Guarding NZ’s reputation
It’s a fun game: pick which party individual newspapers’ editors vote for. In England, they make it easy - the editorial line is clear and partisan, and widely-trumpeted. Here, where papers tend to be single players in local markets, there is a greater need to straddle the middle so as not to offend big chunks of voters (and potential newspaper readers).
But the Sunday Star-Times better watch out or it might get a reputation for agreeing with the Greens more than is fashionable among editorial writers. Of its five editorials in May, two have been broadly supportive of Green initiatives. The first a few weeks back endorsed the Green call for a boycott of the Black Caps’ tour to Zimbabwe. The second, in today’s issue, deals with Rod’s protest last week against the Chinese government. It reads:
Sometimes, the Greens have their uses. Party co-leader Rod Donald’s protest against the Chinese police state was splendid, a symbolic gesture that glows in the memory.
Nothing could better illustrate the gulf between democracy and despotism - and nothing could better show the difficulties that beset the relationship between the two…
Chinese security guards summoned the New Zealand police to deal with the Green MP after he unfurled the Tibetan flag. If the police had done so, it would have been a powerful symbol of appeasement and surrender. It would also have exposed Clark to charges of hypocrisy. It was she, after all, who as Opposition leader criticised a National government for apparently allowing a bus to be used to shield former president Jiang Zemin from a similar protest in 1999. This time, at least, the New Zealand authorities seem to have decided that the right to free speech matters, and is not to be lightly abandoned.
It might infuriate Chinese strongman Wu Bangguo to be “insulted” by a lone protester in a pipsqueak nation. Presumably the Chinese are angry that he should suffer the indignity of having to enter Parliament through a side-door. That is just too bad. The servants of a police state will never understand why the mighty should tolerate protest. In China, dissidents are routinely jailed and killed. But we do things differently here.
The Zimbabwe cricket tour and the Chinese politician’s visit do have something in common. They involve the Greens standing up for human rights that the vast majority of New Zealanders cherish and champion. And they involve opportunities for New Zealand to say, “Yes, we are a small nation, but we are a great one. We believe in human rights and are willing to stand up for them.” The Sunday Star-Times is right. One of the Greens’ uses is to act as the country’s conscience on human rights, and to defend those values against those who would throw them to the winds of political expediency.
You may have noticed an increase in the frequency of my attacks on the policies of Winston Peters and NZ First recently. Partly, this is to do with the fact that, increasingly, I believe “nationalism” and “Kiwi values” will be an issue in this election. And, quite apart from the meta-choice of Labour vs National, the subsidiary choice facing voters is the Greens vs NZ First. Who would you prefer to be a guardian of our international reputation? Who would you trust not to trample on the human rights of our citizens and visitors to our countries for political expediency?
