United Future leader, Hon Peter Dunne, is calling on the Government to take a strong stand against the attendance of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe at next month's CHOGM Conference in Brisbane.

Mr Dunne is supporting calls by some Australian Federal MPs for Mr Mugabe to be prohibited form attending CHOGM because of the deteriorating human rights situation in Zimbabwe.

"New Zealand has been far from backward in supporting the exclusion of the likes of Fiji, Nigeria or Pakistan from participation in Commonwealth events when human and democratic rights have been attacked in those countries in the past, and it should be no different in the case of Zimbabwe."

"Mr Mugabe says he is a strong supporter and admirer of the Commonwealth and there is no doubt that he would be severely embarrassed by being excluded from CHOGM because of his unacceptable land resettlement policies, but it is a step countries like New Zealand should take to reinforce our opposition to such moves," he says.

Mr Dunne says he has been disappointed at the Government's silence on the issue.

"They seem neither to care, or show any real interest in the issue."

"Yet I am sure the Labour/Alliance Government would have been far more outspoken, with outrage mounting upon outrage, had it been a white-led Government dispossessing black landowners," he says.

Ends

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>