Sunday 20th June, 2010

Q+A’s Guyon Espiner interviews Foreign Minister, Murray McCully

Points of interest:

• If the International Whaling Commission breaks down “anarchy… on the open sea”


• IWC at risk of breaking down: “The odds have always been massively on the side of breakdown rather than breakthrough”


• New Zealand delegation at the IWC conference is “not turning handstands… the going has been tough”


• If Japan’s whale quote can be cut there’s a “reasonable chance” Japan might accept whaling is no longer commercially viable


• Some countries at negotiations are acting as “wreckers”


• Norman’s Tibetan protest “disappointing”, “unworthy” and “abused parliamentary privilege”


• Green co-leader’s actions were “calculated to give offence”

The interview has been transcribed below. The full length video interviews and panel discussions from this morning’s Q+A can also be seen on tvnz.co.nz at, http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news

Q+A is repeated on TVNZ 7 at 9.10pm on Sunday nights and 10.10am and 2.10pm on Mondays.

MURRAY McCULLY interviewed by GUYON ESPINER

PAULThe International Whaling Commission is gathering in Agadir in Morocco, for their Annual General Meeting starting tomorrow, and it's anyone's guess what's going to happen. The threat of extinction hangs not only over the whales but over the Commission itself. Delegates are going to be voting on a controversial proposal to allow commercial whaling by Japan, Norway and Iceland, for the first time in 25 years, in exchange for reducing the number of whales killed each year. Even though there's a global whaling moratorium, Japan, Norway and Iceland continue to hunt whales, killing about 1700 every year. New Zealand supports some sort of deal that would allow the resumption of commercial whaling, although the government has said the proposal as it stands is unacceptable and more talking is needed. Last night Guyon Espiner spoke to Foreign Minister Murray McCully in London. Now Mr McCully's been in frequent contact with the New Zealand delegation and he will arrive in Morocco in a few hours. The Commission's proposal estimates it would save the lives of 3200 whales over ten years. So Guyon began by asking Murray McCully why New Zealand is not supporting that.

MURRAY McCULLY – Foreign Minister
Well we're supporting the process, but the particular proposal that’s on the table doesn’t meet our particular needs. It does make provision for some endangered species to be taken in the southern ocean, and of course it doesn’t have a low enough starting point. It stipulates 400 a year of Minke whales in the southern ocean, that’s not a satisfactory starting point from our perspective in terms of change. We want the elimination of whaling in the southern ocean at the quickest possible time.

GUYON Can I move to the southern ocean specifically in a moment, but if we can stay with the overall numbers, there's something like 1600 whales killed a year at the moment. What would be an acceptable overall number under a proposal that you could accept?

MURRAY Well an acceptable number is zero, but we're going into this process to see whether there is something that meets our needs that can be negotiated. I'm bound to say I've got more pessimistic as time as moved on. We've invested a lot in this process as a country over the last few years, that’s why we said we'd try and stay the distance, but the fact is that the proposal put forward by the chairs wasn’t good enough, and we're exploring as urgently as we can what significant room for manoeuvre there might be. That hasn’t been helped by the political changes in Japan. Minister Akamatsu, the Agriculture Minister stepped aside a few weeks ago, a new minister has taken control, Minister Yamada, and we've still not quite had a sense as to how he's going to take this process forward. But the important thing is that the alternatives here aren't flash, which is why some of the NGOs like GreenPeace and others, who I've been talking to fairly actively, aren't saying abandon the process and go to the court, they're saying negotiate a better deal. And that’s what we're trying to do.

GUYON Well how far apart are the sides Minister, because obviously you're saying this is not acceptable, Japan probably wanted to go even further. I mean is there any hope of bringing this together for some sort of enduring solution here?

MURRAY Well just focusing on the southern ocean which is really New Zealand's area of great interest, if we could see a process by which whaling ceased in the southern oceans in the next few years then obviously we'd regard that as a better alternative than going to the International Court of Justice, where the proceedings themselves could take four or five years, and then we might of course lose them. So it's a question of whether we can see some sign of a phase out in a reasonable period of time. And when the IWC Chair and Deputy Chair put forward a proposal that said we might see whaling in the southern ocean reduced to 200 in five years' time, and of course Japan didn’t endorse that proposal, but neither did they reject it. When you're getting down to something like 200 it's simply unlikely to be commercially viable. If some time in the next three or four years Japan needs to buy a new mother ship, that’s an expensive exercise. Already the whaling costs them a lot of money, and so it's a question of trying to understand what Japan is really saying when they talk about numbers that low. I think there's a reasonable chance that they accept that there's no commercial viability at that point, and if that’s an outcome that they understand, then clearly it's a conversation we want to have.

GUYON What risk is there Minister that the proposal which we find unacceptable actually passes, and 75% of the 88 member commission actually supports it, and we get exactly what we don’t want, which is this proposal which is on the floor now actually passing?

MURRAY I don’t think there's any risk of that. I think the greater risk is that some of the more aggressive players might sandbag the process, and in that respect I think it's the nature of large discussions like this amongst 88 different countries, that the wreckers are always going to find it much easier to succeed than the builders.

GUYON Who are the wreckers in this Minister?

MURRAY Oh I don’t want to go attributing blame to individual nations, but what I will say is that there's a huge amount of work that is going to need to be done constructively if we're going to find a solution. There have been one or two parties who haven't been as constructive and cooperative as the others, and in the next few days that’s going to have to change or this process will fail.

GUYON Well what is the word Minister that you're getting from Morocco. We've got a team over there, what are they telling you?

MURRAY Well look I'm a relative newcomer to this process, but people like Sir Geoffrey Palmer are vastly experienced and our two senior negotiators from the Ministry are as well. They're not turning handstands at the moment, they report that the going has been tough at the officials' meetings, and that too many of those who are focused on their own narrow agendas have been lobbying to try and bring the process down, without sufficient indication that nations are working to find common ground in the middle. So it's not a good scene, it's a question of whether we can salvage something from that situation. If we can salvage it we should.

GUYON And what are the consequences Minister of not actually being able to do that? I mean Sir Geoffrey Palmer you mention there, he says that this is the last chance the IWC has to cure itself. I mean do you agree with that?

MURRAY Yes, if it's not this week certainly it will be over the next few weeks that we see either a breakthrough or a breakdown in the IWC. I think the energy that’s been required to get the process this far has been enormous. There isn't much appetite for a longer process from here, and if it does break down, essentially we could end up with anarchy in terms of the whaling activity on the open sea. There'll be no real effective constraint if the IWC ceases to exist, or indeed if it ceases to be fully representative, because one group breaks away to set up effectively a pro whaling international lobby. All of these are possibilities and they're ones that we wish to avoid.

GUYON So it's that serious, unless we get a resolution here we're looking at a potential break-up of the whole Commission, and then no rules to regulate the hunting of whales, and it would be open season presumably on endangered species?

MURRAY As I say the process hasn’t been that flash, but the alternatives are all pretty bad, which is why we are persevering with it, and which is why we will keep persevering through to the conclusion of the diplomatic process this week.

GUYON Can you give us some odds of success here? What are the chances of actually finding a resolution?

MURRAY Oh look the odds have always been massively on the side of breakdown rather than breakthrough, and from the reports I've been getting it hasn’t got any better. But over the next 24 hours or so we'll see the political representatives start to accumulate in Agadir, Morocco, I'm going there myself later today. That’s where some leadership is going to be required from those political representatives, and I guess that’s the last hope of seeing some progress this week. On the bright side of the equation, nations like the United States, Japan, New Zealand in particular, have been working very hard to try and salvage something. The fact that Japan has stayed the distance is very encouraging, their demeanour in the past has not been as flexible. So there's something to work with there, and we're going to do our best to work with it.

GUYON In the last couple of minutes Minister I'd just like to turn to a domestic issue, or a domestic incident as it turned out, the Chinese security guards actually getting into something of a scuffle with the Green Party Co-Leader, Russel Norman. How did you read that incident?

MURRAY Well look I've only seen the media reports of it, but I find it massively disappointing. Of course we have freedom of speech in New Zealand, but that doesn’t mean we have to use that freedom of speech to cause offence to people, particularly to overseas visitors. It seemed to me that what Dr Norman was doing was calculated to give offence to the Chinese Vice President who's an important overseas visitor. It seemed to me that he abused parliamentary privilege, because he was in a situation where no member of the public could have placed themselves, and so it was only his role as a Member of Parliament that enabled him to do so. When we have differences of views with other countries, and we do frequently, I think it's important that we express those views in a way that is respectful and courteous. That’s what we do on a regular basis. The other political parties in our parliament do understand this, we work together to promote New Zealand's interests internationally, and particularly in the area of trade.

GUYON Sure but is it okay Minister for a Chinese security guard to manhandle a New Zealand parliamentarian on the forecourt of parliament?

MURRAY Yeah I'm not gonna buy into what actually happened there, because as I say I've only seen the media reports and there's a process I guess under way in New Zealand involving the police and others to ascertain who was to blame for that. What I'm saying is that Dr Norman shouldn’t have actually been in that situation in the first place, if he'd have shown good judgement, and if he'd have put New Zealand's interests to the fore.

GUYON So we are not placing any blame on the Chinese. You haven't talked to any administration officials and said hey this isn't on?

MURRAY Oh look I'm sure that those who have been dealing with the delegation at home, they’ve had their discussions about what actually happened. I haven't been able to participate in them, I simply make the wider point that I would have thought that a member of the New Zealand parliament, dealing with any international visitor of note, would want to avoid causing offence I think Dr Norman went out of his way to cause it, and I think that’s an act that’s unworthy of a member of the House of Representatives in New Zealand.

GUYON That’s all we've got time for, but thank you very much Minister, Murray McCully for joining us on the programme, we really appreciate your time.

ENDS

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