond that we have to work with the Government of the Solomon Islands to rebuild the system. The police officers cannot do their job unless there is a justice system that can hear the charges against those people who are the criminal elements try them and where they are found guilty convict them. The justice system cannot work unless there is a functioning prison and the major prison was three-quarters built before the money ran out. Therefore that facility is not available. 
We must as well work with the Solomon Islands Government to build a capacity to better manage the economy and to be able to provide the basic social services that are so badly needed. The 16 Ministers including five heads of State who came together in Australia yesterday unanimously agreed to make that effort and New Zealand will no doubt play its full role in assisting that effort just as we have assisted the Solomon Islands over many years. This country and the Pacific Islands Forum will not stand by while that State collapses. 
Finally there is a question about whether this action has multilateral support. The Leader of the Opposition put out a press statement accusing us of hypocrisy because we were acting without the support of the United Nations. We have approached the United Nations and again contradicting what the Leader of the Opposition says the United Nations Department of Political Affairs is fully supportive of a regional initiative at the request of a sovereign country for assistance. So too is the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth and the Commonwealth itself will do what it can to assist. 
We are left with the situation that everybody is in favour of acting. Even the Opposition says that it is in favour but it tries to pick holes in the effort. Its members try to undermine the efforts of their country instead of acting in a bipartisan constructive and sensible way. As long as they continue to do that it is they who will be made the fools and they who will seem to be the people who are not getting alongside what this Government is doing and will do in a constructive way the right thing for the Solomon Islands and for the Pacific. I urge every member of every party of this country to support the Government in its endeavours and I am more than willing to brief any party in the House on what we are doing why we are doing it and how we are doing it in order to prevent the sort of pathetic ignorance that we heard from the Leader of the Opposition in his opening speech. 
Debate interrupted.