Dr Kennedy Graham tribute to Norway - Notice of Motion

This 49^th Parliament has, I believe, had more than the usual share of grief. We have stood in silence over tragedies in Haiti, in Afghanistan, Chile, Australia, Tonga, Poland, and Japan. Here at home we have mourned Pike River and, of course, Christchurch. We know, all of us in this House, what it is to come together to unite in a moment of grief and pay tribute. Yet we have not encountered these past 2 years the depth of evil that characterised the massacre last week in Norway.

Mr Breivik's deed is in the category of major terrorism—a crime against humanity. It equates with Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma bombing, Mohammed Atta with the Twin Towers, the bombings in the Bali nightclub, the Spanish train, and the London Underground. We know about mass sniper killings in recent times in the US, the Netherlands, Russia, and Britain. But those were mindless acts of deranged individuals.

If their lives are to have meaning above mortality, a legacy beyond their short span, it will be because we determine here as a nation to celebrate all that is uplifting with the human spirit.

Last week's killing of 77 innocent young people was anything but mindless. This was a political act. So not only must we grieve for Norway, we must respond publicly and with one voice to a political act of destruction with a political act of resolve. We must answer a paroxysm of death with an affirmation of life. The tribute we pay to the slain youth of Norway as they went about their engagement in a political party must be to reaffirm the very civic values they were expressing in their final moments here on earth. If their lives are to have meaning above mortality, a legacy beyond their short span, it will be because we determine here as a nation to celebrate all that is uplifting with the human spirit. Let this nation now proclaim the human values these young Norwegians were living at their moment of death.

I know from personal experience how close we in the Antipodes are to those in the most north-eastern tip of Europe. I lived and worked 3 years in Sweden and I visited Norway often. I worked closely with one of Norway's most prominent leaders, Thorvald Stoltenberg, former Foreign Minister and UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UN representative on the Yugoslav crisis, and father of the present Prime Minister. Mr Stoltenberg was a strong guiding light on the boards of my institute in Sweden and the UN Academy I directed in Jordan.

It was in his house in Oslo that my wife and I met the Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, some 6 or 7 years ago. On last Saturday evening I telephoned Thorvald to convey New Zealand's concern over this event and our empathy for the Norwegian people. I said how much we admired the manner in which the Prime Minister was rallying his people, demonstrating to the world the sanity and stability and tolerance that characterises his nation. Thorvald responded with Nordic simplicity. They were, he acknowledged, going through tough times, but they would emerge stronger for the experience, simply because they would refuse to be intimidated. Yes, he said on a personal note, he and his wife were proud of their son.

It was Thorvald who once told me that of all the countries in the world, he thought Norway and New Zealand were the closest. We shared geographic isolation. We knew the sea. We were small in number yet large in spirit. Our people were rugged individualists yet we cared one for another. To this day I take his observation as one of the greatest compliments my country has been paid. The Norwegian massacre is not just a national tragedy; it is a global tragedy. All of humanity shares in this together.

Norway is leading the world in its display of national commitment to global tolerance. Let us all support her in embracing the seven global values that have been identified by our Governments at the UN General Assembly: freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, human rights, respect for nature, and shared responsibility. By embracing all faiths, by celebrating our common human values, we shall convey the true response to the Norwegian massacre and validate those who fell. Let us incorporate that tolerance, that wisdom, and that understanding, in our own parliamentary work here in this country today and hereafter.