By Tom Petterson, Socialist Equality
Group
As New Zealand approaches an
election on November 7, the entire parliamentary
establishment and the media are conspiring to downplay, if
not completely bury, the immense dangers facing the working
class from the expanding global war.
Only the
Socialist Equality Group’s campaign is warning that behind
the backs of the population, the ruling elite is conspiring
to further integrate the country into US-led imperialist
wars and war plans against Iran, Russia, China and
elsewhere. That will be the agenda of the next government,
whether it is led by the incumbent National Party or the
opposition Labour Party.
Neither Prime Minister
Christopher Luxon nor Labour leader Chris Hipkins is
speaking openly about these plans. Both parties are
extremely nervous about the widespread and deeply-ingrained
hostility to war among workers, young people and the broader
population.
During the final leaders’ debate
broadcast by Stuff on October 20, both Luxon and Hipkins
attempted to distance themselves from Washington and the
Trump administration.
Asked whether the war against
Iran was “a mistake,” both leaders said it was, with
Luxon calling its objectives “very confused.” In fact,
the current government supported the attack on Iran and
echoed the US and Israeli lies that it was aimed at stopping
Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
The moderator then
posed the question: “What’s the first thing that happens
if China were to invade Taiwan?”
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Luxon did not
answer directly but said such an attack would be
“catastrophic for the world” and urged “dialogue”
between the US and China. The Labour leader agreed that a
war would be “catastrophic” and urged China—but not
the US—“to seek diplomatic resolution to any conflict in
the Taiwan Strait.”
He added that “we should also
be very clear that we are an independent nation. We don’t
align with either side in any conflict between the US and
China, and that has been New Zealand’s long-standing
position.”
Hipkins’ statement is a lie. New
Zealand is not neutral or non-aligned, nor does Labour
support such a position. NZ is an imperialist power, which,
in league with Australia, dominates much of the impoverished
southwest Pacific region. Since World War II the NZ and
Australian ruling classes have pursued their own predatory
interests in a close alliance with US imperialism. With the
eruption of a third world war, Wellington is scrambling to
secure its seat at the table for the violent redivision of
the world.
Neither Luxon nor Hipkins explained why
tensions over Taiwan have escalated to the point where war
between nuclear-armed powers is publicly discussed. They did
not dispute the question’s implication that China’s
belligerence is to blame.
This framing turns reality
upside down. It is Washington that has systematically
militarised the Indo-Pacific region and encircled China,
including by supplying weapons to Taiwan and strengthening
alliances with the Philippines, South Korea, Japan,
Australia and New Zealand.
It is the US, not China,
which has launched a series of criminal wars, driven by the
long-term decline of American capitalism, including the
onslaught against Iran. The wars in the Middle East and
against Russia, along with the seizure of Venezuela’s
resources, are all aimed at isolating and weakening China,
the main economic rival of US imperialism.
Labour
governments have played a key role in strengthening New
Zealand’s alliance with Washington. Labour sent troops to
take part in the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the war
in Iraq in 2003. The last Labour government sent NZ soldiers
to Britain to train Ukrainian conscripts to fight against
Russia.
Labour and National have also worked to
seamlessly integrate the New Zealand military with
Australia’s armed forces, under conditions where Australia
is being transformed into a vast base for US operations
against China.
During the last Labour-Greens
government, in August 2023, Defence Minister Andrew Little
openly declared that the country needed “a combat capable,
ready force” in case of a US-led war against China. He
said: “If for example conflict does break out in the South
China Sea, where $20 billion of our exports flows through
every year, we have a stake in that, and we may be called on
to play a role should conflict break out. We need to be
equipped for that and prepared for it.”
The sham of
Labour’s so-called “independent” foreign policy is
further exposed by Hipkins’ insistence that NZ must remain
in the Five Eyes. The intelligence-sharing network, led by
the US, is playing a key role in drawing up war plans
against China.
The Labour leader has also ruled out
closing the FBI office in Wellington, which was opened by
FBI director Kash Patel last year for the explicitly stated
purpose of “countering the CCP [Chinese Communist
Party].”
The election will change nothing. If Labour
leads the next government the militarisation of New Zealand
as part of the anti-China alliance will continue and
accelerate.
Labour supported National’s 2025 Defence
Capability Plan, which included an extra $12 billion for the
military over four years and outlined plans to nearly double
military spending from just over 1 percent to 2 percent of
GDP. The diversion of billions of dollars into war is being
paid for with deeper austerity measures, which will gut
public healthcare, education and welfare
programs.
These facts underscore the political fraud
being perpetrated by New Zealand’s pseudo-left
organisations, Socialist Aotearoa and the International
Socialist Organisation (ISO), as well as Palestine
Solidarity Network Aotearoa. These middle-class groups are
presenting a Labour-led coalition with the Greens and Te
Pāti Māori as a more peaceful alternative, based on
Labour’s thoroughly hypocritical criticisms of the Iran
war and Israel’s genocide in Gaza—which Labour supported
when it led the government in 2023. They are seeking to
deceive workers and to channel anti-war sentiment behind
pro-imperialist parties.
Against all these tendencies,
the Socialist Equality Group has intervened in the
election—standing Tom Petterson as its candidate in Hutt
South—to explain to workers that a genuine anti-war
movement can only be built in opposition to all capitalist
parties, including Labour, its parliamentary allies, the
union bureaucracy and the pseudo-lefts.
The SEG’s
demands include an end to all military spending, withdrawal
from the Five Eyes and all imperialist alliances, and the
withdrawal of NZ troops from every overseas deployment. None
of this will be achieved through appeals to capitalist
governments, which have proven in every country that they
are impervious to mass protests against genocide and
war.
The only force capable of stopping the escalating
world war is the working class, united across borders on the
basis of a socialist program. The movement of workers and
youth against austerity and the far-right—which is
spreading in France, Spain and other countries across Europe
and elsewhere—must be transformed into a conscious and
internationally unified fight to abolish the capitalist
system itself.
This, in turn, requires the building of
socialist and internationalist leadership—the
International Committee of the Fourth International, the
world party of socialist revolution—including its New
Zealand section.
We call on workers, young people and
readers of the World Socialist Web Site to attend the
Socialist Equality Group’s election meeting this Sunday,
November 1, at 1:30 p.m. in the Dowse Art Museum, 45 Laings
Road, Lower Hutt, to discuss these urgent
questions.
