Test Statement Does Not Satisfy C.N.D.

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31077, 4 June 1966, Page 18

Test Statement Does Not Satisfy C.N.D.

(New Zealand Press Association*

WELLINGTON, June 3.

“If there is no danger from French nuclear tests why has New Zealand protested to France, and in the United Nations, so long and persistently,” said the national secretary- of the New Zealand Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Miss S. Smith) in a statement tonight.

The Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake) said in Parliament today that the French tests would not add significantly to health hazards in New- Zealand.

"What does significantly mean?” Miss Smith said.

The present effects of nuclear testing on New Zealand were said to be "significant.” The director of the Institute of Nuclear Science (Mr T. A. Rafter) had said at Easter

that this meant the deaths of two or three children a year, she said.

Miss Smith asked further what it meant to say that the French tests would add “fractionally” to the hazards. “How many more children does this mean?" she asked. “What is the proper extent of our concern? There is more

hazard, according to the Prime Minister's report for the Cook Islanders and Sa-

moans than ourselves, and the nearer the test site the greater the danger must be. “Should we not be concerned with the whole Pacific, particularly those people who are not being protected by a metropolitan power?"