Phil Goff: Former High Commissioner to London on the comments that led to him loosing his role

Phil Goff is standing by his comments about US President Donald Trump as he arrives back in New Zealand.

The former High Commissioner to the UK was sacked from his role after questioning whether Trump understood history.

Goff says Trump's treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy prompted the question.

He told Mike Hosking the comments weren't made flippantly.

Goff says he thought about them seriously and wanted to know why the Trump administration was appeasing Russia.

He also acknowledges his comments were risky, but didn’t expect to be fired for them.

Goff says he thought the comments were close to the line, without crossing it.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Last time we heard from our former UK High Commissioner
Phil GoF, he was asking a question that would get
him sacked. Of course, the Foreign Minister said his position
was untenable, and that was that. Phil Goff his lander
back in the country and he's with us. Very good
morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Yeah, good morning, Mike.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Good to be back on the land.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Oh, fantastic being back in New Zealand. I'm not really
looking forward to going from one winter and for another,
but we've had a great week up to the rain
we're getting now, so lovely to be back home.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
On the day you asked the question, did you know
what you were doing?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yeah? Absolutely, I've given some thought to it, and I
thought there was a serious and important question that, excuse me,
needed to be asked about the Trump administration's policy and
seeking to appease Russia, which was clearly what they were doing.
Did they understand the lessons of history? Did they understand
the things that you and I know about that had

(00:50):
happened pre World War Two when Neville Chamberlain had tried
to appease Hitler. And the result of appeasing and aggressor
is not to satisfy them but to wear their appetite
for more regression. I don't believe that the Trump administration
understands that. I thought it was a serious and important
question and it needed to be asked.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Was it a question more of a former foreign minister
than a high commissioner?

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Probably? Look, a career civil servant is trained to be
very cautious, not to express any strong value that they
may hold personally in the question they asked. I thought
it was a critical question. The people in the room
thought it was a critical question, but no other diplomat
wanted to ask it. I'd just had a conversation though,

(01:35):
the previous night with the spouse of one of my
colleagues who was a high commissioner, and she was a teacher,
and she talked about the playground and the bully would
abuse the victim. But the people that enabled that to
happen were the people that stayed silent. I didn't want
to be an enabler. I think that, frankly, the lies
that Trump was talking about Zelensky being a dictator Ukraine

(01:58):
starting the war needed to be called out. He needed
to be challenged. Otherwise we were complicit in what he
was doing, and what he was doing was betraying the
struggle of the Ukrainian people for their freedom, their democracy
and their nationhood.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
How big a surprise was the sacond.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
I thought I'd taken the question right up to the line.
I didn't think that I'd crossed the line, and I
believed actually that the question I was asking must have
been the question on the minds of the New Zealand
government and certainly most of the people that I was
talking to back home in New Zealand as well. But
it's the minister's prerogative to decide who are his head submission.
I have no complaint about removal from office. That was

(02:37):
the price, if that was the price that I had
to pay for saying something that I thought was really important,
unprepared to pay the price.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Was it convenient to Sakia? Was there an element of
that to it or not?

Speaker 2 (02:48):
It's really hard to know. I mean, I have had
no conversation with the Foreign Minister. He said that it
was a difficult decision and he held me in high
esteem personally if I'd been Foreign minister. So would I
have done that to somebody that had asked a question
that probably I thought was a relevant question. The answer
is no. I wouldn't have done that, but then he's

(03:08):
the minister. It's his prerogative. I've got no complaint about
his action.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
What are you going to do now?

Speaker 2 (03:14):
I do a bit of thinking and writing. I've been
approached by a publisher to see if I wanted to
write a book, and I'm going to take a while
working on the farm. I've doing a bit of chainsaw
therapy and wood splitting therapy. I'll think about it for
a while and then consider my next steps, but I
don't think it'll be going back into politics.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Good to catch up. Appreciate at Phil Goff for my
UK High Commissioner. Last time I saw him I was
in his office in London, just ahead of the coronation.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
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