Locke Keith: Urgent Debates — Solomon Islands—Deployment of Police and Military Forces  
Locke Keith: Urgent Debates — Solomon Islands—Deployment of Police and Military Forces  
[Volume:609;Page:6703] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party supports our police going to help the Solomon Islands people to move to a situation where the rule of law applies and we support what our police force has done so far. I understand that about 10 New Zealand police are there now and that that will expand to perhaps 30 or 40 under the arrangements. We are very grateful to those police who will go on this operation for what they will do and for the sacrifices they will make. The Green Party wishes them well in their work over there. The critical element in determining how we see such an operation is what the people of the country itself want. So far it seems that the people of the Solomon Islands from the Prime Minister Sir Allan Kemakeza down want to have a contribution of this sort. But of course we have to keep monitoring that because we want to make sure that as we go through this exercise it is always with the support of the Solomon Islands people. 
I am a bit concerned about some of the Australian Government’s comments which almost determine in advance that this will be an operation that will last for years when the aim should obviously be to help through this process to boost the confidence and ability of the Solomon Islands people to get their own society on track. Our aim should be to complete the operation in the shortest possible time frame. It is good that the Pacific Island leaders who met yesterday endorse this operation. I hope that they will make a contribution to it because sometimes Australia and New Zealand are seen as the bigger white members of the Pacific nations although of course the New Zealand contribution to such operations usually has a strong Maori and Pacific Island dimension. However it will be good if other Pacific Island countries are involved in the Solomons alongside Australia and New Zealand. 
Essentially as the Minister has explained this is a policing operation against criminal elements and there is a need for an armed back-up of military components to support those police given the situation that has been outlined by other speakers in this debate. But I am still concerned at the number of military personnel envisaged—1500 Australians and a total force of 2000. I take the point that Richard Prebble has made but I do not think it requires a force of that size to indicate to the criminal elements that there is a seriousness about this operation. It is not like the East Timor commitment where because there was organised backing from West Timor in support of the militias that went into East Timor as organised forces we needed to have more systematic patrolling than will be the case in the Solomons. 
I take up the point that Bill English and Ron Mark have made: can our armed forces stand this contribution? I think there is an easy solution to their concerns and that is not to send the 60 or 100 troops to Afghanistan as planned where they will be involved in a dirty war essentially defending one set of warlord factions against others. That will be a dirty war in the sense that any prisoners we capture in Afghanistan will be handed over to the United States and held in places like Guantanamo Bay where the rule of law does not apply and people are mistreated etc. Rather than getting involved in a dirty war in Afghanistan as the Government is planning to do it should concentrate our forces on peacekeeping which we have gained good experience in through our Bougainville and East Timor commitments. We are developing a speciality in peacekeeping with regard to both our military and our police. I think the nation is proud of what we have achieved in peacekeeping and will be proud of what we can achieve in that role in the Solomon Islands. 
I want to go back to the origin of the problem there. I think to a large extent it is the result of overseas interests such as Malaysian logging interests corrupting the political system to their own ends. Ten years ago there was a big debate in the Solomon Islands about that. The present Prime Minister was forestry Minister at that time and there was much criticism of him for allowing Malaysian logging companies to clear-fell much of the Solomons with little taxation duties or anything like that applying to them. A couple of years later in 1995 an anti-logging activist was murdered and seven Government Ministers were charged with accepting bribes. So outside interests were fostering corruption and we must put that problem on top of the economic problems that developed around the time of the Asian economic crisis. The growing unemployment at that time was exaggerated by the International Monetary Fund’s prescriptions that the Solomon Islands should cut the public sector. The resulting social crisis allowed the more corrupt element in the political system to use factional differences to foster ethnic differences and conflict between Malaitan people and those from Guadalcanal in furtherance of their own narrow political interests. 
The problem of corruption continued through to the year 2001. Sir Allan Kemakeza was dismissed then as Deputy Prime Minister. He was charged with taking hundreds of thousands of dollars for himself and his family. The former finance Minister Snyder Rini was dismissed because he had given undue remissions of duties to forestry companies. So there was that continuing problem of corruption and a very bad economic situation. 
Unfortunately there is another contributing factor. I do not think Australia and New Zealand have provided sufficient aid to the Solomons over the years. We have of course had an aid programme to the Solomons and currently we give $8 million in aid. It is very good that the Government has announced that part of our response to the Solomons crisis will be a doubling of that aid. That will catch up on some of the shortfalls in the past. 
However I am not sure whether we need to have 2000 military people in this force. I think we have to be concerned that we could have too much overkill in terms of military intervention. I am not really concerned about the New Zealand troops operating in an insensitive way because they have a very good record internationally—a better record probably than the Australians. But I think we have to learn for instance from what is happening in Iraq today with the US getting off side with the people. I am not making a direct parallel here because our peacekeeping force in the Solomons will not be an occupation force as is the US force in Iraq. But we do have to be mindful of the problems that could develop if we do not handle the situation sensitively or if there is a bit of overkill in our response. We could draw hostility from the local population which could make the situation worse. 
What we want to do—and I think Bill English was right—is to move as fast as possible to continue the process that began at Townsville in the year 2000 of trying to get the civil society and the various parties back together. We need to work with the politicians and the civil society. There are groups like the Civil Society Network in the Solomons that are trying to draw things together. One of the problems with the political system there is that it is a first-past-the-post system. I think one of the MPs is there on 13 percent of the vote so it is an inappropriate political system. We need to work with the civil society and also to resist the temptation to dominate the country too much. I have heard reports from Australia that it will put various Australians in the different ministries for the long term. I think we have to be a bit wary about being seen to dominate the Solomons. 
I think another lesson we can draw from this situation is that we should watch for problems in the Pacific and give support at an early time. For instance we tend to ignore another Melanesian nation West Papua when ignoring what is happening to its people may can come back to haunt us. We should support the rights of those people against the Indonesian occupation as well. 
The New Zealand Greens support this peacekeeping force as do our colleagues the Australian Greens on other side of the Tasman. We are very pleased that they are putting their support behind this force because something that the Greens as a whole internationally have put forward is that we should really concentrate on peacemaking trying to bring parties together and trying to resolve situations in other countries in as peaceful a manner as possible but backed up with policing and peacekeeping forces where required. I think we need to specialise in that area. One of the Green Party’s proposals is to set up a peacekeeping school in New Zealand and there are some ongoing discussions with the Government on how to progress that. I think such a school would increase our ability to do this peacekeeping work and to be able to work with other police and military personnel in our region towards resolving situations like the one we see in the Solomon Islands today.