French president Emmanuel Macron accompanies New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Photo / Getty Images
French president Emmanuel Macron accompanies New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Photo / Getty Images
COMMENT:
New Zealand's place in the world came into focus again this week on a number of fronts.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has been in Iceland, Norway, Finland and Denmark to put some heft behind the decision to re-open a New Zealand embassy in the region. The location is Sweden.
Trade Minister David Parker has been in Beijing helping to repair strained relations through his participation in the second Belt and Road conference.
Speaker Trevor Mallard has been consolidating closer ties with the African Union in Ethiopia, cementing relations with Rwanda and representing New Zealand at the Anzac service at Gallipoli in Turkey.
But the biggest impact internationally involved the Christchurch mosque attacks six weeks ago and the revelation that the Prime Minister has teamed up with the French President to get extreme violence removed from social media in the aftermath of the massacre.
New Zealand was also propelled back into international headlines again by the suggestion that the Sri Lanka church and hotel bombings were retaliation for the Christchurch mosque massacre.
By several accounts the perpetrators had been planning a major attack before Christchurch happened.
Whatever the truth, actions and reactions to Christchurch will reverberate for years to come in our global engagements.
Peters told an audience in Oslo that the attacks may not have an effect on our foreign policy settings.
But they will add a new dimension to New Zealand's engagement, particularly by Jacinda Ardern, and we are just seeing the start of it.
Ardern's bid with Emmanuel Macron to get an accord with social media platforms at a G7 ministerial conference in Paris next month is the first tangible initiative in the international arena.
It has been met with scepticism from cynics who view such gatherings as meaningless talkfests.
They are the sort of critic who would never start anything unless success were guaranteed.
The suggestion that Ardern do nothing after the murders of 50 people in New Zealand were live-streamed and shared on social media is to deny human nature and New Zealand's own instincts.
Being a bit-player in international politics has never stopped New Zealand playing its part in major conflicts, as Anzac day reminds us, or engaging in major issues such as nuclear weapons and climate change.
The international perception of New Zealand changed forever after the attacks on Christchurch not just because of the crisis but because of the country's reaction to it. That has been reinforced by Prince William during his visit.
Illustration/ Guy Body
Ardern gave notice very soon after the attack that preventing future live-streaming of extreme violence was going to be a priority - and clearly Macron saw the potential to collaborate.
Most New Zealanders will be proud that the Prime Minister of just 18 months has the international standing to be invited to co-chair and organise the meeting with Macron.
Her stature grew because of the terrible circumstances of Christchurch but she had already made a strong impression last year in Europe and Britain.
Ardern's natural instincts are to collaborate as broadly as possible and in this case, to try to get the social media giants themselves to agree to ways to stop publishing extreme violence.
The one thing she and other leaders cannot rely on in trying to form a broad alliance is the unpredictable United States under President Donald Trump.
That factor alone makes it important to get co-operation from social media themselves, rather than using heavy-handed regulation or attempting to bully the corporates into participation.
Ardern and Macron will co-chair the meeting but she is not leaving all organisation to France. Planning has been going on for weeks.
She has spoken to Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, to Twitter's Jack Dorsey, to Apple's Tim Cook, Google's Sundar Pichai and Microsoft's Brad Smith.
It has to be said to preventing the incitement of murder and the elimination of murder from social media platforms is a pretty low bar to be aiming for. Any difficulties are likely to be in the "how" not the "what."
The details are still being worked on – former diplomat Leon Grice is working on the plans on behalf of the Government and is in the US to attend Facebook's F8 conference to flesh out more detail of the pledge that will be produced by the Paris conference.
It won't eliminate the evils that lurk within social media. But it won't be nothing either.
The one area of concern about the Ardern-Macron initiative that is warranted is from those who fear the move could lead to greater regulation over free speech in the media generally.
Labour MP Louisa Wall reinforced such fears when she posted a stream of consciousness on Facebook after Ardern and Macron announced their joint venture on Wednesday aimed at social media.
Wall widened it to general media. She said it was time to formally recognise the Fourth Estate as part of the political system because it wielded significant indirect social influence.
"This would impose a Duty of Care on the media - a formalisation of the social contract, the implicit responsibilities requiring adherence to a stand of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeably harm others."
Unhelpful to Ardern is an understated description. Off the wall, might be another.
Ardern has been at pains to distance herself from any suggestion that this is the thin end of the wedge to regulate free speech on the internet or other media.
She is not entirely distant, however. Andrew Little's domestic review into whether our laws are sufficient to deal with hate speech will be a fraught and emotional debate - probably culminating in election year.
The test for Ardern on the domestic stage will be greater than her current one on the international stage.
