Shearer David: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShearer David: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 12 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1560. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert):The speaker who has just sat down Louise Upston did not address the issue that many New Zealanders are thinking about at the moment and that is sending our troops and our forces into harm’s way into Iraq. If you look at what has happened over the last months the months of being able to respond to this it is an utter muddle. What we know is that the Government has already taken a decision on this issue and is arrogantly allowing New Zealanders to think that somehow it is still considering its options. Training has been going on for months and this week Gerry Brownlee rather arrogantly said that somehow there was going to be some preliminary training for a possible deployment in Iraq. His office told us that in December last year. Last year we knew what the training was for and this week we get told by Gerry Brownlee that actually he has made a decision around that.The Government cannot continue to fool the country on an issue as serious as that. But to beat that were Murray McCully’s comments today on radio and what he was actually saying about our deploying into Iraq. There have been no Government-to-Government discussions about deployment in Iraq up until now. We have been training for 3 months but there has been no discussion with the Iraqis about putting our troops on their soil helping them out or even asking them whether they actually want New Zealand forces to be there. In fact he went on to say to journalists that that has actually been done by the US and Australia on our behalf. This is really about what John Key admitted to a BBC interviewer—it is about being part of the club. This is not about making a real difference. It is being part of that club a club of the willing that wants to go in there. Of course the US and Australia who are already there want us to be part of their club—and the UK. The Foreign Secretary of the UK was here last week and he too wanted New Zealand to be part of that club. When I asked the UK Foreign Secretary how many troops the UK has on the ground and how many troops it is planning to deploy the answer was none—zero. The British Government does not want to put troops on the ground because it believes it is politically untenable in Britain. Why? Because it realises after 10 years of putting troops on the ground there that people in Britain do not want to go down the same route again.When you look at the legacy the history of Western involvement in the Middle East it turns out to be not a pretty history. Yet we are making a decision on behalf of New Zealanders. We have already made it—it has been done. It has all been wrapped up. We have had our meetings with our particular club and we will be putting in troops on the ground as a result of that. What has changed because John Key realises that the club conversation is not working is that for the first time I have heard John Key address human rights. Suddenly human rights are being pulled out of the drawer and human rights are being used as the justification of why we need to be in Iraq. Well human rights violations are occurring right across the world—certainly in Iraq; what has been done by the Islamic State is barbaric and horrible. But they are also happening with Boko Haram and oddly enough they are also happening in Sri Lanka a country we learnt this week whose former president Mr Rajapaksa has been invited by John Key to come to New Zealand on a formal visit. This is a man who presided over 50000 Tamils being killed and has not done any investigation into that issue and yet John Key standing up for human rights in one situation is conveniently ignoring human rights in another.What New Zealanders want when the Government is thinking about going into a war zone and a conflict zone—and do not believe that we will be operating behind the wire and therefore everything will be OK and will be risk-free. That is not the case and it is not the situation that has been experienced by any trainer in the Middle East or Afghanistan. Many casualties have occurred behind the so-called wire whatever that wire might be. What we expect what New Zealand expects and what the Labour Party expects—and a Labour Government has committed troops into conflicts before—is a sound analysis and a sound rationale for why we want to be there. I do not believe that this Government has answered the hard questions we expect to be answered. What is going to happen is that 2 years down the track we are going to be asking why we are there and what the purpose is.Here are some of the questions. Can we make a difference? Surely that is a question that we have to ask ourselves—can we make a difference? The United States spent $25 billion over 10 years at the cost of scores if not hundreds of its soldiers training the Iraqi Army only to find that it did not succeed and that the army did not stand up the first time it went into battle. Much of that problem was not to do with the training. Much of that problem was to do with fact that the political environment had undermined and hollowed out that military. But that is what I mean. What can we do—putting a band-aid over something like that—that will make a real difference to the Iraqis and to the Iraqi armed forces. What is the risk? What is the assessment of that risk to New Zealand? I do not believe that we have done that. We are gung-ho about going in. The Australians went in without being asked actually. They positioned their forces outside of Iraq without being asked then tried to ask their way in. Of course they want us to be there. They want another flag up the pole. The question is what the risk is to our soldiers and I do not believe that has been answered. What is the exit strategy? How do we know when this mission is complete? We sent troops into Bamian with a very clear set of instructions. This Government eventually pulled them out after believing that what we had done and the mission that we had set out to achieve had been completed as far as it could. That is not the case in this situation. The US is asking for just a 3-year commitment to put more troops on the ground. That looks to me like a slippery slope that we are embarking on without an exit strategy.What is the risk to ordinary New Zealanders to Kiwis right across this country of Islamic State and the radicalisation that is happening by becoming engaged in a conflict like Iraq? That has not been assessed. That has certainly not been assessed. What is the risk to New Zealanders here and abroad from our being more involved in this conflict and what is the cost? Another question: what is the cost of that involvement by putting 100-odd New Zealand troops on the ground? And how could we better use that money? What are the opportunity costs? What are the opportunities in humanitarian assistance—in standing beside some of the organisations and the local authorities and Governments that are desperately trying to address the real underlying issues that are causing the conflict in Iraq to start with? The economic issues the capacity issues within the Government that have allowed that military to fall apart—those are issues where we can actually really make a difference I believe and we have not been able to address those at all.Lastly here at home what are we doing to address the possible radicalisation of young Muslims in particular on the ground? Everybody whom I have met has told me that that simply is not happening. Yet when we look at risks to New Zealand those are the risks that we need to address which we are simply not doing. Instead we are going and embarking on a military adventure to join a club.