Against the grain

“An act of real political courage by the National Party would be to increase its commitment in the dangerous areas of Afghanistan and to announce that New Zealand was rejoining the ANZUS Alliance, which it bailed out of two decades ago,” suggests executive director of The Sydney Institute Gerard Henderson in an opinion piece for The Sydney Morning Herald. This comment after “conservative prime minister [John Key] rejected a modest request for military support by, a social democratic leader in Australia.” “Key’s decision will no doubt go down well among his fellow New Zealanders,” Henderson continues. “An Australian academic, Hugh White, a critic of Australia’s Afghanistan commitment, has praised Key’s ‘political courage’ in this instance. Yet it takes no particular courage for a New Zealand political leader to appeal to that nation’s isolationist tendency and its considerable left-wing constituency.”