Who’s that creeping underneath the radar?

While many commentators were lamenting the drop in business confidence last week, the quarterly GDP sneaked up by 1 per cent. Then, as others were lamenting how ‘‘weak’’ Jacinda Ardern was, and that Winston Peters was running things, the refugee quota was extended to 1500.

I’m pretty sure that raising the refugee quota was not that high on NZ First’s list of policy priorities. The rumours of the death of our ruling coalition are greatly exaggerated.

Coalition politics is all about keeping your partners happy, and that’s what our prime minister is attempting to do. And that’s difficult when your partners are diametrically opposed on some issues. That is why it was interesting to see our military deployment in Iraq extended until June next year. This is despite Labour opposing having troops in Iraq during National’s term. Calling it ‘‘mission creep’’, former leader Andrew Little promised to bring our soldiers home.

Labour once had a proud tradition of not getting involved in Iraq. When the United States invaded in 2003, Helen Clark famously said that she didn’t want New Zealand getting involved in other people’s wars. Mind you, the crazy, Right-wing George W Bush was in charge back then, not the sagacious and reasonable Mr Trump.

I suspect Ardern, knowing Defence Minister Ron Mark and his NZ First colleagues would support extending the Iraq deployment, quietly put stopping it in the too-hard kete. With the entire US military, NZ First and the Nats on one side and a few angry Greens on the other, if you take the morality out of it, it’s an easy decision to make.

Though I oppose having troops in Iraq, it amuses me how in recent times New Zealand has done the bare minimum to keep in with the US. During the Vietnam War we sent the least number we could and even then, prime minister Keith Holyoake secretly had grave doubts. But, as David Lange learned in the 1980s and what Ardern will be aware of while in New York, it takes a lot of gumption to stand up to the US, and Kiwis don’t like to make a fuss.

Also passing under the radar – perhaps the radar was recently purchased by the Defence Force along with the faulty rifle firing pins it is having to replace – was the extension of our tour of duty in Afghanistan. New Zealand troops have been there since 2001 – that’s longer than the Boer War and the two World Wars combined.

In June Ardern said ‘‘it’s hard to determine what success would look like in such a changeable environment’’. Good point, but surely we can tell what failure looks like? The Taliban are still in control of much of Afghanistan, and scores of Afghans are being killed every week. Even though the atrocities are appalling, they get far less coverage in our media than US school shootings or stabbings in nice parts of Paris.

The issue led to the demise of the Alliance in 2002 but, more importantly, 10 New Zealand soldiers have lost their lives. Attempts have been made to impose democracy but, like the corrupt South Vietnam government of the 1960s, the ‘‘good guys’’ in the Afghan government sometimes seem as bad as the ‘‘bad guys’’. Then there have been the incidents in which civilians have been killed when our soldiers have been involved, and the reputation of our Defence Force compromised.

Ron Mark reckons we must give humanitarian aid in the Middle East as well as military aid. That’s a good start, but how about we give humanitarian aid instead of military aid? Tell authorities we’ll build schools and hospitals but won’t destroy them. Yet even then, in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, such work carries an incredible safety risk.

Mark tells us he has been told by the Iraq government that our troops have made a huge difference there. Apart from the fact that currently the Iraq government is in limbo because it ordered a recount after the May elections and there was a fire in the biggest ballot paper storage depot (I’m not making this up), it sounds like the minister is pandering to the old ‘‘we’re punching above our weight’’ myth that New Zealanders love to believe.

But isn’t all this conflict, that we don’t really want to be involved in, about fighting Isis and other violent Muslim fundamentalists? Well yes, but the most violent Muslim fundamentalism I can see at present is rich Saudi Arabia – which produced Osama bin Laden and most of the 9/11 hijackers – bombing the poverty-stricken civilians of Yemen. Trouble is, the Saudis buy quite a bit of our meat, so we don’t hear much about it here.

If our Government did condemn the Saudi civilian bombings, maybe the press statement was released on a Friday afternoon just before a cabinet minister was fired, and I missed it.

How about we give humanitarian aid instead of military aid? Tell authorities we’ll build schools and hospitals but won’t destroy them.