June 8, 2008
By Michael Field
When National Party leader John Key thinks about the South Pacific, its from a first class recliner on an airliner 10,000 metres above it heading toward his Hawaii holiday home.
Its a place to be flown over without stopping; a regrettable long jump before the world he's really interested in.
National are plainly sleep walking to victory in the New Zealand elections but when it comes to foreign policy, it hardly matters.
Labour and National are the same.
Both perfer to take loud and strident stands on Dafur and Zimbabwe, but shut up when it gets closer to home. Its easier to tell Africans, who have never heard of Helen Clark or Key, what to do.
The Labour led government has relied almost solely on a boycott and ban of the Fiji's leadership. It has not worked and has produced no real change in the military regime.
There is no Plan B.
National does not even have a variance on failed Plan A. They've got nothing.
This is strange, because the Fiji situation next year will be New Zealand's
single biggest and potentially most catastrophic foreign policy issues. Bad
things will happen.
Key has been to Fiji and some of his advisers know it well. But we will get
from Key precisely the same as Clark and Phil Goff now turn out.
But they are showing absolutely no leadership in the area or the region
at all.
National does not give a bugger about the South Pacific; Polynesians donšt
vote for them, so forget them.
John Key will fly on... perhaps dipping his wholemeal bread into his olive oil whilst imperally looking down on troubled Fiji.
Copyright: Michael Field
