A New Zealand MP has said the country’s Pacific neighbours are to blame for New Zealand’s worsening drug problems, blaming “failed states” in the region for failing to stop drug smugglers.
Shane Jones, the assistant finance minister, has earned a reputation in his six months in government for his blunt and often controversial rhetoric.
Speaking at an event last week regarding New Zealand’s “Pacific reset” strategy Jones said: “Many of the problems that we are dealing with here, with P [methamphetamine] and drugs, where do you think that is coming from folks? That is coming from closely failed states in the Pacific,” Jones said.
“That is the transit route where a lot of this drama is costing good ordinary middle class, upper class, lower class people inordinate pain and fear and anguish.”
“I have extraordinarily high fears about Pacific Island states being used as transit points for mischief and mayhem, eventually making its way to New Zealand,” Shane Jones said.
The New Zealand Drug Foundation said while it was true the Pacific islands were increasingly being used as a transit route for drugs bound for New Zealand from South and North America, Pacific Island countries did not have the resources - and in some cases, the will - to crack down.
“The issues he raises are very genuine, Pacific islands don’t have a lot of surveillance capability, they don’t have strict border control, so there are a lot of reasons in terms of infrastructure about why the Pacific is vulnerable to the flow of drugs,” said executive director Ross Bell.
“We shouldn’t be too complacent. If that region is increasingly more important as a drug trafficking and trading route then there are real threats to democracy because of that.”
New Zealand recently announced its “Pacific reset” strategy, aimed at curbing foreign influence in the region from superpowers such as China, and boosting New Zealand’s commitment to its neighbours.
Part of the strategy includes a NZ$700m boost in aid funding over four years.
New Zealand is the Pacific’s second-largest donor, with about 60% of its total aid budget directed towards its Pacific neighbours.
Lopeti Senituli, spokesperson for the Tongan prime minister said the comments by Jones were bordering on racism and his country was not the “wild west”.
Jones specifically name-checked Tonga as having a major issue with drugs, but Bell also mentioned Fiji and French Polynesia as countries of concern.
“They [prime minister Ardern and foreign affairs minister Winston Peters] espoused that we have a common culture and common values...and here is Shane Jones saying they are a failed state,” Senituli told Dateline Pacific.
“That’s not a reason to state that the country was a failed state. I think we are a thriving democracy, we have a good prime minister and government in place, and His majesty is at the helm of the country, it it’s a really belittling statement to make of the Kingdom of Tonga,”.
