Update: transcript from House on 2nd terminator question

Published: March 3, 2006

by frog

This makes for great reading!

NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: Does he have confidence in his Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister of Foreign Affairs): It is early days, but I have found Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade staff to be conscientious and professional, and therefore the answer is yes.

Nandor Tanczos: When the Minister told the House yesterday, in answer to a question on the Convention on Biological Diversity, that: “there is no such international convention or treaty.” was that because his officials did not tell him or was it just because he forgot?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The member full well knows that he began with a convention on an issue called “the terminator” where it comes to seeds. That is what he started with, but where he went after that, I do not know. It puts me in mind of the old saying: I shot an arrow into the air. Whither it landed, I knew not where”. The fact is, if a member puts down a primary question and staff prepare the answer to it, that is likely to be what the answer is about.

R Doug Woolerton: Apart from the terminator gene, is the Minister aware of any other substances that effect sterility?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The answer is yes, for it is generally accepted that smoking cannabis has an impact on driving capacity, on mental capacity, on social capacity, and on the issue of sterility, which was the primary question asked yesterday. It can be a real terminator.

Nandor Tanczos: Is the Minister aware of reports that the United States, although not a party to the convention, has been working through other countries in an attempt to overturn the status quo on terminator technology, and is that what he meant when he said in a recent speech that New Zealand is working in the interests of the United States in the Pacific?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: My answer is this: that is not what I said in my recent speech, at all. The member should refer to it in order to get the honest interpretation from it. What I did say at the time was this: that Ministry-[Interruption] Well, I can see why honesty would be so foreign to that member, but not to me.

Madam SPEAKER: Please just stick to the answer.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I am happy to stick to the answer. The trouble with National members is that they can dish it out, but they cannot take it. They cannot take it, and we know why: it can be lonely with one’s nose against the window for all these years.

Nandor Tanczos: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The Minister is attempting to avoid the fact that he does not know the answer to the question, by obfuscating in this House.

Madam SPEAKER: I asked the Minister to stick to the answer to the question, and I accept that there was certain distraction and therefore we meandered into other areas. I ask the Minister to address the question.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I am well aware of what the United States is doing abroad on this issue. I am also very well aware that we will soon be sending officials to Brazil on an issue that relates to a conference agenda that was agreed to by the then National Government way back when Mr Storey was in charge of these affairs. But the real point is this: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is involved in amalgamating and coordinating the views of various departments. All those departments have a greater role than it has in respect of the issue the member seeks an answer on-in particular, the Ministry for the Environment. He has put his question to the wrong Minister.

Nandor Tanczos: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The Minister seems to be unaware that officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade are, according to their own account, due to present to Cabinet fairly shortly prior to that meeting. Is he telling us that he is simply a puppet for the Labour Government and does no decision-making of his own?

Madam SPEAKER: That is not a point of order; it is a point of debate.

Nandor Tanczos: As New Zealand’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, is he concerned that the reputation of New Zealand is being damaged due to the widespread condemnation of our position in attempting to open the door to terminator technology, against the wishes of the vast majority of signatories to the convention?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: What I am aware of is this: there are very few countries in the world that follow the prescription of the Greens. That is why Green parties are not in power anywhere in the world that I know of. The real issue is that we have provisioned a group of people to take part and perform their role at the next conference with respect to those matters abroad. They are well appraised of the views of the whole range of countries that will be there, and they will be governed by the domestic policy of this country, not by some policy made on the hoof.

Nandor Tanczos: I seek leave, for the benefit of the Minister, to table the list of parties to the convention that he referred to-188 parties.

Leave granted.

Nandor Tanczos: I seek leave to table decision 5 of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which New Zealand is party to as a ratified member.

Leave granted.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: In the interests of helping that member, I seek leave to table a paper from the convention in respect of terminator technology, but I cannot, because there is no such convention.

Madam SPEAKER: That wasted the House’s time.

Jane Clifton’s column in the Dominion Post this morning is about this line of questioning and is very good, but isn’t available online at the moment. She calls Winston Peters’ answers “a lengthy and heroically information-free response that could have been written by the maestro of obfustication, Parekura Horomia.”

frog says

Published in Environment & Resource Management | Parliament by frog on Fri, March 3rd, 2006   

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