Helen Clark: Former Prime Minister and Head of UN Development Agency on Australian 501s and funding for Gaza

New Zealand will make its annual payment of $1 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) as scheduled - Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has confirmed. 

"This follows careful consideration of the UN's response - including through external & internal investigations - to serious allegations against certain UNRWA staff being involved in the 7 October terrorist attacks on Israel," Peters said in a tweet. 

Former Prime Minister and Head of UN Development Agency, Helen Clark, told Heather du Plessis-Allan “They had to conclude that Israel’s case is completely unproven, because they never provided any evidence.” 

Clark said “Every big barrel of apples, will have a bad one somewhere – but as a smear of an organisation is quite wrong.” 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The government will spend a million send a million dollars
rather to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in
Gaza in the coming days. Our annual donation was put
on hold. You may recall after several several UN employees
were accused by Israel of participating in Hamas's attacks in October.
The UN has investigated found no evidence to back those
claims up. Former Prime Minister and former head of the
UN Development Agency Helen Clark is with us now Alan

(00:21):
hi Ver have before we get into this on Direction
ninety nine are now replaced by Direction one one zero.
Is there anything we can do to stop these deporties coming.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Well, I think it's really outrageousness. I mean, there was
an agreement that those who had really spent the substantial
part of their lives in Australia and to all intensive
purposes for Australia and shouldn't be deported here. And it
looks like political panics overturned that. I did hear Chris
Laxon earlier in the day saying that they had registered

(00:52):
our concern as a country with this training government. This
is all politics, you know, they're running up to a
selection as a person the next year or so. And
it's easy to beat upon people with the Zealand citizenship
born here who've committed her crime. But to all intensive purposes,
Australia has raised these people. Yeah, so I think it's right.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
But I mean it's been suggested that maybe what we
should do is revoke their citizenship. They would be left
therefore with none. Is that even possible?

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Well, here's where I think international law comes in that,
or even our own law, that to take away citizenship
when people don't have an alternative citizenship is quite a
big issue. Remember you and I have discussed this with
respect to that young woman who was groomed and recruited
by ISIS and the British government revoked her citizenship and

(01:50):
said she's entitled the Bangladesh citizenship. Now the Bank I
think said she wasn't. But she's in effect being left
to stateless person. So we revoked the citizenship of these
people they want to deport. The Aussies aren't going to
give them sortizanship, so we make them stateless people. And
I think there's probably some international convention that we're Party
two that wouldn't permit that.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Probably it sounds like there would be Hey, on UNRA.
Does it sound to you like Israel just never ponied
up the evidence to back up their claims.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
That's right, mere the whole organization, but then when asked,
persistently asked to give evidence and never fronted up with it.
So there was this inquiry conducted by a former French
foreign minister for the Secretary General. She drew on expert
research institutes and other institutes in the Scandinavian countries. They

(02:41):
actually said that had better procedures to ensure political neutriality
than any other UN organization or the NGOs they could find.
So they had to conclude israel case completely unproven and
they never provided any evidence.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Yeah, and so as a result, can we have confidence
that they are completely independent from hummus?

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Well, what I've said before employee to you, and we've
discussed it is Look, every big barrel of apples will
have a bad one somewhere, but to smear a whole
organization through the actions of a very few people is
quite wrong. And the inquiry found that they do go
to great lengths to ensure the staff, athletics and neutral

(03:26):
They also every year in Israel lists of their employees
for vetting and get this, Heather, Israel has not expressed
concern about any of the employees in twenty eleven, and
those lists have gone to it interesting.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
Hey Helen, thank you as always, really appreciate your time.
That's Helen Clark, former Prime ministand former UN Development Agency head.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
For more from Heather Duplessy Alan Drive, listen live to
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