Skip to comment form | Skip to poll | Send to a friend

The announcement that New Zealand has declared its candidacy for membership of the United Nations Human Rights Council raises a number of interesting questions. Like why are we doing this? And what do we hope to achieve? A website was launched to support New Zealand’s candidacy last week. And no doubt some considerable sums of cash will be sunk into MFAT lobbying. All in the cause of winning election to one of the more disreputable institutions to be spawned out of the United Nations in recent years.

The UN Human Rights Council was established in March 2006 to replace the totally discredited UN Human Rights Commission. That organisation had morphed into an assembly of dictatorships, terrorist sympathisers and outright whackos (including such human rights luminaries as Zimbabwe, Syria, Libya and China). The final straw was the uncontested election to the Commission chair of Sudan, the home of ethnic cleansing. Even the United Nations was embarrassed to own them. 

The new Council of 47 elected members was designed to establish a credible UN assembly to focus on international human rights issues. But the track record to date has not been promising. Devoting much of its efforts to regular criticisms of Israel, the Council voted down (22-20) a resolution calling on the Sudanese Government to prosecute those responsible for killing raping and injuring innocent civilians in Darfur.

Britain has recently been the very fortunate recipient of the Council’s wisdom. A Sri Lankan initiative was passed calling on Britain to abolish the monarchy and have a written constitution. Sri Lanka, it would be fair to say, has less than an unblemished track record on human rights issues in recent times. But so busy has the Council been persecuting Israel and dealing with pressing human rights issues around the British monarchy that human rights abuses in Tibet, China, Zimbabwe, Burma and a variety of other places have not attracted the Council’s interest, let alone condemnation.

Last week, the Human Rights Council elected Nigeria as Council chair for the next year. An interesting call since Nigeria has been the subject of more than a little comment on the human rights front. Minor matters like gross irregularities in recent presidential, governorship and assembly polls. And the odd bit of armed thuggery and murder against opposing candidates and their supporters. Then there are the examples of extra-judicial executions that Amnesty International reported in the Niger Delta. Oh, and the reports of intimidation and harassment against journalists and human rights activists. Clearly these are just the guys to be heading up the UN Human Rights Council.

So why, we wonder, has New Zealand decided to use valuable MFAT time and money campaigning to join this illustrious body? The United States has just made the decision to pull out of active participation. But hey, if New Zealand does win a seat around the Council table from 2009 there is one very significant benefit. Hopefully by next year Helen Clark will be freed up from other duties and available to become our Permanent Representative. A few quick tales on her excursions with the Electoral Finance Act and she would be bound to win any ballot for the chair. The perfect retirement role for our UN-centric Prime Minister.

Defence Flunks Acquisition Audit 

Regular readers of this newsletter will be aware that the worldwide headquarters of mccully.co is more than a little exercised over the inability of our Defence Ministry to competently manage the process of purchasing major equipment. The LAVs, the LOVs, the multi-role vessel, the patrol boats, the helicopters – you name it: each new contract has attracted new criticism and new attention from the Auditor-General (A-G). So when the A-G decided to have a look at all of the major acquisitions undertaken in recent years to assess the nature of any systemic problems (of which there are clearly many) MPs and commentators alike breathed a sigh of relief. Now, surely, we would find out what went amiss in all of these cases. Right? Wrong!

The bad news starts in the foreword: 

“My staff were unable to complete the audit as originally intended. A lot of the detailed information that I expected the defence agencies to have was not readily available."

So the Auditor-General, having made the significant, even momentous decision to review all ten recent major Defence acquisition projects together has had to make the equally momentous decision to abandon his audit because the Ministry can’t give him the information to audit. How bad is that?

And the Parliament, frustrated by ongoing blowouts in major projects like the NH90 helicopters (about a $300 million increase on what was supposed to be a $500m budget), which had expected the A-G to identify the causes so that the solutions could be monitored, is now left shaking its head in wonderment.

Equally serious is the focus on the continued failure of Defence to actually deliver new acquisitions on timetable. The A-G chronicles a saga of ongoing but unexplained delays. But if Defence can't supply the A-G with information, the A-G can't tell Parliament how to fix that either. Although the report gives a very strong clue as to the real problem.

The A-G focuses on the major blowouts which have occurred between the Approval to Commence (when Cabinet gives a green light to proceed with a project) and the Approval to Commit (when Cabinet agrees that a contract can be signed). The Capability Management Framework (CMF) is the Defence rule-book for managing such contracts. The A-G notes that "the CMF states that accurate cost estimations are critical at the Approval to Commence stage." Yet Defence has told the A-G that "cost estimates at this point are, at best an 'intelligent guess’”. (The word “intelligent” in this context clearly used with a heavy sense of irony).  

In other words, Defence have not followed their own rule book and the report gives little confidence that they have any intention of doing so in future. The A-G states "my staff and the Ministry of Defence disagreed on the point in the acquisition process from which changes should be monitored and reported" (which is very unfortunate because the CMF rule-book is very clear that the A-G is right and the Ministry wrong). The A-G is clear in his view that when Defence seek Cabinet approval to commence a project of this sort, they should supply "robust" estimates, and that any changes from that point should be clearly monitored and reported. But Defence have ignored both their own rule-book, and the clear view of the A-G. Worse, their Minister, Phil Goff, is clearly complicit in this clear breach of accountability requirements.

The report sheds no light on how the Ministry has managed to superintend the construction of in-shore and off-shore patrol boats that flunked their Lloyds survey, or how they managed to construct a multi-role vessel with all of the seaworthiness capabilities of a wallowing pig. But those questions will wait.

In all of this the approach and demeanour of Defence Minister Phil Goff has been deeply revealing. Rather than insisting that CMF guidelines are adhered to and demanding explanations as to why his Ministry is blowing out budgets and purchasing dodgy gear, Goff has been insisting that the report is good news because it doesn't reveal incompetence or negligence (which, given that the auditor can't find anything to audit, is hardly surprising). While the new Secretary of Defence, John McKinnon, gives every impression that he is intent on a tidy-up, Goff is doing precisely the opposite. All of which indicates that Goff is very much part of the problem, not part of the solution.

If you would like to comment on this issue please click >>>

Send to a friend: