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Rainbow Warrior . . Page.. 799 ..

to anybody at all in any position of authority in France, and tell them what we think about them. But we do not need to shoot ourselves in the foot by cutting ourselves off from the French people for the next century and throwing aside the relationships that we - - -

Mr Berry: That is what you said when they sank the Rainbow Warrior.

MR KAINE: Mr Berry does not know. Mr Berry is like Mr Keating: He reinvents history to suit himself. He throws out the window what he does not want to know about. He does not want to have a rational debate about this. All he wants to do is kick Kate Carnell in the head. This is a good opportunity to kick Kate Carnell. “Poor leadership”, he says. I ask him: Where is the leadership from your party? For four years of government you maintained the relationship with the French through the Versailles twinning arrangement and you never once protested about it, no matter what they did. Now it is politically expedient to kick Kate Carnell in the head; so you are up on your feet, bitching and whingeing and complaining. Mr Speaker, I am not bitching and whingeing and complaining. I am speaking my mind, and I do not want to cut myself off from the French people in Versailles. I want to be able to go and talk to them on a person-to-person basis. I want to be able to go to Versailles and say to the French man and the French woman in the street in Versailles, “We do not like what your Government is doing, and we think you should be doing something about it internally, within France”. If we are going to cut ourselves off, how can any of us do that?

Mr Berry wants to go back to the international confrontation that we have seen in the world for the last 50 years. Mr Speaker, I do not want to. I much prefer the approach that is proposed by the Chief Minister: Tell them, in ways that are available to us, that we do not like it. By all means, boycott their goods. It is a good way of sending a message. But, in an insane world, there is a limit to the kind of action that you can take. I want some sanity in this international debate, not the kind of sledge-hammer approach that Mr Berry is proposing, because that is what leads to international conflict. We do not happen to have any nuclear weapons. The French do. Would it not be sensible for us to talk to them about that? Or are we going to take Mr Berry's approach, the confrontationist approach, to the point where the French feel inclined to come and drop one on us? Is that a sane approach? That is the kind of thinking that we have put up with for the last 50 years in this world. I am not in favour of it. I would rather do it in a sane way, thank you very much, Mr Berry.

MR CONNOLLY (11.14): Mr Speaker, twinning arrangements are all about symbolism, and rightly so. The movement for sister cities really emerged as part of the United Nations structure after World War II, as a way of establishing people-to-people links. The theory behind it, and properly so, was that, by fostering international goodwill and understanding at the people-to-people level, you would be less likely to allow zealots and demagogues to create the sort of international turmoil that Mr Kaine told us today he had lived through and the tragedies that flow from that. Because twinning arrangements are about symbolism, this Assembly really has little choice but to support the motion that has been put before it by the Leader of the Opposition.

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