Hayes John: Cluster Munitions (Prohibition) Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hayes John: Cluster Munitions (Prohibition) Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 28 July 2009. Volume:656;Page:5189. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) 
: 
 It is a great pleasure to be in the House this afternoon engaged in a dialogue between parties in which everyone agrees on the issue and on the direction in which we are headed. I think that is because everybody in this House shares a vision for a just secure and sustainable world. They also know that cluster munitions have inflicted unacceptable harm on civilian populations and many many countries have seen their deadly effects. 
The legacy of contamination resulting from cluster munitions failing to detonate is huge and it is civilians who are killed and injured by unexploded cluster munitions. For a period brightly coloured cluster munitions were dropped and these bright colours were attractive to children who fiddled with them and then lost their lives. Decades after the use of cluster munitions in battle people are still being killed and maimed by them. The tragedy of lost lives and of horrific injuries is evident right across the world from South-east Asia to the Balkans and from Africa to the Middle East. Unexploded munitions also represent a huge obstacle to post-conflict communities seeking to rebuild their lives. Economic reconstruction and social recovery cannot take place until the explosive ordnance is cleared and destroyed; the task of clearance is a huge and daunting challenge. 
In relation to New Zealand’s involvement in this exercise I particularly commend the Leader of the Opposition Phil Goff for his work in this process when he was the Minister for Disarmament and Arms Control because the reality is that if the Minister is not pushing an issue the resources will not flow to deliver this sort of outcome. I commend the team of people—because it will have been a team of people—in the ministry in which I used to work the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade for its excellent work. The whole ministry engaged at all posts across the globe and in many of the divisions in Wellington will have pushed this issue to the outcome that has now been achieved. 
I think this exercise shows that New Zealand’s commitment to working with others to stop the human cost of cluster munitions has not been inhibited either by our size or by our remoteness from the problem. Out in the field New Zealand has sent teams of clearance experts from our Defence Force to help clear the estimated 1 million cluster sub-munitions that littered southern Lebanon after the 2006 conflict. Earlier our Defence Force personnel worked for many years in Laos Cambodia Mozambique Angola and Afghanistan clearing landmines and unexploded ordnance. The aid agency NZAID has provided support to rehabilitation programmes to assist the victims of unexploded ordnance including unexploded cluster sub-munitions in affected countries in South-east Asia. 
But now in this House we are putting a fence at the top of the cliff by referring the Cluster Munitions (Prohibition) Bill to the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee which I chair and by the fact that we have signed up to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. The committee looks forward to receiving this legislation; it will process it as quickly as it can. We are doing so to put a fence at the top of the cliff not an ambulance at the bottom. 
We need to eliminate the use of cluster munitions where they have an unacceptable effect on civilian communities. When these bombs are dropped—and people tend to overlook this—they have a very wide spread. A cluster bomb can cover an area the size of roughly two to three football fields. That can cause a huge amount of damage. They cause particular damage to civilian communities first because of that big spread and second because the unexploded bomblets remain dangerous for decades after the end of a conflict. Nobody in this House will support the sort of damage that these weapons do; in today’s 21st century the damage is just unacceptable. We have to stop the production of these weapons the spread of these weapons and the use of these weapons. 
I think that this legislation will progress very quickly through our Parliament and through the select committee process and as the chair of the select committee I look forward to pursuing that objective. Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker.