New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone Extension Bill
Since the 1990s there has been significant movement towards strengthening New Zealand's 1987 Nuclear Free Zone legislation. In her first term in parliament, Jeanette Fitzsimons, leader of the New Zealand Greens, introduced a members bill to the House on 25 May 2000, the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone Extension Bill. This, she says, sets out to fill gaps in the 1987 legislation and seeks to prohibit the transit of nuclear armed or propelled warships and transport of nuclear waste though the 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Fitzsimons argues that there have been two major developments since the 1987 legislation that justify updating the Act:
Firstly, the International Court of Justice, prompted especially by New Zealand, has declared the deployment of nuclear weapons to be illegal. This justifies taking an even stronger stance on where they may be carried. The numbers of those weapons, and the States holding them, have increased, despite the end of the cold war. Uncertainties around the intentions of nuclear states and the location and safety of weapons have made disarmament an even more urgent priority now than it was in the 1980s. Secondly, nuclear fuel reprocessing has gone global, with shipments of highly hazardous plutonium mixed-oxide fuel and high-level waste passing regularly between Japan and Europe, sometimes through the Tasman Sea.
If adopted, the Bill would mount a serious challenge to the continued deployment of nuclear weapons throughout the world's oceans. The New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone Extension bill lost its second reading on 29 May 2002. Opposition to amending New Zealand's anti-nuclear legislation came from the New Zealand Labour Party, who say that implementing the detail would be impossible and could make the proposed new legislation unenforceable. They said the bill breaches a fundamental principle of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which requires all countries to allow freedom of navigation through their EEZs. However, anti-nuclear activists remain confident that the amendments to New Zealand's nuclear legislation will eventually pass, citing grey areas of the law in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. There is a firm belief amongst New Zealanders, as indicated by polls, that New Zealand must take leadership on this vital International issue.
Read more about this topic: New Zealand's Nuclear-free Zone
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