Phil Goff Relishes New-Found Freedom, Blasts Donald Trump Again

Friday, 11 April 2025, 6:24 pm
Article: RNZ

Felix Walton, reporter

Sacked diplomat Phil Goff reveled in his freedom to denounce Donald Trump on Thursday night, describing the US president as an abusive bully before a packed lecture hall at the University of Auckland.

The former High Commissioner to the UK said New Zealand, alongside much of the western world, was enabling Trump's behaviour.

Goff was dismissed from his job in London after drawing parallels between Trump's stance on Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Britain's appeasement of Hitler before the Second World War.

Speaking at a panel hosted by the University of Auckland, Goff made it clear he had no regrets.

"I relish the freedom that I now have to say what I believe," he said.

"It was obvious to me that Trump does not understand history, otherwise he wouldn't have embarked on a pathway of appeasement of Putin, knowing the precedent for that in Europe."

The former Auckland mayor, Labour minister and party leader compared international politics to a school playground.

"You would get the bully who would abuse the victim and all of the other kids knew that it was wrong but didn't intervene," he explained.

"And I'm sitting there in my role as High Commissioner trying to be diplomatic [but also] desperately not wanting to be an enabler."

He feared New Zealand had become one of those enablers.

"We kept our head below the parapets because Trump is the leader of the world's most powerful country, [for] one. And two, he's got a well-known reputation for vindictiveness," Goff said.

"But that is becoming an increasingly unsustainable position in my view."

Goff said the United States was no longer a trusted ally.

"Under the Trump administration, the United States can no longer be regarded as a friend, an ally or a trading or security partner which is reliable," he said.

"Ask the Canadians how reliable the United States has been."

Fellow panellist and associate law professor Tim Kuhner, an expert on political corruption, said democracies around the world had eroded over the last two decades.

"Over 106 countries since 2006 have had deterioration, decline in the rule of law, civil and political rights, free and fair elections, those sorts of things. Media freedoms, academic freedoms."

He said it was vital that democracies improved their legal defences to protect those freedoms from corruption.

"I think there is a lot more work to be done in nations around the world that can be done peacefully which is preventing the conditions under which a illiberal populism arises," he said.

"That's what nations around the world ought to be doing in response to Trump. They should be preventing future Trumps."

Phil Goff said military defences were necessary too, applauding the Government's recently announced boost to defence spending.

"I think we have to increase the level of defence spending. What Putin is doing is exercising hard power. It can only be met not by diplomacy but equally by hard power," said the former Minister of Defence.

"And while we're a small country, we've always been prepared to put our hand up and to make the sacrifices that are necessary."

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