Delahunty Catherine: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: General Debate[Sitting date: 16 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:13933. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Speaker.Tēnā koutou e te Whare Paremata. I have not got a rhyming couplet series in this speech but I want to talk about a really true story that is important to this country. While the Prime Minister was heading off to Bali to further strip our country of our sovereignty and its resources by our free-trade deals three young men entered the Australian consulate and asked for amnesty for peace and for the right of journalists to visit the country of West Papua. Australia ignored their pleas and also dumped seven desperate people from West Papua who were being hunted by the Indonesians into a refugee camp on the border with Papua New Guinea.But what has New Zealand done lately? What has this Government done lately for this beleaguered country? Well we have colluded with the powerful against the vulnerable and we have committed $6.34 million over 3 years to run yet another community policing programme to train the police to play nice in West Papua based on the supposed great success of the previous pilot. This pilot in 2008-10 was interestingly assessed and was supposedly a success in the minds of some of the well-intentioned people who believe in community policing but if you ask West Papuans about it what they have experienced from their police in the 2 years since New Zealand did this wonderful training has been nothing short of desperate genocide. There have been police involved in numerous incidents of human rights abuses shootings killings torture and attacks on communities. These have involved deaths and the vigorous application by the police of treason laws that include arresting people for praying for peace at church services for holding rallies and for supporting the Freedom Flotilla from Australia. So thank you very much New Zealand Government but this is not helping. Community policing is a very good initiative when the community has got some kind of basic rule of law but right now we are sending our community police to train in a war zone—a war zone where peace has not been declared.What about aid? What about addressing poverty? What about human rights? What about HIV programmes and community development? The Green Party is a great supporter of positive aid but we are very concerned about human rights. We know that human rights in West Papua are abused daily. We know that our Government in this country is now ignoring the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act on family care for example and has introduced mass surveillance thus showing a willingness to adopt more totalitarian methods. However to spend $6.34 million of very very precious aid money on something that is not going to work is actually disgraceful.The training policy that has been introduced is in a contaminated context and it is doomed to fail. It is very interesting to read the review of this pilot that was supposedlythe great success. One of the quotes from the review is that “The degree to which the project contributed to improving human rights and enhancing respect for the rule of law is unknown.” The Government does not know. Now it is throwing more money at a problem that we will not take responsibility for in the true sense and the problem will not be fixed by yet another waste of community policing training.This is incredibly disappointing. In fact what it is like is handing out pretty umbrellas to people in the middle of a cyclone. That is what we are doing. The New Zealand Government aid programme in West Papua is handing out the pretty umbrellas in the middle of a series of police and military attacks on citizens which is a disgrace. So the Green Party is calling for a much more positive response from the Government. We know it loves mass surveillance. It is in with the right people if that is what it likes but Indonesia requires something more in terms of response. We need to challenge Indonesia to start a peace dialogue with the people of West Papua to create some safety some human rights and some basic legal rights in that country.If New Zealand wanted to take leadership that $6.34 million would be better spent on negotiating with the parties to create a peace environment with some independent mediation which we ought to be capable of rather than having all these other ridiculous programmes that are not working. We are very disappointed with this waste of money.