Pressure likely over Labour’s nuclear plan

Press, 13 July 1984, Page 4

Pressure likely over Labour’s nuclear plan

NZPA staff correspondent Sydney The New Zealand Labour Party’s stand on nuclear ships is set to come under intense pressure from Australia as well as the United States after an episode at the Australian Labour Party conference this week. Australian Labour Leftwingers called on the Canberra conference to ban the visit of nuclear-powered ships from Australian ports, giving as an example the proposed ban by a New Zealand Labour Government. The move was quickly defeated and drew fire especially from the Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr Hayden, who recalled his big climbdown on the question in 1982. He told the conference, “I had to haul back in 1982 on this issue and it was quite embarrassing. “It was unwise then and I am damned if I will be unwise again,” said Mr Hayden. Informed observers said, yesterday that Mr Haydehy-'

regards the New Zealand Labour Party’s promise to ban nuclear ships from the country’s ports as largely electioneering. “He expects the position will change once Labour gets into power and is faced with the realities of life,” one observer said. Mr Hayden is expected to lobby his New Zealand colleagues strongly on the ban both when he visits Wellington for the A.N.Z.U.S. meeting next week and later. The United States Secretary of State, Mr George Shultz, who will also be at the meeting, will also be putting the “hard word” on the expected new leadership and is reported to be saying privately that if New Zealand goes ahead with its ban he will personally sink A.N.Z.U.S. The observers in Canberra say Mr Hayden privately believes the New Zealand Labour Party is in the same position as the A.L.P. was in two years ago. At that time, Mr Hayden, as Leader of the Opposition,

threw his weignt behind the Victorian state Premier, Mr John Cain, who opposed the visit of a nuclear-powered American warship to Melbourne.

The Conservative Party Prime Minister, Mr Malcolm Fraser, accused Labour of being soft on A.N.Z.U.S. and Mr Hayden was eventually forced to back down on the question. Analysts looking at his later overthrow by Mr Hawke as leader of the party traced some of his loss of prestige to that defeat. What is of concern to the Australian Labour hierarchy is that if New Zealand goes ahead with its ban and A.N.Z.U.S. survives, it will give the Australian Left and concerned sections of Mr Hayden’s own centre-Left faction a good case for raising the issue again at the next conference in two years time. A senior research fellow at the Australian National University’s strategic and defencA studies centre in

Canberra, Mr Andrew Mack, said yesterday that there would be strong pressure if New Zealand stuck to its guns. “If A.N.Z.U.S. survives, as I believe it will, the argument will be that if Australia is committed to a nuclear-free South Pacific, allowing nuclear-powered ships in does not mix,” he said. “I do not believe banning the visits will damage the alliance because they are not needed,” said Mr Mack. The defence of both the ship visits and Australia’s other commitments to cooperation with the United States on such matters as communications and monitoring bases was tied in by both Mr Hayden and the Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, to an over-all defence of the A.N.Z.U.S. treaty. Mr Hawke said the alliance was widely supported in Australia but that that did not mean his Government meekly embraced every position adopted or pursued by the United States. /