Blog #21

Won’t Rob’s mob have to give way to the concern of decent citizens for social justice across the board?  Does anyone know much about leased line prices?That is the clear message I take from the polls, and it is the clear message that Labour Opposition members are getting throughout the country. As the Dominion reported on 19 April in reference to his appearance at Eden Park with the royal couple, the Prime Minister may still ‘prove a runaway success as a side show’, but as a serious solution to the political, economic, social and moral crisis that New Zealand now faces he and his accomplices among government members should be immediately dismissed.
It is not just New Zealand’s political leaders who are taking flight from reality these days. They have their counterparts at the highest level in other important nations. Just as I am struck by the inadequacy of the government’s response to New Zealand’s present crisis, so I am appalled at the inappropriateness of the response by major world leaders to the most critical issue confronting the international community—that of disarmament. I must say that Opposition members note with particular sadness the recent announcements by the socialist government in France concerning its increased spending on nuclear defence. Its four-year military programme announced last week gives clear priority to nuclear weapons. That is especially bad news for South Pacific nations like New Zealand, because it indicates a continuing commitment by the French government to further develop its own nuclear deterrent, and that means a continuation of the nuclear weapons testing programme at Moruroa.
It is pleasing to note that the Leader of the Opposition took the earliest possible opportunity to express the unanimous opposition of the New Zealand Labour Party to continued French nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific. That message must be driven home to France—the message that all democratic political forces in the South Pacific deplore its nuclear weapons testing, and that that, indeed, is the unanimous view of all nations that take part in the South Pacific Forum. While the Labour Party is opposed to nuclear weapons testing by any nation, wherever it may occur, it is particularly concerned that it should be carried out in our region, in a colonial territory, by a colonial power operating from half a world away.
While I have singled out the French government for particular criticism, the continuing antics of the two major superpowers concerning their nuclear arsenals also warrant some comment. Each is engaged in a deadly game of blindfold bluff, each trying to perpetrate the fiction—and it is no more than that—that the other side has assumed nuclear superiority, and, therefore, that it poses a greater threat to security than before, and that massive expenditure to close the alleged gap is required.

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