Prebble Richard: Crimes and Misconduct (Overseas Operations) Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Prebble Richard: Crimes and Misconduct (Overseas Operations) Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:12232] 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I rise to speak to the third reading of the Crimes and Misconduct (Overseas Operations) Bill which fundamentally has been passed so that in the event of New Zealand personnel serving in the Solomons committing a crime—and although the operation is not United Nations peacekeeping it is still peacekeeping—it would be deemed to be a crime in New Zealand under this bill. Such persons can be arrested in the Solomons by New Zealand Police and tried in this country under New Zealand law for the crime committed in the Solomons which otherwise could not be done under our territorial laws. 
As it happens I was in the Solomons when the Solomons Parliament introduced its parallel bill. It was not made abundantly clear by the Minister but the Solomon Islands Parliament has passed a law that exempts New Zealanders serving in the military in the police and as civilians and we have given an undertaking that should a New Zealander commit a crime he or she will be prosecuted in this country. The first thing I want the House to know is that the Solomon Islands judiciary never collapsed during the peacekeeping. There are still expatriate judges and Solomon Islands judges and if the House gets the impression that the Solomon Islands judiciary is not capable of giving a fair trial to a New Zealander that is not so. It most certainly was the fact that at the time we intervened the Solomon Islands police force probably was not capable of doing such prosecutions and it certainly did not exercise proper policing functions over large parts of the Solomons which is the reason for the intervention. 
I am a little concerned that the bill is open-ended. There must come a point where we ought to say that law and order has been restored in the Solomons and there is really no case for a New Zealander who commits a crime in the Solomons to be able to say that he or she should be tried in this country just because he or she is serving say as a civilian adviser. 
With the Solomon Islands having passed its part of the bill it is now necessary for this Parliament to pass our part but I do make a few comments about this legislation. I support the bill in the sense that I myself have made representations—not just to this Government but also to the previous Government—that the situation in the Solomons did require intervention and it would not be able to be healed within that country. There are complicated reasons for that which go to the nature of the ethnic tension. I have also said to successive Governments that an intervention would be very successful and it would not actually require a very large number of New Zealand personnel. While it has been very successful I think the numbers we have sent are way over the top but that is partly because we were with the Australians and they tend to be a bit way over the top. We never needed anything like that number and I still think that the number of police serving in the Solomons from New Zealand is excessive. 
I make the point to the Minister of Finance that we ought to be thinking about pulling some of those numbers back and part of the reason I say that is that our aid vote to the Solomons is being reduced in other areas in order to pay for policing. So we ought to be conscious of the fact that we do not want to send across more of something they do not need when that means we are not able to help them more with things that they do need. 
But coming back to the bill itself I think I should defend the Solomon Islands judiciary. I think that they held to their task when there was a civil war going on and when the Solomon Islands police force was a large part of the problem. It was not all of the police I have to say but when some of the police were out of control the judiciary themselves continued to uphold the rule of law. I think that a New Zealander who committed a crime in the Solomons would always have had a fair trial in the courts and would have a fair trial today. 
 Having said that this is the best part of the package that we agreed to with the Australians and the Solomon Islands Government. I suppose that we also agreed with the volunteers—because they are volunteers although I do not know whether the Army are volunteers; the police certainly are volunteers as are civilians. They were given an undertaking that this law would be passed. I think—and I am putting it slightly differently from Mr Worth—that New Zealand is somewhat overextended in the number of peacekeeping operations it is conducting. I think that we are in 22 different countries or something like that. It is said that we are punching above our weight and I also think we ought to look at whether that is sensible. The Solomon Islands are in the Pacific and is clearly an area of interest to us so I acknowledge that I call for this intervention. I believe that the Government has done the right thing. Having done that I acknowledge that Parliament is obliged to pass this bill so the ACT party will support its third reading.