Lillian
Hanly Political Reporter
Labour’s foreign affairs
spokesperson says there is a time for quiet diplomacy “and
there is a time when quiet diplomacy must bend to moral
clarity,” as she responds to comments by Winston
Peters.
Labour has outlined its focus to foreign
policy, summing up its approach in three words,
“independent, principled and unafraid”.
Vanushi
Walters was speaking alongside the Labour leader as part of
Diplosphere’s foreign policy election series at Parliament
on Wednesday.
It comes after the foreign minister took
aim at those insisting the country always use megaphone
diplomacy, especially against the United States, as he
states New Zealand’s nuclear-free
policy had a cost.
On Monday he called out those
who focus on “national identity” rather than the national
interest in his final speech as foreign affairs minister
this term, making a case for quiet diplomacy.
On
Wednesday morning, Walters responded specifically to Peters’
comments.
She referenced Peters’ argument that
independence is about agency, suggesting agency is about New
Zealand’s interests over our identity.
But Walters
said “our interests and our identity, or by another name,
our values, are tethered together”.
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She then said New
Zealand’s silence on breaches of the UN Charter this term
had been “noticed”.
“We do not grow our agency if we
stand for nothing, because that too is a choice that has
consequences.
“We lost our reputation as an honest
broker and a consistent champion of international
law.”
Walters said there was a time for quiet
diplomacy, “and there is a time when quiet diplomacy must
bend to moral clarity”.
“That is undeniably the case
when the scale of human rights abuses is so special that it
amounts to genocide, to ethnic cleansing.”
She said
Labour would recognise Palestinian statehood and place
economic sanctions on Israel, as well as “intervene in
support of South Africa’s case at the International Court of
Justice in respect of a breach of the Genocide
Convention.”
Walters also specified that New Zealand’s
relationships with both the US and China are “equally
important to us as major trading partners,” as she called
out Peters’ comments to Lawrence Xu-Nan.
“Yet under
this government, we have not seen a balanced foreign policy
approach.
“To the contrary, what we’ve seen is
outright racism directed at one partner and felt by the
Chinese diaspora here in New Zealand, and silence when the
US acted in breach of the UN Charter.”
Labour leader
Chris Hipkins also spoke, saying old assumptions were being
tested in foreign policy, but New Zealand’s response cannot
be “fear”.
He said New Zealand could not rely on old
relationships, old institutions and old assumptions about
trade, security and international cooperation, as power was
being exercised more openly.
“While it is tempting to
treat this as simply a phase that will pass to be waited
out, that will be a mistake.”
He specifically
referenced the anti-nuclear movement, after saying
independence didn’t mean isolation, but the “confidence to
make our own decisions in our own interests and to explain
those to others”.
He acknowledged the decisions about
New Zealand’s anti-nuclear stance came with a cost, “but
each one also told the world something true about who we are
as a country”.
He said New Zealand’s influence came
from its willingness to “say what we think”.
“In
practice, that means we can trade with a country while
disagreeing with them.”
He said it was not in New
Zealand’s interests to have to choose between its partners,
such as the United States and China.
Hipkins also said
he wanted a Pacific that was “not militarised, and one whose
future is not dictated by rising sea levels and worsening
storms.”
Later, speaking to reporters, Walters
responded to questions about the recent missile test by
China, and concerns by some Pacific nations that the United
States conducts tests into the Marshall Islands, which is
done with the country’s consent.
Walters said neither
were a breach of international law.
“But both are
problematic in terms of peace in the Pacific, and so we
would say that neither are helpful in terms of ensuring that
we have a peaceful, peaceful
Pacific.”
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