Standing Upright Here: Bruce Brown reviews a recent book on New Zealand nuclear policy.

• Author: Brown, Bruce
• Position: Book review

STANDING UPRIGHT HERE: New Zealand in the Nuclear Age 1945-1990

Author: Malcolm Templeton

Published by: Victoria University Press in association with NZIIA, Wellington, 2006, 621pp, $49.95.

Malcolm Templeton has written the definitive book of New Zealand in the age of nuclear energy. He is well-equipped to do so, having served as Deputy Secretary (Political) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, New Zealand Ambassador to the United Nations, New York, where he played a major part in the negotiation of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone, and leader of the New Zealand delegation in the eight-year negotiation of the Law of the Sea Convention. As this and his other books show, (1) he combines a prodigious capacity for research with a mastery of English prose.

This book is a long one, often chapters, but it also falls into some seven broad groupings: the early period in the Second World War and its aftermath, particularly with the prospect of peaceful uses for nuclear energy in New Zealand; British and American nuclear tests in the Pacific; French nuclear tests in the South Pacific; the New Zealand and Australian case against France in the International Court of Justice; the South Pacific nuclear free zone concept and negotiation; the visits of nuclear-armed and/or powered ships; and the nuclear policy and the ANZUS relationship. On all these issues Templeton provides new and interesting material. However, in this review I will focus of the last of these groupings.

The first visit to New Zealand of a nuclear-powered vessel was the submarine USS Halibut, invited by the Labour government of Walter Nash in April 1960. No special conditions were attached. The Australians invited such ships similarly, again without special conditions. There were some reports questioning their safety, but, Templeton states, there was no further enquiry until 1968, when a sub-committee of the New Zealand Atomic Energy Committee was established. What was in question related only to nuclear-powered ships. There was not a similar concern about nuclear weapons.

Many visits

There were many visits by US Navy warships from 1960 to 1970, but only two were nuclear-powered--the cruiser USS Longbeach and the frigate USS Bainbridge. Questions of both safety and political acceptability arose. On safety, the New Zealand Atomic Energy Committee considered that the reactors of nuclear-powered ships should be shut down while the vessel was in port. There was also to be a requirement that the government to which a nuclear-powered ship belonged should accept absolute and unlimited liability arising out of a nuclear accident during the visit. However, the US Navy stressed its nuclear safety record and refused to give any information about the state of its ships' reactors. They also pointed out that there were constitutional problems--only Congress could commit money for unlimited and unforeseeable compensation. Also concerned, the Australians stopped accepting nuclear-powered ship visits about January 1972. (As Deputy High Commissioner in Canberra, I was called in by Secretary of Defence Sir Arthur Tange to be informed of this.) At that stage, no nuclear-powered vessel had visited New Zealand since 1964.

While officials in New Zealand were debating the issue, the government under Bill Rowling made no decision, conscious of rising public concern and anti-nuclear sentiment. The CND President, Richard Northey, questioned the legal force and adequacy of a congressional resolution on liability for damage, but the resolution adopted on 6 December 1974 had the force of law, Templeton comments, and was in fact described as Public Law 93-513. It was signed by the President.

Anti-nuclear remit

Anti-nuclear sentiments persisted, and were particularly evident at the Labour Party's Annual Conference in May 1975, which adopted a remit opposing visits by ships carrying nuclear weapons. Whether Rowling would have changed government policy accordingly was an open question, in Templeton view, but this was all overtaken by the 1975 general election, which returned a National...