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New Zealand's parliament has strongly rejected an attempt to lift a 20-year-old ban on nuclear-powered ships visiting its ports.

The bill was defeated by 109 votes to nine on Wednesday night.

The lawmaker behind the bill said the rejection had "all but ruled out the prospect of New Zealand signing a free trade agreement with the US".

Relations between New Zealand and the US soured when the nuclear ban was first introduced in 1985.

When the legislation was passed, Washington immediately suspended military ties with Wellington, and no US navy ship - nuclear or otherwise - has since docked in New Zealand ports.

Ken Shirley, an MP from the small right-wing conservative party ACT, proposed the bill to lift the ban, saying it was harming New Zealand's ties with other nations.

"If parliament does not refer my bill to a select committee for further consideration, it will have passed a golden opportunity to throw out this relic from the Cold War era and restore our once strong relationship with the US," he is quoted as saying before the vote.

Principle stands

He added that the clause could be safely removed because no foreign warship could come to New Zealand without being invited by the government anyway.

But the other parties largely rejected the bill, and polls have shown that the public continues to back the nuclear-free stance of the governing Labour Party under Prime Minister Helen Clark.

Ms Clark has vowed to retain this policy if re-elected in the 17 September parliamentary elections, but she has accused her main opponent, Don Brash of the National Party, of planning to abolish it.

Mr Brash recently insisted he would not make any change to the nuclear ban without holding a referendum on the issue.

Ra wrote:Sounds like hippy bullshit to me.
- Ra

Stofsk wrote:The reason NZ denies USN the use of their ports is due to the fear of being made a nuclear target. They don't like the fact that ties with someone like the USA might result in being destroyed in a nuclear exchange. And it was originally a protest against nuclear armed warships, IIRC. They didn't want boats with WMDs in their ports.

Yes it's silly, but it's their country and their rules. NZ is only harming itself by this stance, but it is their choice. One thing's for sure: I don't think too many Lord of the Rings can be made to be an effective substitute for trade with such a powerhouse like the USA. But whatever, I'm not a kiwi.

Even here there are people who don't like the fact American military forces can practice wargames with our own troops. Hell, there are people who hate the fact we even have a military.

Hell, there are people who hate the fact we even have a military.

frigidmagi wrote:Those people exist in every nation in varing numbers. I won't go into the names we in the military have for them suffice to say niether side really cares for the other, but one side has to die for the other anyways.

If it sounds impossible that the laws of New Zealand and Australia are invalid, read on.

The Australian Government has based its current lawmaking powers on the Australian Constitution Act of 1900. That Act was passed by the British Parliament while Australia was still a Dominion. The important fact to remember is this: The Australian Constitution is a British law.

New Zealand was granted Dominion status in 1907. The title Dominion means nothing significant, in British law and legislation the term was synonymous with colony. It wasn't until January l0, 1920, however that Australia became a sovereign nation in its own right when both Australia and New Zealand became foundation members of the League of Nations - the forerunner to the United Nations.

Membership of the League of Nation was restricted only to sovereign countries, and Article XX of the Covenant of the League of Nations required the extinguishment of any colonial laws applying to a member state pre-Sovereignty.

That meant the Constitution Acts in New Zealand and Australia passed prior to independence became legally void under international law.

It was a condition of membership of the League of Nations and later the United Nations.

But no new constitutions were ever forthcoming in either country.

It continues to be a founding principle of the United Nations charter, that the laws of one state cannot be used in another unless ratified by a mutual treaty.

So while the Australian Government has relied on a colonial act passed by the British in 1900, Britain has said otherwise, saying the Australian Constitution Act (UK) is null and void.

"No Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, or an Act that looks to the Parliament of the United Kingdom for its authority, is valid in Australia or its territories in accordance with the laws of the United Kingdom and the Charter of the United Nations," wrote British officials responding to an information request.

For decades, Australians have obeyed federal laws seemingly passed with full legal authority on a raft of issues from law and order to taxation. In all cases the Australian Government has claimed its powers from the 1900 Constitution Act.

That fundamental reliance took a knock however, when the United Nations' International Law Commission ruled that Australia could not rely on Section 61 of its Constitution to provide the power to enter into international treaties, because the Constitution was a British law, not an Australian one. Instead, said the UN, Australia needed to look to its membership of the League of Nations in 1920 as providing proof of its sovereignty.

An Australian group calling itself the Institute of Taxation Research, has used that ruling and others to mount a serious challenge to the constitutional authority of the Australian Government, saying that if the Constitution Act did not give the Government power to sign international treaties because it was void, nor could it be used as the basis for domestic law.

In 1992, the Australian High Court held that: 'The very concept of representative government and representative democracy signifies government by the people through their representatives. Translated into constitutional terms, it denotes that the sovereign power which resides in the people is exercised on their behalf by their representatives. "In the case of the Australian Constitution, one obstacle to the acceptance of that view is that the Constitution owes its legal force to its character as a statute of the Imperial Parliament enacted in the exercise of its legal sovereignty; the Constitution was not a supreme law proceeding from the peoples inherent authority to constitute a government.

"In other words, the Australian Constitution does not establish the sovereignty of Australians or their government".