To many people NZ still is that nice nuclear free country but here is the thing: We no longer are!
We may not have large nuclear reactors or nukes to bomb people with but what we do have is much more insidious and creepy. It goes largely under the radar but it is something that we have been importing ever since we joined the coalition of the killing in Afghanistan.
What is worse it is something we have been using in NZ when doing military drills right here in NZ, especially when they are joint military exercises and the one we will be engaging in on the South Island will be no different.
What the NZ army will be using is the ordinance brought here by our partners the US And France amongst others. Bot these countries now only use DU ammunition and unless NZ makes its own I don’t see how we can escaping using it here too.
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Hamburg/Geneva/New York – 23 October 2013: In 1987, against the backdrop of rising Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, New Zealand passed its ground-breaking Nuclear-Free Act, which banned nuclear weapons and meant US nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered ships were no longer allowed in New Zealand ports.
Today, more than 25 years later, the policy has been announced by the World Future Council as winner of the Silver Future Policy Award. This year’s award seeks to highlight disarmament policies that contribute to the achievement of peace, sustainable development and human security. This evening, a formal awards ceremony will be convened at UN Headquarters……
New Zealand’s policy started as a radical and utopian gesture, and has become part of our national identity – our DNA,” says New Zealander Alyn Ware, winner of the 2009 Right Livelihood Award for his work on nuclear disarmament, and a participant in the Future Policy Award ceremony at the United Nations on 23 October. “It inspires other countries, and empowers us kiwis to take nuclear abolition global.’
The Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean (Treaty of Tlatelolco) won the 2013 Future Policy Gold Award, while Argentina’s “National Programme for the Voluntary Surrender of Firearms” also received Silver. Four additional disarmament policies from Belgium, Costa Rica, Mongolia and Mozambique/South Africa were recognized as Honourable Mentions.
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Aotearoa: A Wider Perspective 
On New Zealand Nuclear Free i would like to add it was a monetary reformer, Bruce Beetham, & the grass roots self-funded & media ignored Social Credit movement that converged around him which bought it into being.
This Bruce Beetham lead movement, across NZ, was becoming harder to ignore as it started bumping the 20% mark of a, at that time, high voter turnout NZ election. He was also promoting, proportional representation for all & a Nuclear Free New Zealand.
Nuclear Free New Zealand got adopted as a ways to dilute & splinter the, what must have been ‘startling’, grass roots movement that had congealed behind this man’s efforts for monetary reform.
For most in the ‘historical record’, it is equally claimed by Green type environmentalists & Labour, but it’s happening was really bought about on the political scene by a monetary reformer named Bruce Beetham.