JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader, Green Party):
I move, That the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone
Extension Bill be now read a second time. The passing of the
New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament,
and Arms Control Act in 1987 was a milestone in New Zealand's
development as a nation that can create its
own destiny, think for itself, and support the principles of peace and
safety
for all peoples. It prevents the stationing
of nuclear weapons on our land or territorial sea out to 12 miles, the
entry of
nuclear-powered ships into our harbours, and
the building of nuclear reactors in New Zealand.
It is actually very modest legislation, although
New Zealanders have been enormously proud of it. It has made waves
internationally and marked New Zealand out
as a country that stands up for what is right in that respect. But it is
modest.
It does not prevent nuclear weapons and reactors
from cruising along our coast, as long as they are just passing through,
and it does not prevent ships carrying other
nuclear materials.
There have been two major developments since
1987 that justify updating the Act. Firstly, the International Court of
Justice, prompted especially by New Zealand,
has declared the deployment of nuclear weapons to be illegal. That
justifies taking an even stronger stance on
where they may be carried. The numbers of those weapons, and the States
holding them, have increased, despite the
end of the cold war. Uncertainties around the intentions of nuclear States
and
the location and safety of weapons have made
disarmament an even more urgent priority now than it was in the 1980s.
Secondly, nuclear fuel reprocessing has gone
global, with shipments of highly hazardous plutonium mixed-oxide fuel and
high-level waste passing regularly between
Japan and Europe, sometimes through the Tasman Sea. This bill was drafted
in 1997 as the Pacific Teal was passing through
the Pacific--in fact, through the Tasman Sea--with a cargo of high-level
nuclear waste. Another ship took this route
last year, and, as we speak, two empty ships are on their way from Europe
to Japan to collect plutonium mixed-oxide
fuel that has been rejected by Japan because British Nuclear Fuels Ltd,
which
produced it, falsified the safety data. It
is a totally unnecessary shipment, in both directions, of fuel that should
never have
left home and where the company that produced
it lied about the safety data.
There is a very close connection between the
nuclear fuel cycle and weapons. Reprocessing creates plutonium that is
usable in weapons. There is a lot of it stored
in Japan now, but despite the statements that this fuel reprocessing is
absolutely essential to the nuclear power
industry, none of the reprocessed fuel produced by this France-Japan circuit
has ever been used in a power station. The
Act does not deal with the products of fuel reprocessing, because the trade
did not exist in 1987, and we need to deal
with it now.
My objectives in drafting this bill were not
just to try to protect New Zealand and the sea immediately surrounding
it,
because in the end there is no security from
nuclear materials unless there is security for everyone. It was, rather,
to take
another tiny step towards a nuclear-free South
Pacific and, eventually, a nuclear-free world. I hoped that the discussion
around this bill would support calls already
being made for continued evolution of the United Nations Convention on
the
Law of the Sea to clarify that “innocent passage”
means only cargoes that are genuinely innocent. So I was
disappointed, not only that the Government
is voting this bill down today, but that it was completely uninterested
in any
kind of changes to the bill that might have
seen it used to make some kind of advance on the 1987 Act, or to require
more information and safety from the ships
coming through.
The Government has raised three main arguments
against proceeding with this bill. The first is that nuclear materials
are
not generally transited through our exclusive
economic zone now, and the Government has an assurance from the nuclear
States that this will continue. The first
response to that argument is to ask why, if that is occurring de facto
anyway, it
should not be codified in law. As the Peace
Foundation said to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, “the
fact that New Zealanders felt justified in
requesting nuclear States not to transit through the exclusive economic
zone,
and the fact that those States have agreed
to this, provides legitimacy to the claim that such protection of an exclusive
economic zone is becoming part of the customary
right of coastal States. Codifying this protection in national legislation
would both affirm and strengthen this right.”
The reason this argument was not accepted,
of course, is that the Government does not want it to become a precedent
for other States. There is ample room for
a ship to pass through the Tasman Sea without infringing the exclusive
economic zone of either Australia or New Zealand.
But that is not true of other parts of the South Pacific, where island
States are so close together that there is
no passage, without entering the zone of some country. New Zealand is
therefore accepting an assurance that our
own immediate safety will be protected, and is refusing to take a stand
that will
help other States to protect themselves from
the nuclear threat. If our objective is a nuclear-free South Pacific, this
is not
the way to achieve it.
Second, the Government argues that this bill
is illegal under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which
gives States the right of innocent passage
through the waters of other countries. This is a provision of the convention,
but
it is not absolute. The convention is actually
about striking a balance between the rights of coastal States and those
of
maritime nations. Article 23 makes the right
of innocent passage subject to certain precautionary measures. It provides
that “foreign nuclear-powered ships and ships
carrying nuclear or other inherently dangerous or noxious substances shall,
when exercising their right of innocent passage
through the territorial sea, carry documents and observe special
precautionary measures established for such
ships . . .”
New Zealand has been campaigning for strong
international regulations for such transits, and these ought to
confer--liability in the case of an accident;
full documentation of cargo and route; prior notification, and, preferably,
informed consent; a full environmental impact
assessment of possible accidents, and a contingency plan for emergencies.
But no such precautionary measures have been
agreed. So New Zealand is entitled, in my view, in the absence of such
measures, to keep these ships out. The Law
of the Sea convention also, in articles 21 and 56, gives coastal States
jurisdiction, with regard to protection and
preservation of the marine environment.
The third issue, on which the Government opposes
the bill, is that it believes it is unenforceable. I was particularly
touched that Judge Weeramantry from the International
Court of Justice saw fit to come and make a presentation to the
select committee. In addition to pointing
out that--if a nuclear exchange broke out while a ship carrying a nuclear
weapon was in our economic zone--we would
become a target, he also had this to say about enforcement: “It is not
the
availability of enforcement provisions that
gives validity to a principle of international law. International law is
respected
through the weight of its legal authority.
The ICJ itself has no enforcement powers, yet over 90 percent of its decisions
are implemented.”
We learnt from Mr Colin Keating, a New Zealand
negotiator, in 1982, of the Law of the Sea convention, why our
officials are desperate not to open the question
of how the convention may evolve to clarify the rights of coastal States.
He told us that in 1982, New Zealand fought
hard for a maximum economic zone and maximum access to the resources
of the continental shelf--such as fish and
minerals. The issue of rights of coastal States to protect their environment
from
pollution and dangerous cargo, was on the
table at that stage. New Zealand gave that away, in return for fish and
minerals. That is what he told us; that was
a deal done in 1982. The Minister said yesterday that those rights had
not
been traded away, because we had never had
those rights. What we learnt from Mr Keating was that those issues were
on the table for discussion but New Zealand
chose not to pursue them, in order to gain maximum economic advantage in
the economic zone, and to the continental
shelf. So if a missile hits us, while a United States submarine carrying
nuclear
weapons is in our zone, we can say: “So long,
and thanks for all the fish!”. The Green Party tried a number of
amendments to the bill.
… ends