Given Labour is big on promoting human rights, the Government's seeming indifference to a state-owned New Zealand company doing business with the repressive military regime running Myanmar would appear somewhat inconsistent - at least on the face of it.

However, the Government is not being as inconsistent as National MP Murray McCully is making out.

And because it believes it is being consistent, Labour is steadfastly refusing to wear any embarrassment from the National foreign affairs spokesman's highlighting of the contract between the state-owned enterprise Kordia and Myanmar Post and Telecommunications.

McCully says the Government's relaxed attitude is at odds with both the "ministerial tantrums" that followed predominantly state-owned Air New Zealand ferrying Iraq-bound Australian troops to the Middle East and the "firm" sanctions imposed on Fiji's military rulers.

He has a point with respect to Air New Zealand. The Government's fury with the airline was driven by Labour's fear of being tainted by association with the occupation of Iraq, especially after it had ridiculed John Key for his shifting stance on the American-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

Fiji is more problematic. Exactly the same ban on granting visas applies to the "Butchers of Burma", the description McCully applies to the Myanmar regime's military leaders and their families, as it does to members of Fiji's post-coup Government.

Arguing the Fiji military's actions pale into insignificance when compared with last year's brutal and bloody crackdown by the military junta in Myanmar, McCully seems to be suggesting state-owned enterprises be banned from doing business in Myanmar, but then says he does not yet have National caucus approval to state such a view.

In hindsight, Kordia should have advised its minister of the contract - as Air New Zealand did with its troop charters.

However, it is unlikely the Government would have ordered the company to pull out of Myanmar.

For starters, New Zealand does not apply economic sanctions to Myanmar. Or Fiji for that matter. Using McCully's logic, Air New Zealand should be banned from flying tourists to Fiji.

Economic sanctions against Myanmar would have little practical impact as two-way trade between New Zealand and Myanmar is negligible - barely worth $7 million a year.

However, for more pragmatic reasons, the Government would anyway be unlikely to impose economic sanctions without the cover of United Nations say-so.