Transcript
Shane Jones told journalists asking about New Zealand's funding boost to the Pacific, the Pacific Reset, that essential institutions in the region and the quality of governance need to be strengthened. He says methamphetamine, known as P, and other drugs coming into New Zealand are from closely failed states in the Pacific. Mr Jones says the Pacific is the transit route causing people in New Zealand inordinate pain, fear and anguish. He singled out Tonga.
"Tonga has a frightfully high level of indebtedness. Tonga needs an enormous amount of assistance with its customs, it is a transit point - I can;'t say too much about what the police may or may not have shared with us when I was an ambassador, but 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. Tonga is top of the list."
But the spokesperson for the Tonga prime minister, Lopeti Senituli, says Tonga is not a failed state and it's not the Wild West. He says Mr Jones' comments are New Zealand centric and border on racist.
"But it also gives the lie to the reasons that Prime Minister Ardern and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters have given as being the basis for the Pacific Reset. Because they espouse that we have a common culture and common values etc and here's Shane Jones saying you are a failed state."
Mr Senituli concedes Tonga has a problem in terms of the amount of P that is locally available with some of it being smuggled over the border.
"But 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, so it's a really belittling statement to make of the Kingdom of Tonga."
A New Zealand political scientist says there are no failed states in the Pacific. The director of the Massey University Pasifika Centre, Malakai Koloamatangi, says the minister is exaggerating.
"We have states that are facing problems, some in terms of instability, some in terms of good governance and development related issues, but there are no failed states. To paint the picture that the Pacific is like made up of nations that are failed and that drugs get in and out without any barrier, is obviously mistaken. That is not the case in the Pacific."
But a Tonga-based publisher has welcomed the blunt call from Mr Jones. Kalafi Moala says it's about time someone tackled the issue.
"The kinds of things we are experiencing today, with the rising crime, the issues with drugs - every week there is somebody arrested - caught with methamphetamine and all of those, and the kinds of policies and actions that are coming from government, is taking us nowhere. This must be what a failed state feels like."
The New Zealand Drug Foundation has welcome Mr Jones call, saying a lot of the drugs coming into New Zealand come via the Pacific Islands. But the biggest hauls of drugs are typically made in places like French Polynesia. In October last year three Europeans were caught in the Marquesas with half a tonne of cocaine on their yacht.
