Graham Kennedy: Cluster Munitions (Prohibition) Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Graham Kennedy: Cluster Munitions (Prohibition) Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 28 July 2009. Volume:656;Page:5187. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) 
: 
 Let me state from the outset that the Green Party supports the general thrust of this proposed legislation to ban cluster munitions and we will be voting for the referral of the Cluster Munitions (Prohibition) Bill to the select committee. We have some views that we should like to share with this House and we encourage the Government to consider amending the draft as it proceeds through the House to adoption. We look forward to the opportunity for discussion in select committee but in this first reading it is appropriate I believe to advance a few broader reflective points. 
The ban on cluster munitions as with the ban on landmines is an important part of humankind’s move towards making military conflict more civilised or at least a less uncivilised activity than before. The treaties on these two types of munitions strengthen the normative framework to that end. The treaties are the twins of two parents in positivist humanitarian law: the Hague convention of a century ago which addressed the possession of certain weaponry and the Geneva Convention of half a century ago which addressed the treatment of combatants. Both treaties broke new ground in this respect. A quarter of a century ago another convention within the same normative framework banned the use of certain conventional weapons that might be excessively injurious or might have indiscriminate effects. By the 1980s we were getting more serious and specific about what was permissible and what was not. Nonetheless the corollary is that in the area of armed conflict certain other weapons that are selective in their application and whose injurious effects are not excessive but simply lethal grace our contemporary level of civilisation. So our relatively enlightened world of international law co-exists with our relatively benighted world of armed conflict. 
Be that as it may we painstakingly plough our way towards a more humane means of controlled carnage among nations. In force since 1983 the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons banned five categories of weapons but failure to reach universal agreement on banning all landmines prompted some countries to take an alternative negotiating route resulting in the seminal agreement on landmines at the initiative of Canada. This latest treaty banning cluster munitions followed the same route this time on the initiative of Norway. The political significance of these two treaties goes beyond their own subject focus for the means through which they came into existence reflects the new trend in international relations and the strengthening of global security. This involved the perhaps unprecedented phenomenon of the formulation of international law on the initiative and through the leadership of the middle powers leaving some of the major powers ensnared in the 19th century mindset of following when they are ready. 
This is novel. It used not to be this way. That trend will reach its apotheosis when a nuclear weapons convention is negotiated and brought into force by the non-nuclear weapon States thereby introducing a new norm of international relations that will be accepted and respected by the pariah nuclear weapons States themselves. When that happens it will be not only the meek who inherit the Earth but also the enlightened presuming there is a tolerable Earth to inherit. 
The process of negotiating the Cluster Munitions Convention was purposeful and swift. Following their indiscriminate and indeed irresponsible use in the Middle East in 2006 negotiations commenced in February 2007 and were completed in May 2008. I commend our New Zealand diplomats and in particular Ambassador Don MacKay for their skill and devotion in sharing the leadership with Norway Ireland and others in this complex and sensitive process. That included the successful fourth negotiating session in Wellington in February 2008. Now we must move expeditiously to implement the convention in domestic law. The convention was signed by some 100 States and will enter into force when ratified by 30. Some 15 have ratified already and it is important and appropriate that New Zealand ratify as one of the 30 to bring it into effect. 
I ask the House to allow me also to advance a point pertaining to the international treaty on which the bill rests. It is our conviction that there is no place in the 21st century for withdrawal clauses in contemporary disarmament treaties. The international community of States is slowly but surely transforming into a global community of peoples. It is they who are demanding progress and making the global community safer more secure and more predictable. That is not achieved by allowing States’ parties to withdraw from treaties that ban inhumane weapons at will. The days of untrammelled national sovereignty of the Westphalian kind when States could enter and withdraw from any treaty on a whim or pretext are gone. Today we have a hybrid system of international relations where the vital interests of all countries and the vital interests of humanity are inextricably married. 
Weapons of this inhumane kind are now regarded as unacceptable in customary international law. Prohibition of such inhumane weapons may perhaps be seen today as a peremptory norm of the global community. The social fabric of the global community today imposes natural obligations upon States that cannot be shed. Such obligations derive purely from membership of the global community and they cannot be revoked. When acknowledged in treaty form in the 21st century there should be no pretence of any right of reservation or of withdrawal. 
There are a number of questions and possible suggestions for improvement pertaining to the bill that in the Green Party’s judgment it may stand to benefit from. These include issues of transit divestment definition training and interoperability. It is our intention to pursue these in the select committee and we look forward to cooperating with colleagues in the Government and other parties to that end. We support this bill being sent to a select committee for consideration.