Sunday 24th April, 2011

Q+A’s Panel Discussions transcript.

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PANEL DISCUSSION led by GUYON ESPINER

In response to WAYNE MAPP interview

GUYON Time to welcome the panel. Dr Jon Johansson . Welcome, Jon.

JON JOHANSSON – Political Analyst
Morning.

GUYON Thanks for coming in. Matt McCarten, trade unionist, political organiser, Herald on Sunday columnist. Welcome. Thanks for being here.

MATT MCCARTEN – UNITE Union
Thank you.

GUYON And we’ve got Glyn Carpenter on the panel this morning – the head of the New Zealand Christian Network, which works to find unity amongst Christians in this country. Thanks all very much for being here. Jon, we’ve already had some feedback on that SAS mission following that interview. We’re got Chris Davies who tweeted in: “We’ve asked the SAS to be there. Let them do the job.” Paula Wagstaff emailed in saying, “That’s the SAS’s job. That’s what they’re there to do.” I mean, this is going to be the public reaction, isn’t it, that this is just the reality of war?

JON Yeah, I know, and that’s why it’s important to actually contextualise what's going on there. Like, let’s face it, right, the SAS have been there one way or the other for nigh on 10 years. They are part, now – inextricably part after this latest attack, I’d say – of that protracted strategic quagmire. So a reprisal attack risks actually undermining and putting a stain on that very proud tradition that we do have in this country.

GUYON Is it a reprisal attack?

JON Well, it has to… As a matter of simple logic, I think it has to be. But for the unfortunate death of Timothy O’Donnell, would the SAS have been in a neighbouring province two weeks after there, clearing house? And the answer is palpably no to anybody that thinks about that.

GUYON Do you see it that way, Matt McCarten – a revenge attack or simply…?

MATT It’s called utu. It’s the New Zealand version of it. Of course it is. I mean, and Wayne Mapp was looking very uncomfortable about the whole thing. Yes, I understand when you’re in war, you go and kill people. That’s why people like me opposed it right from the start. It was always a moral war. In the first attack they did, the SAS, they led it, they’re soldiers, they’ve got a war to do. False intelligence. Went into a village that had nothing to do with the Taliban. They actually were supporters of the government, actually. They went in there. A 6-year-old girl ran out in the middle of the night. Fell down a wall, broke her back and died there. They say, “Oh well…”

GUYON This is another incident.

MATT It’s another one, but it sets it off and it sets up the utu to go on and on. So this is a village which was innocent. They took 40… oh, 55 men, shaved their beards off, didn’t take their names, took their numbers, sent them off. Five have disappeared into the torture camps, and they shot…

GUYON In an earlier incident.

MATT But what I’m saying is that it keeps going on and on.

JON And you end up becoming your enemy. And, I mean, after 10 years of this, if we are now no better than just, you know, reprisal…

MATT We support a narco-state…

JON Yeah.

MATT …which survives on drugs and corruption. It’s south Vietnam war all over again.

GUYON These guys are saying we’re just as bad as the guys we’re fighting – essentially what they’re saying.

JON Yeah.

MATT It’s their country.

JON That’s your risk.

GUYON Do you agree?

GLYN CARPENTER – New Zealand Christian Network
The logic cuts both ways, and you could say that the death of Tim O’Donnell highlighted the security risk, and if that’s the reason that they went out – to secure an area – then that fits within the mandate. But, I mean, Christians also have opposed this war right from the beginning.

GUYON Do you oppose this? Because what happened to forgiveness, I suppose, if the Christian faith is to be…?

GLYN Well, church leaders in New Zealand back in 2003 put out a statement objecting to the war on terror, as did church leaders in Britain and America. So there's a reasonably consistent pattern. That doesn’t mean to say that every Christian or every person in the church would oppose it, but that was the view of the church leaders. As far as the logic’s concerned… I mean, war is always a terrible thing – that goes without saying. But if there has to be war… And Christians generally hold two positions: one’s an absolute pacifist position, and the other one is a just-war theory. But within the just-war theory, there have to be rules, and so if this was a reprisal attack…

GUYON Let’s talk about those rules. Jon, you’ve got an interesting question on this, because he talked in that interview about the international forces and NATO could basically approve an action like this. Do you think it would had to have had government approval, perhaps from John Key?

JON Right, well, I want to start there by saying John Key himself said, “New Zealanders deserve to know what our forces are doing overseas.” Now, are we honestly expected to believe that ISAF and NATO now decide what happens, what actions New Zealand troops take? I do not believe that this action… Because it seems to me it’s a change in the rules of engagement, and I think the Minister, when he talks about essentially ISAF and NATO – what does that mean? I think questions need to be asked…

MATT He was all over the paddock. He was ducking and diving. He knew exactly what had happened.

JON Sure.

MATT They’d authorised it.

JON But the key question here, Matt, is what involvement did the New Zealand government have in this specific action? Was there involvement?

MATT Right up there, that high. [Hand raised to head height]

GLYN I think the point he makes which is hard to sustain is that the situation is getting better, when, as he said, there are more people now as part of the reconstruction force, and we’re seeing this kind of situation going all the time.

MATT Just like Vietnam .

GUYON The other big situation that arose as part of that interview was the treatment of prisoners who were handed over. I mean, I guess you could ask what are the SAS supposed to do with prisoners?

MATT The SAS did comply.

GUYON Who do they give them to?

MATT No, no, that’s exactly right, because they give them to the Americans, they’ve got one set of problems, cos they just hand them on. You’re quite right – it’s the secret police who gets them, and they torture them. That’s what they do. You know, there was an incidence in Jon Stephenson’s article in Metro – that everyone should read who cares about this sort of stuff – they actually wanted… They gave them to the Afghanis, who wanted to string them up and drag them along the road for 100 K until they died, and the SAS stepped in and told the Americans it’s unacceptable.

JON And the British won’t hand over troops to them.

MATT But, but… Yeah, the British won’t hand them over, but the SAS did complain, and their senior officers, including the next governor general, refused to do anything about it.

GUYON So who’s culpable? Who’s to blame in all this? Is it Helen Clark and Phil Goff, the ministers at the time?

MATT Yes.

GUYON It is Jerry Mateparae?

MATT Yes.

GUYON Is it John Key and Wayne Mapp?

MATT They’re all covering it up, all of them together.

GUYON He’s blaming everyone.

MATT Yeah, they are.

JON Well, it’s a path dependency. Once we made the decision there that it advanced our foreign policy goals – whatever they might be – to join this action, we’re on a path dependency.

GUYON OK.

JON So they’re all culpable in that sense.

GUYON Glyn Carpenter, are we fighting…? You talked about a just war. Are we fighting a just war, from what you’re hearing?

GLYN Well, the church leaders who put out statement seven years ago basically didn’t believe it was. And there are a number of criteria – I mean, this theory’s been around for a couple of thousand years.

JON In the American press, I think their intelligence estimates there’s about 10 Al Qaeda up in the border region of Afghanistan , OK. The strategic problem is Pakistan . Why are we in Afghanistan ?

GUYON Alright, got to go on that point.

*****

In response to Anjum Rahman and Rt Rev Dr Graham Redding interview

GUYON Glyn Carpenter, faith and violence – they go hand-in-hand, don’t they? I mean, the Bible – full of stories about violence and retribution.

MATT Genocide.

GLYN Well, I was listening on Easter Friday to Ian Grant on the radio, and he was saying that God’s OK, but some of his mates are a bit dodgy. And I think there is this fact, and we simply have to own it. And going back to the interview, one of the points that I’d like to pick up on is this idea of avoiding words like good and bad doesn’t help. Some things just simply have to be named as bad. And when this Terry Jones in America – Pastor Jones – he burned the Koran, we put out public statements, both ourselves in New Zealand and our international organisation, condemning those actions. What we didn’t see was reciprocal statements coming from Muslim leaders about what took place afterwards, and both of the actions were bad.

GUYON So we don’t see that enough from the Muslim community in your view?

MATT That’s not true. I saw there were statements by Muslims when the crowd went and executed the UN staff and there was some shooting – they claim there was some shooting first. And I think that Anjum is quite right – it’s just a mob. It wasn’t actually about, I don’t think, religion. I think all that North Africa and Middle East is always connected up as religion, good and bad. I think it’s economics.

JON But there’s history, culture, economics. Yeah, yeah.

MATT Exactly. It’s about totalitarian states right across, and people have just had enough. And it doesn’t matter if they’re pro-Western or anti-Western, they’re all totalitarian states, and people are just saying, “We’ve had enough.”

GUYON We’re not fighting for resources in Afghanistan , though, are we?

MATT We’re just there because we want to support the Americans’ utu, and the Taliban have never done any terrorism act outside – or any acts of violence – outside their own country. They see themselves as a struggle of national liberation, to get the occupiers out, and we’re occupying. And we celebrate the Anzac Day – the last time we went into a Muslim country and got our butts – and we celebrate that, and we’re still doing it today.

GLYN That’s only partially true, because…

MATT Still going where we’re not invited and getting our butts kicked.

GLYN It may be true to say the Taliban hasn’t operated outside of Afghanistan , but the original justification was not just Taliban, but it was al Al Qaeda, and they certainly have…

MATT It was solely Al Qaeda.

GUYON And where are they now?

JON And there's just 12 of them in the mountains.

GLYN They certainly have committed actions outside, so…

MATT In Pakistan .

GLYN …I don’t know that that’s necessarily valid in that case.

GUYON Jon Johansson , politics and religion in New Zealand just done mix, do they? I mean, we had Tony Blair recently saying that you can get…

JON And thank the cosmos for that.

GUYON You get labelled a nutter, he said, if you even talk about it. You worked with Jim Anderton. He’s a Catholic man, but never talks about his faith. Why don’t we talk about faith in politics?

MATT Because we have education in New Zealand .

JON Exactly, education is the big kicker here, but, you know, 200, 300 years before baby Jesus was born, you know, Aristotle said that the chief idea that underpinned a state was passionless reason, and unfortunately, through history, what religion has by and large show us is – you know, based, as it is, on faith and driven, as it frequently is, by emotion and other drivers – it’s antithetical to that idea.

GUYON You must be heating up about that idea.

GLYN These are not fair comments, because…

JON Oh, it’s history, mate.

GLYN The fact is that Christians and religious leaders across the board… But we’re talking here in New Zealand in terms of Christianity, because in three years’ time, we commemorate 200 years of Christianity in this country. The arrival of the social welfare state was driven because of somebody’s faith in politics. So to say that they don’t mix just because people don’t articulate their religion…

JON No, I’m saying in formal structures, religion and politics do not mix, nor should they.

GUYON What about strategically…?

GLYN You can’t avoid it.

JON In formal structures.

GLYN You simply can’t avoid the fact that if I’m a Christian and I go into Parliament, I can’t extricate my faith position…

JON Of course you can. You could and should.

GLYN Whether I’m a Christian or an atheist or whatever I am, my belief system is a fundamental part of what I do.

JON And on an individual level, I completely agree…

GUYON Can I just go to you, Matt McCarten. Strategically, I mean, you look at Maori in New Zealand – 15% of the population, got a force up now to be a party in Parliament. 52% of us identify ourselves as Christian, but you’ve never seen a Christian-based party in Parliament. Why do you think that is?

MATT Well, because their leader’s in jail for being a paedophile.

JON (laughs)

MATT But I think we know the Americans… Just to finish on a better note – the Americans, we all owe something to. They were the first country in the world which separated religion from politics, and that’s become the trend and it’s a good thing, and they should do that all around the world and we’d have a lot less problems than we have now.

GUYON Alright, thanks for that advice.

*****

In response to DON BRASH interview

GUYON Matt McCarten, what did you make of that?

MATT I think he’s going to find it difficult to get ACT to agree, but if he can, I think it’s going to bring right-wing politics right back into the centre of discussion, and I think that Key would worry about that. It gives a possibility for Labour to latch onto a real enemy.

GUYON Fear of Don Brash?

MATT And it changes the game.

GUYON Do you reckon he’s got 5% in him as a leader?

MATT I think he does.

GUYON Jon Johansson ?

JON Ah, well, Walter Nash of the right, you’ve got to say, cos Dr Brash…

MATT He’s looking very young today.

JON Indeed he does, and he’s very a very busy week ahead of him.

GUYON He’s got to join the party, talk to the president, go to the board meeting, take the party over.

MATT It’s called a merger in acquisitions, I think they call it in business.

JON If MMP survives the referendum, ACT has to be a 5% party to survive long-term, and they have far more chance under Dr Brash than Rodney Hide, who is just hopelessly compromised.

GUYON Glyn Carpenter, is Don Brash a viable political brand now, do you think?

GLYN Well, the church in general doesn’t get too much involved in individual…

MATT Separation of the state and church. Good on you, brother.

GLYN We go for policy issues, and prior to the election, we’ll be looking at the range of issues and seeing who’s going to offer them up.

JON Well, you’ll have to ping Don on his civil union stance in his next phase of his career.

GUYON Maybe we’ll leave that for another day.