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by frog

Rod‘s campaign to have the Black Caps’ tour of Zimbabwe cancelled rolls on. Yesterday, he probed the Prime Minister in Parliament about her views on the issue. The following exchange ensued between Rod and Michael Cullen, who was deputising for the PM:

Rod: When she said yesterday “personally I wouldn’t be seen dead there�?, was she hoping that individual New Zealand cricket players would follow her lead and withdraw from the proposed Black Caps tour of Zimbabwe; if not, why not?
Cullen: The Prime Minister was expressing her personal view. The decision as to whether the New Zealand cricket team tours Zimbabwe is one for the players and New Zealand Cricket to make.
Rod: Is the Prime Minister concerned that a tour by an official New Zealand cricket team to Zimbabwe could be seen as giving tacit approval to Robert Mugabe’s pariah State and therefore could undermine the Government’s condemnation of the rigged election recently held in Zimbabwe; if not, why not?
Cullen: No, because both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade have made clear on many occasions New Zealand’s abhorrence of the Mugabe regime.
Rod: Will the Government consider advising New Zealand Cricket that if it withdraws from the Zimbabwe tour on moral or political grounds, the Government would underwrite any fine imposed by the International Cricket Council; if not, why not?
Cullen: No. That would create an unfortunate precedent for the future in many similar kinds of cases, I would have thought.
Rod: Does the Prime Minister consider that there is value in New Zealand pursuing sporting boycotts against Zimbabwe, given their effectiveness in helping to overturn South Africa’s apartheid regime in the 1980s; if not, why not?
Cullen: Yes. Certainly, sporting boycotts have worked in the past, but no New Zealand Government has ever attempted to prevent a New Zealand team going overseas, as opposed to preventing a team coming to New Zealand.
Rod: Will the Prime Minister encourage the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Phil Goff, to follow the example of the British Government and meet with New Zealand’s representative on the International Cricket Council with a view to requesting an international sporting boycott of Zimbabwe; if not, why not?
Cullen: That is a matter for Mr Goff. I think it is fair to say that the current policy of the International Cricket Council makes these decisions very difficult for sporting teams, and the policy could well be revisited, but that, again, is a matter for cricketers and cricketing organisations throughout the world.

Reports on these latest developments are available from the NZ Herald and NZPA.

Meanwhile, the Zimbabwe tour is bringing ideological enemies in the blogsophere together like few other issues: No Right Turn, NZ Political Comments, NZ Pundit, and David Farrar have all advocated some sort of boycott.

In other news, Rod has just appeared on the Rock’s Morning Rumble with Nick and Rog, having been interviewed by former Kiwi pace bowler Simon Doull on the Zimbabwe issue. Doull, who had his test and ODI debuts in Zimbabwe in 1992, is also fully behind a boycott.