Felix
Walton, reporter
Sacked diplomat Phil
Goff reveled in his freedom to denounce Donald Trump on
Thursday night, describing the US president as an abusive
bully before a packed lecture hall at the University of
Auckland.
The former High Commissioner to the UK said
New Zealand, alongside much of the western world, was
enabling Trump’s behaviour.
Goff was dismissed from
his job in London after drawing parallels between Trump’s
stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Britain’s
appeasement of Hitler before the Second World
War.
Speaking at a panel hosted by the University of
Auckland, Goff made it clear he had no regrets.
“I
relish the freedom that I now have to say what I believe,”
he said.
“It was obvious to me that Trump does not
understand history, otherwise he wouldn’t have embarked on a
pathway of appeasement of Putin, knowing the precedent for
that in Europe.”
The former Auckland mayor, Labour
minister and party leader compared international politics to
a school playground.
“You would get the bully who
would abuse the victim and all of the other kids knew that
it was wrong but didn’t intervene,” he explained.
“And
I’m sitting there in my role as High Commissioner trying to
be diplomatic [but also] desperately not wanting to be an
enabler.”
He feared New Zealand had become one of
those enablers.
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“We kept our head below the parapets
because Trump is the leader of the world’s most powerful
country, [for] one. And two, he’s got a well-known
reputation for vindictiveness,” Goff said.
“But that
is becoming an increasingly unsustainable position in my
view.”
Goff said the United States was no longer a
trusted ally.
“Under the Trump administration, the
United States can no longer be regarded as a friend, an ally
or a trading or security partner which is reliable,” he
said.
“Ask the Canadians how reliable the United
States has been.”
Fellow panellist and associate law
professor Tim Kuhner, an expert on political corruption,
said democracies around the world had eroded over the last
two decades.
“Over 106 countries since 2006 have had
deterioration, decline in the rule of law, civil and
political rights, free and fair elections, those sorts of
things. Media freedoms, academic freedoms.”
He said it
was vital that democracies improved their legal defences to
protect those freedoms from corruption.
“I think there
is a lot more work to be done in nations around the world
that can be done peacefully which is preventing the
conditions under which a illiberal populism arises,” he
said.
“That’s what nations around the world ought to
be doing in response to Trump. They should be preventing
future Trumps.”
Phil Goff said military defences were
necessary too, applauding the Government’s recently
announced boost to defence spending.
“I think we have
to increase the level of defence spending. What Putin is
doing is exercising hard power. It can only be met not by
diplomacy but equally by hard power,” said the former
Minister of Defence.
“And while we’re a small country,
we’ve always been prepared to put our hand up and to make
the sacrifices that are
necessary.”
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