Burton Mark: General Debates 
Burton Mark: General Debates 
[Volume:617;Page:12856] 
Hon MARK BURTON (Minister of Defence) 
: 
 What a week of undignified gaffs it has been for the National Party! We had the defence spokesperson revealing the shameful abandonment of the control of our forces. That is what awaits the men and women of the New Zealand Defence Force—nothing less. And of course we had the regular flip-flops of the National Party leader. I want to tell National members that being in Government is about making decisions. They are often difficult decisions and often they have to be based on imperfect information. I tell Dr Brash that unlike the wonderful rarefied hermetically sealed world that he has occupied for almost his entire adult life in Government one does not actually get a report about the end result of critical events before one makes the decisions. That is why our defence deployments have to be made on the basis of a firm policy that is based on sound principles. When a policy position is taken one cannot take it in secret. 
Let us look at the facts of that event. On 1 May the senior front-bench spokesperson on defence for National delivered a planned and substantial speech to a regional party conference. In that speech Mr Power uttered the now infamous words: “Without reservation we will support our close allies Australia United States and Britain when and wheresoever our commitment is called upon.” It was not a throwaway line. On the contrary it was a cornerstone tenet of the speech and as every member in this House knows very much in keeping with the sorts of sentiments often uttered by senior National Party members in this House. I have no doubt that Lockwood Smith when he gets up to speak as I am sure he will—he is the only one left—will say something similar. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! 
Hon MARK BURTON 
: I withdraw. Let us be clear about matters. Mr Power was so confident of the position he had taken in the speech that he not only had it placed immediately on the party’s official website but even issued the thing in its entirety as a press statement. That is why Dr Brash in my view was so upset with Mr Power. It was another embarrassment for National. It was like Dr Brash before him when Dr Brash refused to come clean to New Zealanders on his extremist nuclear power policy but quite happy to make sycophantic noises behind closed doors saying that when he became the Prime Minister it would be gone by lunchtime. This was another extremist National Party position on defence revealed by its spokesperson on defence Mr Power to the people of New Zealand. 
Mind you Dr Brash was equally flip-flopping. He was just as gung-ho a few weeks ago in relation to Iraq: “Where they go we should follow.” he said. That is what he was about. Now in what is sadly more a crisis of competence than a crisis of conscience—would that it were—we have the absurd spectacle of Dr Brash lurching around indecisively with one vague non-committal policy after another. He has all the finesse of a barefoot Mr Bean hopping around shoeless on a hot tar-sealed road. 
Let me be very clear that this Government believes that New Zealand is a sovereign nation. New Zealanders expect nothing less than a considered but independent New Zealand view and stance on where and when we engage in international military deployments. The people of New Zealand now have a very clear and simple choice when it comes to defence. They have a Labour-led Government which will always retain what must be the ultimate responsibility of any credible Government—decisions on where and when to deploy our servicemen and women into harm’s way must be the responsibility openly of Government—or they can choose the cavalier abandonment of that responsibility by the National Party and its mates if God forbid National ever gets back on to the Treasury benches of this House. 
Ron Mark 
: What about Iraq? 
Hon MARK BURTON 
: I say to Mr Mark in passing that we are in Iraq as a response to a United Nations mandate to go and assist the people of Iraq with the humanitarian rebuilding of that country.