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Historical Development of Nuclear Free NZ Policy, July 15, 2004

Comment by Larry Ross, October 31, 2005

This report of Dr Robert White's paper on some of the historical background to N.Z.'s 1984 nuclear-free legislation contains many useful and valuable facts.

As the originator of the campaign to make New Zealand a nuclear free zone, I will offer some comment and point out a few gaps. These can be examined in greater detail on our website: http://www.nuclearfree.org.nz

The article does not mention the importance of the local and national nuclear free zone campaign in causing the Labour Party to make the decision for David Lange to propose in 1984:

" If we are elected government of New Zealand we will make the whole country nuclear free."

Also, this people's movement of neighbourhood peace groups working to have their own local councils declare their area nuclear free was of great importance in getting the message to M.P.s. It demonstrated the power of the people. Labour listened. National did not.

There would have been no reason for labour to come up with the idea to make NZ a nuclear free zone unless they could see obvious popular demand for it as each new area declared itself nuclear free during the years 1980 to 1984.

Whereas protesting the bomb, and the warships ion NZ ports helped a great deal, it was the focus of the nuclear free zone groups that gave Labour the idea that if they promised the people what they obviously wanted, they were likely to earn some votes in the 1984 election. It worked, Labour was elected in 1984, and then it worked again in the 1987 election when the Labour government enacted the NZ Nuclear Free Zone laws.

After opposing the new law from 1984 to 1990, the National Party finally saw the light and realised they would have little prospect of being elected if they continued their opposition. So they promised to respect the Nuclear Free law if elected in 1990. Thus the nuclear issue was not debated in 1990 and National won the election.

As Dr. White points out, the Americans promised to remove nuclear weapons from their conventionally powered warships from 1992 on. However, they also said this policy can be reversed at anytime in a situation they choose to define as a crisis. As secrecy is of great importance in nuclear policy, the U.S. would not necessarily inform allies and enemies if they reversed their nuclear weapons policy at some point.
Certainly under the Bush, one would expect this policy to be reversed, and for nuclear weapons to again be carried by U.S. warships when it suited Pentagon war planners. There are now many military situations that could be defined under the new US nuclear policies, as potential nuclear war situations.

It is a very, very dangerous time, particularly so because the U.S. has demonstrated that it can create a tissue of lies to go to war, unilaterally, without UN approval, as with the Iraq war. It even threatened to use nuclear weapons
on this occasion.

As Dr. White concludes:"he sees our legislation as being as significant as ever it was, and even more so perhaps, and all efforts to change it in any respect must be resisted with all possible strength."

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Nuclear-Free New Zealand - Twenty Years On

Engineers for Social Responsibility, July 15, 2004

Dr Robert White spoke to the July meeting of the Auckland Branch of ESR to comment on the historical background to New Zealand's anti-nuclear legislation in 1984, and comment on the present situation.

On 14 July 1984 the Labour Government came to power and introduced the first nuclear-free policy for weapons and reactors on ships that New Zealand had ever had. It also established NZ as the first ever, single-nation, nuclear weapons-free zone. NZ is the only country that has put its nuclear-free policy into law which is comprehensive and expresses our complete rejection of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction, or having anything to do with them. For many New Zealanders it is very symbolic and has won our country international recognition as an advocate of a nuclear-free world.

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