Moral-Objection-To-Sanctions

Taiwan. Four New Zealand MPs have been quietly banned from China for a year because they went to Taiwan in May on a junket. The group, which was axe Laura McClure, New Zealand first David Wilson, Labour's Duncan Webb and National's more MPew, traveled as part of the all-party parliamentary group on Taiwan. And this group promoted cross-party engagement and economic ties. China didn't like it. They decided to give them a sanction. They didn't announce the sanctions publicly, though. Instead, last week the Chinese embassy contacted our parliament and requested a meeting to deliver important key messages and suggested the bans could be lifted if the MPs apologized. Laura McClure was on with Heather this morning. She was asked, will you apologize? And she said, No. This is a type of foreign interference. I did nothing wrong. MFAT also confirmed that this is the first time that China has sanctioned a New Zealand MPs for such a trip, even though past delegations, which included John Key as a backbencher, have faced no consequences whatsoever. MFAT, uh made that now look, this has all provoked some angry responses. Human rights groups are at their pillar cause of intimidation. Professor Admarie Brady, who's got us got a spat on with China, calls it a punishment for which we should retaliate. Because in 2021, the European Union cancelled official dialogue with China after a similar sanction of politicians. But this thing that China has done is to me neither a punishment nor is it damaging. A tit for tat retaliation like the European Union instituted would do nothing for New Zealand. A ban on four MPs visiting China for a year really is not much of a punishment. They've got no plans going there. Retaliation, though, could be damaging. But what I think we should do is object strongly. The story happened last week, kept under wraps until Laura McClure leaked it. I thought that was a mistake. We should have gone, hey, what? We should make a big noise about it. We tell China this is not the way we behave. We urge them to grow up. And denying these MPs the chance to visit denies you, China the chance to show New Zealand that you can actually be a reasonable world uh member, that you can make a reasonable and humanitarian claim on Taiwan. After all, we support one China. It shows that China in fact does not follow the One China policy, but instead intends to subsume Taiwan and not respect their rights. So we should say, no, that was the wrong thing to do, but at the same time, do nothing about it. And then we carry on holding the higher moral ground. Because in my view, this was a bad show by China. It weakens them and their case, but not us.