Speak Up-Kōrerotia30 years Nuclear-Free New Zealand

17 May 2017

Male This programme was first broadcast on Canterbury’s community access radio station Plains FM 96.9 and was made with the assistance of New Zealand on Air.

Female Coming up next conversations on human rights with “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”, here on Plains FM.

Sally E ngā mana,E ngā reo,E ngā hau e whāTēnā koutou katoaNau mai ki tēnei hōtaka: “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”.

Tune in as our guests “Speak Up”, sharing their unique and powerful experiences and opinions and may you also be inspired to “Speak Up” when the moment is right.

Kia ora and welcome to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia.” In June 2017, it’s going to be the 30th anniversary of the New Zealand Nuclear-Free Zone Disarmament and Arms Control Act - bit of a mouthful! - but anyway this “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia” show is going to be discussing the Act and its past, its present and its future implications.

We’ve got three illustrious guests with us today: Kate Dewes, who among a whole raft of things I could have chosen is currently Co-Director of the Disarmament and Security Centre and she comes with many decades of peace advocacy behind her. We’ve got Kennedy Graham who is very kindly joining our conversation via phone, among other things Ken you’re an MP for the Green Party and Spokesperson for Global Affairs including Disarmament. And Natasha Barnes is our third guest. Again you’ve got many things I could have pulled out but one of them is a member of the Public Advisory Committee on Disarmament and Arms Control or PACDAC.

I just thought you guys have a wealth of experience behind you, perhaps I’ll pass it over to you to fill in the gaps in those very brief introductions and tell us why you’ve come onto this panel today.

Kate Thank you it’s lovely to be here, Sally. I’ve been involved in helping get our nuclear-free policy and looking after it over the 30-odd years but also involved in taking a fairly important argument to the World Court to try and get the legality of nuclear weapons… Get an opinion on them from the World Court. I’ve also done some advisory work with two UN Secretaries General on disarmament issues.

Sally Which ones were they?

Kate Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon.

Sally And Natasha?

Natasha OK, so I’ve been working on these issues for just under ten years - so not as long as Kate - but I did work for Kate at the Disarmament and Security Centre for a couple of years after I graduated and I was the New Zealand Government Delegation to United Nations in 2010 as a civil society representative but got to hang out with diplomats so that was cool. And then after that I set up an organisation called the International Network for Emerging Nuclear Specialists. A few of us in New York had an idea that the activists weren’t talking to the diplomats and the diplomats weren’t talking to the security people and so if we could get a group of young people who were all interested in these issues but working in different fields together it could be interesting.

Sally Fantastic and it’s great to have a youth perspective on these issues.

Natasha I can kind of claim that.

Sally And Ken?

Ken Well if we go back far enough I did my doctorate on the subject of nuclear weapon-free zones and was subsequently on the New Zealand delegation that negotiated the Treaty of Rarotonga which is the regional zone for the South Pacific. And then I was stationed in Geneva and defended the Nuclear Free Policy to the Conference on Disarmament at the UN in Geneva and involved in various nuclear disarmament sessions in New York. Since 2011 - I went into Parliament in 2008 - and since 2011 have had the Global Affairs portfolio which includes nuclear disarmament as well.

Sally Great. Well it’s going to be fantastic to have such long-term perspectives on these issues as we’re talking about them. My first question for you is what exactly is the Act? What does it talk about? What does it ban? What does it not ban, I suppose?

Kate Well it bans all nuclear weapons and nuclear-powered vessels from New Zealand territorial waters and airspace and it gives the Prime Minister the power to decide if a vessel is nuclear-armed which is unusual. It’s illegal for any New Zealanders to be involved in nuclear weapons development - they’re not allowed to possess weapons, help with development or anything.

Sally Even if they were doing that offshore?

Kate Yes which is very good and it implements quite a few nuclear disarmament and arms control treaties and it also, unusually, creates a Public Advisory Committee on Disarmament and Arms Control which all

three of us have been members of. And that is a really good accountability mechanism in terms of trying to make sure that the Government actually implements what’s in the Act, so it’s a very interesting committee to be on.

Natasha Quite unusual globally to have a citizens’ committee overseeing a government act.

Sally Do you know why that was included in the legislation?

Kate Well I was part of the discussions with Helen Clark at the time when they were setting up the Nuclear Free Act and she was pretty keen to have a citizen committee because it was a very strong peace movement at the time and we were all demanding a say in how the Act should be actually written. And I think Ken would be interesting to talk to about this because he was probably part of the drafting of the Act on the other side.

Ken I was in the Ministry and involved on the peripheral, I wasn’t actively involved in the drafting of the domestic legislation but very much involved… I certainly had a bit of an active hand in drafting the regional legislation with Chris Beby and Nigel Fyfe, that was two years earlier, 1984/1985.

Sally Ken, could you perhaps fill us in a bit on what was the Rarotonga Treaty?

Ken Well back in the early days of the Cold War, the ways in which non-nuclear weapon states thought that they could… The only way in which they could protect themselves from nuclear weapons, the threat of it, was to develop zones that would be free of nuclear weapons; that is to say, deployment of nuclear weapons in the full knowledge that there would be some major powers that had the ability to strike at them from the other side of the planet maybe but nothing localised if there was a regional zone. So the Latin Americans took the initiative in the 1960s and formed a Latin American Nuclear Weapon Free Zone. There had been previous initiatives in central and eastern Europe but they fell through because the Cold War crushed them out.

But the next serious effort was in the South Pacific and it was Australia’s Bob Hawke and New Zealand’s David Lange government that agreed to take that initiative in the mid-80s and with the South Pacific island nations largely south of the Equator at the time and it kicked off at the beginning of 1984. I’d just finished my PhD so I was dragged in on the team and we kept meeting in beautiful atoll areas in Fiji and elsewhere in Canberra and in Wellington and at fairly fast pace negotiated the South Pacific Regional Zone - nuclear-free zone - which did ban and still does ban land deployment of nuclear weapons but did not go as far as to ban their entry into the territorial waters of the South Pacific states. So it was left largely at that stage, I think from memory, to Vanuatu and New Zealand to go ahead and do that and domestic legislation.

Kate Yes. I’d like to take up that point, Ken, because I want to pay tribute really to the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement which was calling for this sort of zone for a very long time and even earlier really with people in C&E and Christchurch in particular like Mary Woodward and Elsie Locke and collecting of 80,000 signatures for a petition for ‘No bombs south of the line’ which would have been the whole Southern Hemisphere nuclear-free zone.

Ken And the whole issue of the French nuclear testing in French Polynesia was behind that as well, even though French Polynesia and New Caledonia were not able to actively negotiate the zone but then of course it did develop protocols even though all we could do was ban land deployment. We did have protocols one of which to the Treaty… One of which invited the nuclear powers to give non-use assurances to Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific islands and they signed on one by one as the years went by. China and Russia of course signed on earlier shortly after 1985 but in due course the US, UK and France signed on as well. So that then got…

That then addressed the whole issue of nuclear deterrence theory. So there was a distinction between the intensity of domestic opposition here in New Zealand to the visits by anybody’s nuclear capable warships on the one hand which produced the national legislation, but a broader concern very closely related pertaining to the South Pacific regional zone as well.

Kate I’d just like to add that New Zealanders were inspired by Palau becoming nuclear free - one of the first actually in 1979/1980 - and then the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. But ours was the only legislation as such that has continued for those 30 years so really worth acknowledging that today.

Sally And I think that’s one of the key points to raise, isn’t it?

Just quickly then before we have our first break, what were some of the immediate consequences of New Zealand passing the Act back in 1987?

Ken Well it kind of was the seal of independence from the Nuclear Alliance [ANZUS] and of course very closely associated with the famous seminal Oxford debate by Prime Minister David Lange where he essentially articulated successfully and won the debate refuting nuclear deterrence theory.

But the underlying point of all this, there’s two dimensions: one is the political feeling throughout New Zealand that we did not want the symbols of nuclear weapons and nuclear capability which reflected nuclear deterrence physically here in our own land and that’s what brought in the national legislation. But associated but independent of that was an explicit repudiation by the New Zealand Prime Minister and other ministers at the time rejecting the theory and concept of nuclear

deterrence saying that New Zealand’s national security was rendered less through reliance on nuclear deterrence than rejecting nuclear deterrence and that’s more than anything else that’s what got the US so upset because they could acknowledge the fact that a strange little country in the South Pacific didn’t want its ships but they could not argue against a repudiation of the theory of nuclear deterrence that had a potential contagion effect throughout a lot of countries including in Europe. That’s what got them going against New Zealand continuing to be part of ANZUS.

Sally And just that last word you mentioned - ANZUS - that’s the Australia New Zealand US security treaty.

Kate And we’ve taken the NZ out of it basically; we’ve been kicked out.

Sally OK we’re going to have time for our first song. Ken, you chose ‘La Marseillaise,’ the French national anthem. I presume that’s possibly because of the nuclear testing you referred to earlier?

Ken Well it was possibly because of the election over the weekend but everything is related in a sense.

Sally OK perfect: ‘La Marseillaise.’

MUSIC BY NATIONAL ANTHEM BAND – FRENCH NATIONAL ANTHEM “LA MARSEILLAISE”

Sally You’re listening to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia” on Plains FM. We’re speaking with Kate Dewes, Kennedy Graham and Natasha Barnes about nuclear-free New Zealand and the Nuclear Free Act. And just for this section, I thought we’d think about what’s the role, what’re the implications, the place of the Act in New Zealand and what’s its importance to New Zealand as a country? It’s a very big question.

Kate I’d like to hear it from the youngest person in the room of how you found out about it and how you feel it’s important. Because you’re the future.

Natasha I think I kind of came at the nuclear issue thinking that it was somewhat kind of quaint aspect of New Zealand’s identity in the same way that jandals or kiwis at Christmas, goodnight Kiwi, might be but it wasn’t until I was at university studying political issues that the topic came up and I really started thinking about it in a lot more detail. And so I’m not sure that young New Zealanders think of it as a contemporary issue because most millennials were born after I was two when the Act was put into place. So for a lot of New Zealanders, it could fall into the history bucket. But when I discovered the issues I realised how incredibly important and how incredibly current it was.

Sally I think you touched on a really key point which is this idea of identity and how much is it a part of New Zealand’s identity, this idea of New Zealand committing to - and as you mentioned, Kate, being the only country that’s

committed to - this kind of legislation.

Kate I think, for me, it’s been something that… Especially when I’ve travelled overseas, I’ve heard from many diplomats around the world that they really honour what we’ve done, they see us as being strong and outspoken on this particular issue and they see it as part of our more independent foreign policy, we’re not independent yet but that’s given us a status within the UN in particular, helped us get onto the Security Council, I think even into Head of the Commonwealth and some of the other roles we’ve had. And I think we’re often seen as more of an honest broker - not always - but it’s also helped us be seen as a sort of a middle power on disarmament issues even though we’re a very small country. So our role in the new agenda coalition… And I certainly wouldn’t have been appointed to something like a United Nations Secretary Generals Advisory Board on Disarmament - I mean, I was the first Australasian ever, well Oceania representative on a committee like that - and that wouldn’t have happened without this. So I think there is a status about it internationally and that we were prepared to stand up to bullies - because our American and Australian and British friends, so called, weren’t very friendly over this issue.

Natasha A lot of those stories are public imagination, public understanding, but many aren’t. But it is a great example of Kiwis getting out there and punching above our weight and really standing on the international stage. So if more New Zealanders can understand that story and draw power from that, then that’s a really great history for the Act to have.

Sally Ken, have you got anything to add?

Ken Well in terms of the role of the zone itself I think it’s very much become a part of New Zealand’s self-perceived national identity and to a large extent, perceptions from outside as well. I think often you hear comments both from New Zealanders and non-New Zealanders: you could say there are historically three major initiatives that have given rise to New Zealand’s identity: universal suffrage first country in the world; social security - national widespread social security, first country in the world; nuclear free zone - we weren’t the first country in the world but in terms of our national legislation as opposed to the regional zone we were I think or certainly one of the very early ones. And I’m pretty sure the only one… The first one and I think the only one to this day that was part of a nuclear alliance and whose policy on the zone resulted in not continuing to be part of that nuclear alliance. So the three stand there together, I think, with equal input. When you go into the specifics and you say, “Well where does it compare today with everything in terms of foreign policy?”

I think you have to acknowledge that probably the young people find Gallipoli to be a more emotive thing to rally around each year than they do the Nuclear-free Zone and probably the reason for that has to do with village cenotaphs and family bereavements that we still carry and feel from grandparents and so on.

Sally Such an interesting idea, isn’t it?

Natasha Putting it into contemporary context it would be like New Zealand having a climate change act where we came out with a really, really strong… One of the Green Party acts, Ken?! But in terms of what it was in the day… It was a big deal.

Sally I’m glad that you touched on issues of the environment - in your case, the hypothetical climate change act - but I guess one thing I was wondering is how much of this was driven once upon a time and how much is still driven by environmental concerns and how much is driven by human rights concerns - which Ken, you’ve alluded to in referring to the three great pieces of legislation in New Zealand’s history?

Kate Well, speaking from the movement’s perspective, when we were first out with the peace squadrons in Auckland and even in Christchurch and Wellington, one of the issues we were working on then was the whole issue of whether New Zealand should get nuclear power. So I just want to cover that because the Act doesn’t actually cover nuclear power generation, but in 1975 there was a petition which received nearly as many votes… It was the next biggest petition after the suffrage one so it was over 330,000 to stop nuclear power and we did that and that was part of the education of the population, I think, that helped underpin what was happened then before coming a nuclear-free zone. But it was also people were aware of what was happening to the environment in the Pacific with testing and the effects on… intergenerational effects but also that radiation was actually reaching New Zealand’s shores, it was in breast milk - my mother’s generation - and cows at the time, it was all being picked up… Strontium-90 in milk, most people don’t know that but that was again a mobiliser for people on that issue. But also it was the biggest weapon that could be used to devastate the environment and certainly with the testing, the heating of the ocean and the heating of the atmosphere. So it’s certainly linked.

Natasha It’s still linked today. I mean, the contemporary disarmament movement globally is looking both at the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons as well as the impact on human life but that research dovetails into the impact on the environment and even from growing seasons - nuclear winters are causing shortened growing seasons - so the environmental issues and the nuclear issues, the humanitarian issues, go hand-in-hand, they always have.

Sally One final comment I had - and Kate, this touches on what you raised in the first section, that this Act was very much something that resulted from a partnership between Government and civil society - and that strikes me as being something that’s quite unusual. Have you seen - and this is a question for all of you - have you seen similar types of work being done and has that - wo questions I suppose - and has that civil society, government partnership continued in this space?

Kate I’d just like to comment on just the nuclear one to start with because I think that it needed the citizen movement to build up the public pressure. And women were very involved certainly in the early 80s when we bought Helen Caldercott out to speak around the country, I mean within weeks of her being here there were 30,000 women and children on the streets of Auckland just on this issue and then of course that mobilised as well a lot of the parliamentarians who were sympathetic, people like Helen Clark and Phil Goff had actually been out on peace squadron boats. But what it meant was that you built it up at every level and we had 300 peace groups around the country that were speaking out on this issue and lobbying MPs and then from that, when you get the Public Advisory Committee onto something you get a real partnership and a sense if the minister - and there was a Minister of Disarmament in those days - if the minister chairs the meeting and the Minister of Foreign Affairs is at the meeting, which is what happened the first three years I was on the Advisory Committee, you can actually have a really good dialogue. And we used to call the Prime Minister in to ask him certain questions about this issue and then we demanded that ordinary citizens went on government delegations to the UN. This is before email and all that sort of stuff and no funding for the peace movement and that has grown since then. And I think it is one of the unusual models that we have in the country where you have been able to get a Committee that is government appointed - and OK, not necessarily all independent speakers on it - but it is a form of accountability and hopefully this will continue into the future. And it’s now become sort of public policy, government policy, to include on delegations not just to the UN but to disarmament sessions. So whether there’s been any more like that… There’s probably stuff in the environmental movement in terms of similar…

Sally And Ken, have you got anything to add from the other side of the platform?

Ken No, other than to say that it has become a kind of integral part in a broader sense of policy making. No New Zealand government these days is going to adopt any policy without at least having acute regard to what the civil society is saying. It begs the question of whether the civil society is speaking with one clear voice but they certainly are heard inside government.

Kate I wouldn’t mind finishing this section by giving a quote from Don McKinnon, who in 1990 resigned as Defence Spokesperson for the National Party when the National Party said it would have to adopt this nuclear-free policy to actually be elected and they did. But the quote from Don McKinnon was, “New Zealand must have the most powerful and well organised peace movement in the world. I fought against it but I don’t mind being beaten on this issue because ultimately the will of the people will prevail.” And the beauty of it is, the will of the people has prevailed for the 33 years.

Sally Well said, Don McKinnon, then. And Kate, we’ve got your song which is Shona Laing, ‘Neutral and Nuclear Free.’

MUSIC BY SHONA LAING – NEUTRAL AND NUCLEAR FREESally You’re listening to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia” and we’re talking about

nuclear-free New Zealand. We’ve just been thinking about the importance of the Act to New Zealand and its identity and I’d like to think about now what changes have we seen occurring over the last 30 years since the Act passed into legislation? Have there been ups and downs in New Zealand’s commitment to being nuclear free?

Kate There’s certainly been two challenges: one in 1992 when the National government tried to overturn Clause 11 of the Act which is the Nuclear-Powered Vessels part of it and did a big report on it, the committee on it. But in fact it was overturned in the end and they did not challenge the Act until I think the early-2000 era when Don Brash talked about it being gone by lunchtime. And I think he was gone by - maybe not lunchtime but afternoon tea - but it was certainly a crazy issue for them to raise at the time and we were able to hold onto the policy which was fantastic.

Natasha I think in the last few years there’s been… The relationship between New Zealand and the US has improved and we are receiving ship visits, they still sit within the context of the Act and very much verified as being not nuclear but there is an increasing closeness there and not a renewed alliance but New Zealand has become a friend and partner of the US. I don’t think that challenges the validity of the Act or its standing but there’s soft movement in the undertones.

Kate And I think that’s when we’ve got to be really vigilant because there’s this whole question of are we really out of ANZUS or are we still in it? We’re certainly sharing intelligence with Five Eyes but we’re also still exercising at times with nuclear-capable, potentially nuclear-powered and -armed warships, and that was a question we used to raise on PACDAC as well whether that was going to be undermining the Act. At times we’re not necessarily voting consistently in the UN on disarmament issues and I know Ken will probably want to comment on that but we do have to watch. We’re just spending $20 billion, I think, on upgrading our defence and what’s that for? Where’s that going to go? I just think we’ve got to be monitoring what’s going… It’s’ just interesting watching the last ANZAC Day, there were a lot of US sailors out selling the poppies, winning the hearts and minds and what is going to happen in the future? So I think we have to watch it carefully.

Sally Kate you mentioned Five Eyes, what’s that?

Kate UK, USA agreement which is basically the listening and [inaudible] and Britain, NASA and Canada is involved in it as well, it’s like what Snowden and others were warning us about, and Nicki Hagar and others.

Natasha If I can jump in on a point you raised, Kate, about participation and military actions? So obviously Donald Trump versus North Korea and growing nuclear arsenal and that, growing threat, New Zealand has recently participated in a very large mock land invasion in South Korea so we are actively participating in what could be seen as quite aggressive or challenging relationships.

Kate I’m sure Ken will want to talk about our voting.

Ken Well it gets pretty complicated. Certainly I think there is a view that while New Zealand made a very clear statement of repudiation of nuclear weapons deployment in New Zealand and for that matter independent of the legislation a repudiation of the theory of nuclear deterrence - in formal statements, at prime ministerial level, so therefore it’s an expression of New Zealand policy to repudiate nuclear deterrence. Nonetheless New Zealand has consistently - including both the Lange government and Clark government along with National Government - have chosen to align some… Well, most of their voting patterns on nuclear disarmament resolutions at the United Nations not on strict logic which would require New Zealand to vote for resolutions that opposed nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence but rather align themselves with NATO states that are reliant on nuclear deterrence.

And so New Zealand having made its very clear statement back home, the Government probably figured that most of the New Zealand public wouldn’t bother - and they’re correct - wouldn’t bother to pass the details of one resolution after another. But those that are promoted by a non-aligned countries, in Islamic countries for nuclear disarmament and which had logical merit in them and in the same objectives as we argued that we would either abstain or occasionally vote against. So I do think that there is a weakening and always has been of the strict global application of New Zealand’s policy when it comes to voting.

There’s only one other thing I’d say in response to the comment about have we had our ups and downs and so on: it’s got to a stage since the 1990s post-Cold War world because there’s a factual development that we haven’t acknowledged and that is things got more complicated and it’s a positive development but it does make it more complicated for New Zealand and that is that in the post-Cold War world, all countries, all major nuclear powers including the United States, are deploying less nuclear weapons on ships. So the extent that there are no real surface vessels or attack submarines that are likely to be coming down here in any way carrying nuclear weapons because they just don’t do it. The strategic ballistic missile submarines (SBMs), they do still, but they never go into any port and certainly not down to New Zealand territorial waters. So the issue doesn’t come up. It makes it a lot more easy for a prime minister of New Zealand in today’s world to interpret the particular Article 9.1 about entry into internal waters of New Zealand based on official advice in a way that allows them to tick the box and assure New Zealanders that he or she are personally satisfied on behalf of New

Zealand that a particular vessel is not carrying nuclear weapons without necessarily having to insist on physical inspection for verification. So that is very much in the realm of political judgement. I actually… The last time around which was not that long ago - six months or eight months ago - I asked the question in the House about whether such official advice to the Prime Minister would be made available to the public and the short answer is well 95% or more of it is publically available anyway so you don’t need to worry about the other 5%, just trust us. So it’s a bit of a grey area and I don’t think it means that… I don’t think it signifies that New Zealand is going one way or the other in terms of weakening its repudiation of nuclear deterrence; it’s more just a political judgement from ship to ship from now on.

Natasha I think, Ken, you raised a really interesting point about the wording of the legislation continuing to be relevant in the contemporary context and how that changes. There are a number of changes that we’re seeing across the South Pacific: Australia looking to potentially host nuclear waste but also as a large exporter of uranium some of which passes through New Zealand ports in its very raw form - it’s not technically in the Act and thus not technically wrong but when you’re thinking of the preamble of the Act and the spirit in which it was meant “nuclear-free New Zealand” is not just, I guess, about being New Zealand nuclear free but I guess New Zealand’s participation in international diplomacy as well. And that has ebbed and flowed in terms of our role. New Zealand has… In 2000 we had some very active diplomats, a coalition of middle power states, the New Agenda Coalition, that sort of ebbed and flowed again, I guess, with the tide of the international community and the focus on disarmament but I think New Zealand has had an opportunity, we have stepped forward and pushed for the issues, active on the issue of de-alerting nuclear weapons. I think there’s 2,500 warheads on 15-minute alert so that’s an issue that New Zealand has really stepped in against.

Sally So do you think the Act needs some kind of an update then, 30 years on?

Natasha I don’t think it would hurt. I’m not necessarily sure an update of the actual legislation is required but a very real contemporary discussion about what it means for New Zealand to be nuclear free in a global world and the impact of nuclear warfare is global, we know that from climate issues and I think when I said before about it sort of being almost a quaint part of the New Zealand psyche, it is just accepted as a default background particularly for young New Zealanders. So making a renewed conversation about what it means today and particularly New Zealand as an international actor on a global stage.

Sally Really interesting stuff. I think we’ll pick up some of these points in our final segment but just before we do we’ve got Natasha, your song which was Shapeshifter, ‘Bring Change’ and I’m particularly glad that you pointed out that it’s New Zealand Music Month in May this month so good choice in that respect. Was there any particular reason you chose

this song?

Natasha I’m a big fan of New Zealand music, a big fan of Shapeshifter, and I like the words in this song, they all sort of speak to empowering young people. I think that’s an important issue for this topic.

MUSIC BY SHAPESHIFTER – BRING CHANGESally You’re back with “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia” and I’m your host Sally Carlton

and we’re with Kate Dewes, Natasha Barnes and Kennedy Graham talking about nuclear-free New Zealand. We just finished up our last segment thinking about should we be thinking about updating the Act 30 years after its passing and, I guess, Natasha, you said you don’t think the Act needs to be… Legislation needs to be reconsidered but perhaps what does it mean to New Zealand today. And I guess the question that raises then is, do you think the commitment is still there from people or, as you, I think, alluded to, is it just an accepted part of what New Zealand is?

Natasha That’s a difficult question. My sense is that commitment does remain but an understanding of what that commitment entails is different. You’re not seeing New Zealanders on a regular basis get out on the streets and protest disarmament like they used to in the ‘80s but you are seeing New Zealanders get out on the streets on a regular basis protesting against other issues. So there’s… I think a conversation around what are the very real contemporary challenges for disarmament. But what I found really interesting coming at the issue was, whilst there is a grassroots movement a lot of the people that started in that grassroots base have actually become experts in the field, Kate and Ken are examples of that where they’ve taken what was a public movement and really have kind of accelerated that up through to the United Nations because a lot of the activity that does need to take place in the sort of coming ideally five years, more like 100 years - as Obama said, not in my lifetime - sometime soon is that activity really has to take place at the highest levels with government as well. And so it’s that relationship between the grassroots and what’s happening at those highest levels that really needs to be focused on.

Kate I don’t see a need to change it except to implement the bit that says we have to have a Minister of Disarmament and at the moment that position is subsumed into Gerry Brownlee, my MP, who I need to maybe go and have a conversation with about disarmament because I think it’s important that our foreign ministers know and certainly fund what we’re doing on disarmament because we’ve got a very strong ambassador for disarmament at the moment and she’s vice president of these treaty discussions that are happening at the moment to try and get a treaty to ban nuclear weapons in the UN; and doing incredibly important work right across the whole disarmament spectrum, not just on nuclear. And I think funding of little groups is really important still and that is part of the role of the Advisory Committee on Disarmament is to actually help pay out some of the French money. I was singing ‘La Marseillaise’ today,

Ken, because we got some good money from France that’s being used to help educate people, that’s part of the Rainbow Warrior fund to keep educating people about these things. So onwards and upwards. When we’ve signed the Treaty to Ban Nukes, whatever shape and form that is in the next few months hopefully, that will be added as another disarmament arms control treaty to the Act.

Sally So it’s a very real possibility that the UN will sign something?

Kate Yes. Just recently in March for five days they had pretty well consensus from about 132 states that were there on a draft treaty to ban them. It’s the next step towards a nuclear weapons convention. But guess who was protesting outside the door? It was the nuclear weapons states and their… Not on the inside saying, we’re not going to have this, we’re not going to sign up so you’re wasting your time but it was really interesting that they did protest outside. But there’s big consensus of most of the states that are part of nuclear-free zones were there and there’s a delegation of us going from New Zealand, including a young mother from Auckland, Lucy, and Lyndon Burford who has been one of our interns, just done his PhD on disarmament, and myself and Rob Greene who is sort of an expert on nuclear deterrence. So we’ll be there having hopefully a little bit of a say and what’s wonderful is that citizens are actually allowed in there and will have some speaking rights in the UN which is great.

Sally Ken, did you want to jump in with any comments?

Ken Well to address the original question of whether the legislation should be amended in any way, I certainly think not, I think it’s really important not to open it up. Legislation generally shouldn’t be opened up unless there’s a very compelling reason to do so, God knows what can happen to it and I think the national legislation has pretty much stood the test of time and I think the challenge for us to make sure that we do stand firm by it because it did, it absolutely did draw the attention of the world to the issue of repudiating nuclear deterrence and standing firm on non-deployment in your own territory.

I’ll give you a personal anecdote to demonstrate the point. Back in the late ‘80s just after the zone had come in - as I said earlier, I was posted to Geneva and my job was to defend the policy and it was not the easiest job in the world to defend the policy at the time in the CD with the major powers some of whom glaring at you but we did - and such was the recognition of New Zealand that the UN aptitude for disarmament research approached us and asked us if New Zealand would be the first in a series of books coming out about national security concepts of states. So I did a book while I was there as a diplomat essentially on behalf… It was in my own name but on behalf of New Zealand about New Zealand’s perception of security concepts and at exactly the same time when I was drafting it I was invited to visit a US nuclear weapons laboratory in California and I absolutely was obliged to go back to New

Zealand - and if you look at the Act under Article 5.2, no New Zealand citizen in or outside the zone shall aid, abet or procure any person to manufacture nuclear explosive devices with a penalty of ten years in prison - so I was obliged to get explicit clearance to go and visit that thing on pain of possibly ten years in prison. So the Act was really very strong and as to this day and I sometimes wonder vaguely, 30 years afterwards or more, what is happening around the world in terms of New Zealand citizens these days wandering around, that particle article of the Act might well apply.

Sally Tricky, isn’t it? I guess one final question I have for you all is, we’re about to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Act, do you expect the anniversary to have any impact on how people see it? I’m thinking about - when I was doing a bit of research for this, the last big anniversary, the 20th anniversary, Members of Parliament kind of recommitting to New Zealand’s place in in this nuclear-free world - are you expecting anything similar or different to happen this time around?

Kate I have asked Ken and representatives of all the political parties to come together and hopefully pass a unanimous parliamentary resolution affirming the Act and I hope that will happen but the other thing is I want to look at is the youth, partly because I’ve got a few grandchildren hanging around, they might wear a peace badge and all the rest but I’m concerned about the ones that are at school. And the good thing is that the Peace Foundation this year, funded by some of the money from the Rainbow Warrior Fund, have set up a website, www.nuclearfreenz30.org.nz and they’re sending out to all the schools during schools’ peace week which is the first and second week of August, to highlight the 30th anniversary. And we’ve put lots of films up there, teaching guide for teachers and students and hopefully blogs will be put up against the ban treaty when Lucy, Lyndon and I are over there and that’s a great way to get teachers involved. There’s already about 120 schools signed up to be involved so hopefully it will go further than that and encourage our young people.

Sally Fantastic. Any final words then before we finish up?

Ken Well I would just say that I think the anniversary should be seized as an opportunity to reiterate, if anything, a strengthened commitment to it and it isn’t - just as I guess I’ve been saying right throughout this - that it isn’t just New Zealand’s own deployment in the zone itself, it’s the whole repudiation of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence theory and that gets us onto what Kate was talking about which is the negotiations going on about for a total ban nuclear weapons convention which is the critical big step. And we don’t have time to go into that in detail but that’s where I think our focus and attention should be, both civil society and government, and just possibly use the anniversary as an opportunity to get parliament and the government to reiterate some form of commitment to a successful outcome for that. That’s a critical thing in 2017.

Natasha There’s a series of activities and events happening across the rest of this year, including this radio show, to get that word out, to remind people about the 30th anniversary. Hopefully that will lead to a series of conversations going forward but definitely I think having the focus on the ban treaty will put it in the media at an international level as well as locally. It’s great to see Kiwis going.

Sally It does sound like auspicious timing actually, having both the 30 th anniversary and the UN movements at the same time. OK well I would like to say thank you so much for coming in and sharing the very vast experiences that you bring with you, both past and present as well. Ken, thank you so much for calling in as well, it’s been really, really valuable having your input.

Ken Most welcome, thank you for having me.

Natasha Thank you.

Kate Thank you.

Sally Kia ora.