Listen Now: 
Download AudioFormer diplomat Shane Jones says New Zealand’s fishing industry is watching closely how the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfolds.
He says Māori-owned Sealord and other companies have long depended on the Ukranian and Russian crews and charters to harvest key deepwater fisheries, so they will be concerned about any interruption to that flow of people and expertise.
It’s still a regional conflict but it has much larger implications.
“Russia has empire ambitions yet again like the tsars of the past and secondly it does not want liberalism, democracy and other features of the Western creed of politics creeping into its system, or certainly the current leader doesn’t. Although there’s a lot of saber rattling about the use of nuclear, that literally is a Rubicon – once you’ve gone over, a bit like the moumou Nukutaurua in Maori traditions, you can never go back,” Mr Jones says.
He says Aotearoa New Zealand needs to stand with other nations for peace and democratic values.
