Q+A: Labour's David Shearer interviewed by Greg Boyed

Labour’s Foreign Affairs spokesperson David Shearer: France and Russia have been directly targeting ISIS in Syria,’ so these are the countries that can expect to be at the front of a target list.’

When asked about the repercussions of Greece saying at least one of the people under investigation for the Paris attacks had registered as a Syrian refugee, David Shearer said, ‘I think politically, what we will see is that certainly the far-right political parties and certainly some political parties saying, ‘Europe has let its guard down; we’ve let these people in; we’re going ignore the millions, literally, of people who are desperately in need of a place of safety, and we’re going to be focusing on the few that have managed to sneak through.’ Unfortunately, that’ll play out.’

And when asked how that will play out here, Mr Shearer said, ‘I think it’s very important to understand that the refugees that are coming from the Middle East into New Zealand are coming from the camps, that have been vetted by UNHCR. They are the people who are in many ways too poor to have got up and gone to Europe. They are the people who we will be taking, and I think in terms of our policy, that’s absolutely solid.’

Q+A, 9-10am Sundays on TV ONE and one hour later on TV ONE plus 1. Repeated Sunday evening at 11:35pm. Streamed live atwww.tvnz.co.nz

ends

Q + A
Episode 38
David Shearer
Interviewed by GREG BOYED

GREG Labour’s foreign affairs spokesperson, David Shearer, joins me now in the studio. David, thanks so much for coming in. First of all, your reaction after hearing about the attacks?

DAVID I was shocked like everybody else, and our thoughts and sympathies go out to the French people, but also anger, because these are the places many New Zealanders have visited. This is a country that stands up for the same values that we espouse, and it’s a terrible thing that’s happened to them.

GREG Less than a year after Charlie Hebdo, why Paris again?

DAVID I think possibly there’s a number of reasons. From what we understand, there’s been a number of suspected attacks that have been foiled by French intelligence, but it’s a continental place. Unlike Britain, it doesn’t have a channel separating them from the rest of Europe. It’s had an influx of people coming into it. It’s got the largest number of fighters that have gone off to Syria. It’s about 3000-odd in Europe, and about 1500 of those are from France, so some of those are obviously coming back as well. And I suppose lastly, it’s got a very big Muslim population, but many of those people, unfortunately, have been somewhat marginalised, particularly some of the young people, so I think there’s a bit of resentment there that perhaps were more receptive to a Jihadist call.

GREG Let’s talk about the places that were targeted. They weren’t UN summits. They weren’t Olympic events. These were relatively low-key, small events – restaurants, bars, a small concert. Is this the new normal?

DAVID I think that’s what’s going to happen, and there’s been a number of commentators saying, ‘Don’t think that this is going to be the last either,’ because, obviously, this works very well for Islamic State. It creates that climate of fear. It shows that they’ve got that reach, and that reach in turn brings other adherents and other supporters to it as well. It shows that they are powerful. I mean, remember, it was just a few days ago that the Russian airliner was brought down. Both, again, countries that have been directly targeting ISIS in Syria, so these are the countries that can expect to be at the front of a target list.

GREG I’m glad you mentioned the Russian airliner. After 9/11, we saw the security at airports, on airplanes, change. It tightened up. It got safer. You can’t make every restaurant, every bar, every small concert with a guard out front, can you?

DAVID No, and it’s obviously going to come down to the sort of intelligence that you are able to get, and remember there’s a lot of people coming in. There’s a lot of targets to cover, and the French intelligence has stepped up dramatically since the Charlie Hebdo bombings, and I think they’re still going through that growth phase of further development. Remember, ISIS too, for the timing around this. They’ve just lost so-called Jihadi John out in Syria. They’ve had their Libyan ISIS leader was hit a couple of days ago. There’s been, obviously, Russia stepping up its attacks. France is stepping up its air attacks, so it’s got a bit of an operandus of targeting those countries, those places where it’s on attack, it’s beleaguered itself, so it will go and switch the attack to other places, and some ways this could be a kind of retaliation for the defeats that it has had on its home ground.

GREG Let’s talk about ISIS and the situation. Every, sort of, splinter group and someone with a grudge and Molotov cocktail claims to be part of ISIS somewhere in the world. This does seem like their work – it’s coordinated, it’s very organised. This genuinely is ISIS.

DAVID It looks very much like that. This had to be well coordinated, as you say. There were different teams. It looked like it happened from outside the country, rather than inside the country, so therefore it speaks of another organising committee. There are groups, as you say, around the world that adhere themselves, almost taken over the franchise of ISIS. Boko Haram in Nigeria, for example, talks about being affiliated to ISIS when really it probably didn’t have very much to do with them at all up until ISIS became much more powerful and much more well-known.

GREG We’re a long way from Paris. We’d be really naïve to think that we’re too far for any of this to affect us somewhere down the line. How worried should we be?

DAVID I think we’ve got to keep this in perspective. Our security alert at the minute is on low. It rose from very low to low. But when you look at all the ingredients that made France the target, many of those are missing here – we’re a small country well away. We can never think that it can’t happen here, because obviously that would be foolish to do that, but at the same time we’ve got to keep it a little bit in perspective about what’s happened there and what could happen here.

GREG That said, the Muslim community in New Zealand – around 40,000 Muslim people in New Zealand. Is the government well enough engaged, connected in that community if things were to happen and some were to hear of plans, that we would know about it in time?

DAVID Well, I think, first of all, about the Muslim community, they’re incredibly peace-loving, law-abiding, hard-working, almost to a fault, and for them, they are the front line. Many of those people hate the idea that this has been carried out in the name of their religion. So they are very willing to try and make sure that New Zealand stays as safe as it possibly can, and they are, in many ways, can give us information about what might happen. So it’s very wrong to point the finger, as some people have been doing, at our Muslim community. That said as well, I think our intelligence agencies have got a big job in front of them. And we are doing a review. The government is calling for a review. We’ve been calling for it for a while, and that will present its findings early next year, which will look at a reorganisation and a restructuring and certainly a refocusing of our intelligence agencies.

GREG Just quickly, back to Europe – Greece has confirmed one of these guys did come through its borders. He was a Syrian refugee. What is likely to be the fallout from this as far as the refugee situation at the moment? What’s likely to be the kickback?

DAVID I think politically, what we will see is that certainly the far-right political parties and certainly some political parties saying, ‘Europe has let its guard down; we’ve let these people in; we’re going ignore the millions, literally, of people who are desperately in need of a place of safety, and we’re going to be focusing on the few that have managed to sneak through.’ Unfortunately, that’ll play out.

GREG Will it play out here? Will we stop taking them in New Zealand as well?

DAVID No, and I think it’s very important to understand that the refugees that are coming from the Middle East into New Zealand are coming from the camps, that have been vetted by UNHCR. They are the people who are in many ways too poor to have got up and gone to Europe. They are the people who we will be taking, and I think in terms of our policy, that’s absolutely solid.

GREG All right, David, stay with us. Labour’s David Shearer.

© Scoop Media