Moore attacks activist over Libya visit remarks

Press, 6 July 1988, Page 8

Moore attacks activist over Libya visit remarks

PA Wellington The Maori activist, Mr Syd Jackson, had denigrated New Zealand’s history and culture, the Minister of Overseas Trade and Marketing, Mr Moore, said yesterday. Mr Moore’s comments followed up reports that Mr Jackson and a fellow activist, Ms Deidre Nehua, had discussed the possibility of trade sanctions against New Zealand by Libya during the couple’s 10-day visit there. “I have listened intently to his statements on his return and am convinced he has misrepresented the

New Zealand case,” Mr Moore said.

“He is not acting honourably and the visit and publicity are so dishonest, hysterical and fanciful that not only has he denigrated New Zealand exporters but New Zealand’s history and culture,” Mr Moore said.

“The visit, camouflaged by concern for MaoriEuropean relations, has simply provided a magnet for division at home and confusion abroad. “I would have thought the people in the Middle East and North Africa have suffered enough over the centuries without

a further lecture by Syd Jackson,” Mr Moore said.

At a later press conference, Mr Moore said it was “pitiful and hysterical” to call for a boycott of New Zealand trade. “That does not help anybody. It certainly does not help the unemployed of New Zealand. It does not help the Maori people,” he said. Mr Moore said that although the Libyans and most Maori people did not take Mr Jackson seriously, “there are a lot of European New Zealanders who are beginning to get very anxious about this kind of statement."

“There is beginning not a backlash but a whiplash.

“In a democracy you can have different views and that is fine, but people who keep shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre are going to have to realise that that in itself is generating the kind of problems they are claiming to want to stop,” he said.

Mr Moore said he did not think the indigenous people of New Zealand “are going to be in any way helped by somebody suggesting we do not sell Libyans or anybody in that region some butter or some meat.”