Labour’s defence policy 'qualified alignment’

Press, 18 February 1986, Page 36

Labour’s defence policy 'qualified alignment’

PA Wellington Labour’s defence policy at the 1984 election was based on qualified alignment, Ms Helen Clark, member of Parliament for Mount Albert, has told a defence seminar in Wellington. That stance of qualified alignment rested on four conditions, she has said.

They were that the United States and A.N.Z.U.S. could accommodate Labour’s stand on nuclear weapons; that New Zealand was free to promote a nuclear weapons-free zone in the South Pacific; that within the A.N.Z.U.S. alliance there was absolute equality with all decisions

taken unanimously; and that New Zealand’s sovereignty was absolutely guaranteed. The assumption when the policy was drawn up was that A.N.Z.U.S. would be flexible enough to accommodate it, she said. Ms Clark said she was not speaking on behalf of the Government but as an M.P. interested in defence matters.

With A.N.Z.U.S. militarily inoperative, New Zealand could either give up its anti-nuclear policies or take a fresh look at its defence position. There was a great deal that was positive in the prospect of New Zealand as a semi ally of the United States. One condi-

tion of it was that New Zealand should disengage from United States nuclear policy.

New Zealand’s defence policies were now firmly centred on the South Pacific, she said. This meant that for New Zealand there would be “no more Koreas, no more Vietnams and no Philippines in the future.”

There was no place for a New Zealand battalion in Singapore in such a policy, she said.

Membership of the Armed Forces had to be made attractive on new terms and not just on the basis of trips and postings to exotic places like Singapore, she said.