Spot the odd one out!

It is day 11 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the New Zealand Government has yet to place any meaningful sanctions on Russia for their invasion. This stands in huge contrast to the rest of the developed world, which responded within hours or a day or two.

Labour has at least abandoned its nonsensical stance that no sanctions can be imposed unless Russia agrees not to veto them, but it has no sense of urgency.

This has been noticed globally. And the reason we don’t have such a law is that Labour and Greens voted it down the last two times it was before Parliament.

The two measures taken to date by the NZ Government are both so limited as to be meaningless. Rather than do a travel ban on the wider top echelons of the Government and the oligarchs with the real power, NZ has merely said it will ban travel of those involved in the invasion. Well all those involved in the invasion are not going to be looking to come to NZ for some sightseeing, are they. The travel restrictions should apply to the entire Russian Government and oligarchs.

Just as puny is the ban on exporting goods to the Russian military. We basically don’t export anything anyway. Other countries have imposed far far wider exports bans. As companies around the world are voluntarily boycotting Russia, New Zealand has done less than Fonterra.