Green foreign leader against other foreign leaders!

Fran O’Sullivan writes:

It’s time that we grew up as a nation when it comes to diplomatic courtesy. It’s time the Greens revoked their “unofficial ban” on visiting political leaders addressing the New Zealand Parliament.

Some of the world’s most powerful leaders like Germany’s Angela Merkel and China’s Xi Jinping are headed our way later this month after they’ve been to the G20 Summit in Brisbane.

Having political leaders of such calibre addressing our Parliament while it is sitting is not going to subvert our democracy. But the Greens’ overblown and juvenile stance that only New Zealand politicians should be allowed to address a sitting session makes us look absurdly pretentious in comparison to our transtasman neighbour.

Indeed it does.

In a few weeks, three of the world’s most powerful people will be the latest foreign leaders to address the Australian Parliament in what will be memorable occasions for that country’s politicians.

At least one of those leaders — Chinese President Xi — will come to New Zealand for a similar State visit. But those long-standing objections by the Greens have (so far) robbed New Zealand of the opportunity to honour visiting leaders in a way that (at least in Australia) has seen them rise to the occasion with excellent speeches that canvas the importance of the bilateral relationship and strengthen mutual bonds.

Prime Minister John Key has wanted to invoke that tradition here.

But the only occasion (to date) in which a foreign leader — Australia’s former PM Julia Gillard — has addressed our Parliament it had to be outside formal sitting hours.

This was because Greens co-leader Russel Norman — an Australian himself — reckoned having a foreign leader in the House could undermine the democratic sovereignty of Parliament.

Did having Winston Churchill address the US Congress undermine US sovereignty? It’s a very silly justification by the Greens.

UPDATE: The article (and my comments) overlook the changes made to Standing Orders just before the election, which now provide a mechanism for foreign leaders to address the House. The Greens would have had to agree to the change in standing orders, which suggests they no longer have blanker opposition. However the Business Committee has to agree on the details, which means they can veto individual foreign leaders. My thanks to the Clerk’s Office for pointing out the change in standing orders to me.