Goff Phil: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Goff Phil: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:615;Page:10821] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade) 
: 
 What a pathetic contribution that was from the Opposition spokesperson on defence. I look across the House and I see Simon Power and Richard Worth and I ask what those two people have in common. What they have in common is that they both owned up and went on the public record to say that 9 years of slashing expenditure on the New Zealand Defence Force by the previous National Government had crippled the New Zealand Defence Force. Now we have the double standard of Simon Power as spokesperson on defence coming into the House and saying that the New Zealand Government has not supported its defence forces. 
Simon Power talked about isolationism. I will tell that member what the defence forces in East Timor told me last week. The senior officers whom I talked to said that they had never in their entire career in the armed forces been as busy and as active around the world in missions that they were proud to be part of than they have been under this Labour-led Government—the job they did in East Timor; the job they are doing in the Solomon Islands and in Bougainville; the work they are doing in Afghanistan in heading up a provincial reconstruction team and the fact that they are working as part of the International Security Assistance Force; and the humanitarian and reconstruction work that is being done in Iraq. The National Party must represent the only individuals in New Zealand and indeed in the international community who will not acknowledge that the New Zealand Defence Force and the New Zealand Government are playing the role of exemplary international citizens in the tasks they are carrying out. 
 I want to come back to what the Leader of the Opposition said—or rather what he did not say—in his speech. Don Brash has been on record as a public figure for well over a couple of decades. We know what his agenda is. His agenda is what he has spelt out. He will cut taxes on the rich—that is $1.7 billion to go back to the wealthiest 2 percent of this country—and at the same time he will slash the minimum wage because that is a disincentive for the disadvantaged and the poorest income earners to work. I am not making that up; Dr Brash is on the record as saying that. Dr Brash is on the record as saying that eligibility for New Zealand superannuation should be raised 10 years so that people would be 75 before they got it. Dr Brash is on the record as proposing privatisation. He said that everything should go. He gave that speech time and time again but we did not hear it in the House today. We did not hear it in the House today because he knew that being to the right of the ACT party will let National subsume the 4 percent that the ACT party gets but will still leave National relegated to a minor Opposition role in this House. 
So the good doctor has discovered the time-honoured populist stance of exploiting race as a way of winning popular support. Never mind the fact that for 9 years we had a National Government that honoured its obligations. Doug Graham supported by Murray McCully who is sitting in the House did what was necessary to bring our country together in order to establish a degree of unity that would mean New Zealand would not follow all those other countries around the world where race and ethnic tension have ripped societies apart. But now the good doctor is subordinating what is in the long-term interests of this country—the well-being and the unity of this country—to divide the country for his own political ends and to disguise what his real political agenda is. 
But it is worse than that. I picked up a New Zealand Press Association article this morning giving coverage of a statement made by Dr Brash yesterday. I will read it to the House and I challenge the National Party as to whether this represents the new policy of the National Opposition. It reads: “National Party policy was that New Zealand should have joined the war in Iraq and the cost of not being there was substantial.” I had to have a double take at that because the National Party has never had a stance on Iraq for or against. From the safe position of retrospectivity it now says we should have been there. But the worse thing is that Dr Brash made that comment in the context of free-trade agreements. He said that the substantial benefit we missed out on was getting into negotiation with the United States and that was the reason we should have gone to war. I have never seen such an expedient morally bankrupt policy as one that states that we should put at risk and sacrifice the lives of young New Zealand men and women serving in the defence forces in a vain attempt to curry favour for a trade agreement. If that is the principle that Don Brash is so keen on telling the country that he stands for as a man of principle then I say that this country will have nothing of it—nothing of it at all. 
Two-thirds of New Zealanders rejected New Zealand’s involvement in the war in Iraq and this Government made its stance very clear. It said that if weapons of mass destruction were the reason for going to war in Iraq then we should let the United Nations Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission weapons inspectors complete their task so that if war was going to happen it was only as a last resort. The weapons inspectors had not finished their work and they needed to be allowed to finish their work. That policy was accepted as wise by five out of seven parties in this House and by two-thirds of New Zealanders. The wisdom of that policy was shown by the comments made by David Kay the head US weapons inspector in his testimony to the Senate armed services committee just a fortnight ago. He acknowledged that there were no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So the good Dr Brash would sacrifice principle with regard to whether New Zealand should go to war. 
However Dr Brash has gone beyond that. He has said he will also sacrifice New Zealand’s nuclear-free policy. Two-thirds of New Zealanders believe that we should not have nuclear-powered vessels and 80 percent of New Zealanders say we should not have nuclear weapons in this country. Don Brash has told his caucus that he would change that policy “before breakfast”—those were words that I heard quoted—against the wishes of 80 percent of New Zealanders again because he thinks that sacrificing this country’s right to an independent policy will somehow give us a free-trade agreement. That is simply a nonsense. I want to quote an authority—a person who should know. He is no less than Prime Minister John Howard from Australia. John Howard said a few days ago that trade agreements were not about friendship and that friendships do not amount to a lot when it comes to trade agreements. He said “I have never said it’s the sort of thing where sentiment and political friendship will triumph over local and sectoral self-interest.” So not only is Dr Brash prepared to sacrifice principle to expediency but he is doing so in a cause that will not succeed. 
This Government will continue to push for a free-trade negotiation with the United States. We are building up a constituency of support for that. Three hundred corporates and 70 members of Congress have signed a letter to President Bush stating that such negotiations should begin. They should begin because it will be good for the economy of our country good for the economy of the United States and it makes sense for two countries that have stood side by side on the issues of trade liberalisation to enter into such an agreement particularly since one of the two closer economic relations partners is now part of a free-trade agreement. But when we achieve that agreement—however long it may take—it will be on the basis of the rational benefits of such agreements. It will not be on the basis of this country and this Government sacrificing the fundamental principles that we believe in and sacrificing our sovereign right as a nation to hold our heads high and put forward the policies that we believe in; not what it is simply expedient to believe in—as Don Brash constantly promotes.