Locke Keith: Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Locke Keith: Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:615;Page:11346] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of the Green Party to support the third reading of the Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Amendment Bill. It is a very important bill and its extension of diplomatic privileges and immunities to representatives of the European Union will be very valuable to us in drawing closer to that important regional Parliament. We have had many delegations here. We are getting closer in all respects—politically economically socially and culturally—to the European Union and this bill will set us further down that track and remove an obstacle in terms of diplomatic privileges and immunities for European Union representatives. 
I think that it is important to look at the origin of diplomatic immunity as a background to some of the debate that took place in the second reading and Committee stage in particular. Diplomatic immunity is provided not because diplomats are superior beings who should be beyond the law and can commit crimes with impunity but because they are often in a country where the Government is quite hostile to their policies. Sometimes diplomats might be representing a country that is almost on the verge of war with the host country. The idea of diplomatic immunity is to stop harassment of or domestic hostility toward diplomats being expressed in some sort of frame-up or in some inadequate judicial process which could easily take place if a Government wants to promote more hostility towards another Government. Having diplomatic immunity is very important in that respect. 
Under this bill immunity is extended to the particular court process of the International Criminal Court. I think that the idea is to stop the proceedings of that court from being interfered with by domestic jurisdictions and by certain witnesses who may be politically charged. In the discussion at the Committee stage the name Milosevic was brought up and the example was given that a lot of people around the world would be hostile to him if he were the star witness at an International Criminal Court hearing in New Zealand. Nobody has great sympathy for him and nobody would want—from any simple moral basis—someone like Milosevic who has committed such crimes against humanity to be immune were he in New Zealand at such a hearing and had he committed some offence against our domestic law. But if we look at the broader context of universally protecting the International Criminal Court from interference then we would give immunity even to someone like Milosevic if he were a witness or defendant at an International Criminal Court trial in New Zealand. 
To extend that line of thinking certain nations are extending that jurisdiction in an extraterritorial manner in terms of the court cases that have taken place—or have begun—around the world against people who have committed crimes such as Pinochet and Ariel Sharon. In the Pinochet case Spain and Britain held court proceedings as to whether he should be tried. The Spanish wanted to try Pinochet. He ended up in Britain and there was a question over whether he should be extradited. All those proceedings occurred under the domestic jurisdictions of Spain and Britain. We could under the procedures of the International Criminal Court have hearings for war crimes or other crimes in relation to Pinochet and his colleagues’ activities in Chile. It could take place in London. We would not necessarily want those court proceedings to be interfered with by claims of domestic jurisdiction from Britain or if the hearing were held in Spain by claims of domestic jurisdiction from Spain. We would want the proceedings protected even though separate from the International Criminal Court hearing one might support Spain or Britain moving against someone like Pinochet. 
The Belgium Supreme Court last year said that Ariel Sharon could be put on trial in Belgium for the crime of genocide which he allegedly committed while he was Israel’s Defense Minister in 1982—he is charged with being responsible for the deaths of between 1000 and 2000 people in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. There is legitimacy in that trial proceeding against Sharon in Belgium but again we would not want that reality to interfere with an International Criminal Court proceeding. 
We even have the situation of overseas jurisdictions applying in the case of one of our citizens Helen Todd who initiated proceedings in a US court against an Indonesian general for the murder by Indonesians of Kamil Bamadhaj in East Timor a few years ago. I think that all those cases are very legitimate and they parallel what is happening in the International Criminal Court in terms of trying to bring to justice people who have committed crimes against humanity. I think it is important to include the immunities and diplomatic privileges applied in this bill in the proceedings of the International Criminal Court so that there is an integrity to International Criminal Court proceedings. 
With those few words I indicate the Green Party’s support for this bill.