Smith Lockwood: Mercenary Activities (Prohibition) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Smith Lockwood: Mercenary Activities (Prohibition) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:618;Page:14256] 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH (National—Rodney) 
: 
 In speaking to Part 2 of the Mercenary Activities (Prohibition) Bill there are a couple of serious matters on which I would appreciate the advice of the Minister in the chair. 
Firstly in Part 2 there are several clauses. The first clause 7 relates to recruiting a person to be a mercenary and I guess that is something. But clause 10 makes an offence of training a prospective mercenary. I would like the Minister to advise how on earth that can actually work. If someone in New Zealand is involved in training people for security work at that stage he or she has no idea whether the trainees will end up in armed hostilities that are defined by this bill as mercenary activities. I would appreciate the Minister’s advice on how on earth that is meant to work. If someone involved in— 
Jill Pettis 
: That’s like saying “I shot him by accident.” 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH 
: That is pretty dumb and about what I would expect from a Labour whip who is involved in making legislation like this. One has to ask oneself why such junk legislation is being passed by the Government under urgency. The only logical explanation I have heard came from Ron Mark who reckons that it is to help Helen Clark get the job as Secretary-General of the United Nations. Why else would the New Zealand Government be passing this junk? 
But I come back to the specific issue which is how legislation can contain something like clause 10 which makes it an offence to train a prospective mercenary. People involved in the legitimate business activity in New Zealand of training security forces have no way of knowing whether a trainee will end up involved in mercenary activities. If trainees do end up in mercenary activities a charge could be brought against the person who trained them because in training people who are now involved in mercenary activities he or she has committed an offence. How does that make sense? The person doing the training was doing perfectly legitimate security training. 
I am sure Ron Mark could name several such international businesses. Members should not forget that under clause 13 “Extraterritorial jurisdiction” this training could involve a New Zealander working overseas. If a New Zealander with an international company is involved in training perfectly legitimate people to be involved in security activities internationally—for example training people to be employed by the United Nations—yet some of those people end up in mercenary activities then that New Zealander is involved in training people for mercenary activities. As I read this legislation such people could be charged under clause 10 with training a prospective mercenary. 
I believe that Parliament deserves to know where the protections are. It does not make any sense at all to have a perfectly legitimate training business caught up in this legislation; we should not blame that business if a trainee chooses to get involved in mercenary activity. Members should not forget that mercenary activity is extraordinarily difficult to define. We know that from the attempts in Part 1 to define it. Members of Parliament may not be aware but the select committee heard that the kaiser charged the New Zealand soldiers fighting in World War I with being mercenaries. 
Jill Pettis 
: Well he would. 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH 
: The Labour member said that he would but that is part of the problem of defining what is mercenary activity. When it comes to clause 7 mercenary activity has been used to try to bring peace to war-torn parts of this world. I invite the senior Government whip to have a look at what happened in Sierra Leone because mercenaries were involved there to try to bring some stability to that place. World pressure against mercenaries caused them to be withdrawn and what happened? The place broke down into civil war. The Secretary-General of the UN himself looked seriously at bringing in mercenaries—clearly defined mercenaries—to try to help with the huge suffering in Rwanda which none of the members of the UN were prepared to do anything about. None of the members of the UN had been prepared to go into Rwanda or Somalia and it was going to take mercenary activity to do something. Part 2 is nonsense.