Mr Prebble stonewalls bill

Press, 13 June 1984, Page 1

Mr Prebble stonewalls bill

By

PATRICIA HERBERT,

in Wellington

No vote was taken on the nuclear-free New Zealand bill when it was introduced in Parliament yesterday because of stonewalling tactics by its Labour Party sponsor, Mr R. W. Prebble. The procedures of the House required that the legislation be voted on by 5.30 p.m. but Mr Prebble, the member for Auckland Central, deliberately dragged his wrap-up speech over time. It is now set down for first reading on the next sitting day but even if Parliament passes it through all its stages the Government has warned that it will not become law

because the Cabinet will not seek the Governor-General’s assent to it.

The bill binds the Crown and Standing Orders rule that the House is not competent even by unanimous consent to pass legislation affecting the rights of the Crown without a recommendation from the Crown to do so.

This will not be forthcoming because, in these matters, the Governor-General must follow the advice of his Ministers. Mr Prebble told “The Press” that he had prevented a vote being taken on the bill because he wanted the Government “to sweat it out a little longer.” He also said that the

Independent member for Sydenham, Mr N. J. Kirk, was back at Parliament but had been “hidden away in the bowels of the building all day” in the hope that the Opposition would not discover his presence. Mr Kirk is expected to oppose the legislation and his vote is critical to the Government because the National member for Waipa, Ms Marilyn Waring, has said that she will cross the floor. . If Mr Kirk had been absent and if Ms Waring had been the only Government member to throw her weight behind the Opposition, the House would have been evenly divided. In these cases it is customary

for the Speaker to use his casting vote in support of new legislation so that the bill would have successfully scraped through its first reading. With Mr Kirk there, however, it would have been defeated.

The bill prohibits the entry of nuclear vessels and weapons into New Zealand and prohibits the building of nuclear reactors and nuclear “devices” except for medical or research use.

It is the third piece of legislation that Mr Prebble has sponsored on the subject and the most far-reaching to date.

Introducing it, he said that the nuclear arms race was accelerating, that de-

tente was “finished,” and that New Zealand was entering a new Cold War.

The world now had 47,000 nuclear warheads with a combined destructive power of about a million Hiroshima bombs. It also had 2000 tonnes of T.N.T. for every man, woman, and child.

“The statistics are so horrifying they numb the imagination,” he said and described the nuclear issue as the greatest political challenge the human race had known.

He also said that the bill could be passed without compromising A.N.Z.U.S. be-

cause the pact did not require New Zealand to allow its allies to bring nuclear vessels into its ports.

The Minister of Defence, Mr Thomson, described the legislation as a cruel fabrication and a disgraceful hoax.

Its clear purpose was to “make political profit out of the genuine worries and fears and hopes of many thousands of New Zealanders,” he said.

New Zealand had always been nuclear-weapons free. Not only that, it had been to the forefront of other countries in pressing for disarmament and arms control.

He then told Mr Prebble that the bill would not become law. “That requires the Governor-General’s consent which, I can assure the member, will not be sought,” he said. The Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, said that A.N.Z.U.S. could not survive if the legislation was passed and that he had “not the slightest doubt” that were Labour to become the government it would reverse the position it had adopted in the bill. The Social Credit member for East Coast Bays, Mr G. T. Knapp, said that he and the party’s leader, Mr Beetham, would support the

legislation although they thought it would be more effective if it included among its provisions a withdrawal from the A.N.Z.U.S. alliance. Ms Waring called repeatedly for speaking rights in the debate but was, the Opposition alleged, blocked out by members on the Government front bench. Certainly a number of them spoke on the bill. With Sir Robert and Mr Thomson, the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr McLay, and the Minister of Energy, Mr Birch, spoke. Ms Waring was eventually offered speaking time by the Opposition Chief Whip, Mr J. L. Hunt, but time ran out before she could take up the offer.