Richard Boock: Beam me up, Jim, I've got a few questions about China

You wouldn't have to be a fly on the wall to guess what Martin Snedden will be telling politicians during today's meeting on the upcoming Zimbabwe tour.

While the normally genial Snedden gave little away after his return from the International Cricket Council meeting last week, the table is set for a more forthright discussion on the issue of Zimbabwe.

The discussion with Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff, Sports and Recreation Minister Trevor Mallard and Progressive leader Jim Anderton represents the first opportunity for New Zealand Cricket's chief executive to cross-examine his opposition on matters of consistency and logic.

Goff opposes the tour and has promised to bar the Zimbabwean team from visiting New Zealand in December, but Anderton has come up with an even more hare-brained proposal - confirmation that either election year or senility (maybe both) has finally arrived.

His plan would see New Zealand free to tour Zimbabwe as long as everyone pretended they were a different team and addressed them by a different name a la the rugby-playing Cavaliers.

Brilliant. But why stop there? Why not also pretend they're playing against a non-Zimbabwean team, on a different continent, and on a different planet? Why not pretend Mugabe's a cross-dressing Martian invader?

The problem for Snedden is that he's supposed to keep his composure in the face of such tosh, and stop himself from laughing in the face of the people who seem unfit to run a country store, let alone a nation.

Hopefully, after Anderton has finished explaining his imaginary universe and Goff has painted himself further into a corner over the December visit, Snedden will have the time to ask a couple of questions of his own.

For instance, how could the Government justify its stance on Zimbabwe while actively seeking a free-trade agreement with China, where the CCP party has made Mugabe look only faintly eccentric?

And how could they defend their position when they knew that the Chinese Government is one of Mugabe's few allies; not only supplying arms (fighter jets and trucks amid a Western embargo), but also designing and donating the roof tiles for the tyrant's new 25-bedroom mansion, complete with helipad.

Maybe they didn't know that.

China, which executes more people each year than any other country, according to Amnesty International, and is notorious for its record on extrajudicial killings, torture, forced confessions and arbitrary arrest and detention, is hosting the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

So Snedden will surely be asking the three white knights what they think of reports detailing the escalating number of house demolitions and evictions in Beijing as the authorities try to clean up the streets in time for the Games.

He'll want to know how they can reconcile their stance on these two issues - Zimbabwe and China. How could one be fine, and the other so repugnant?

Hopefully he'll also be making the point that sport can sometimes lead to positive outcomes, as everyone saw this year when India and Pakistan resumed their cricket ties despite constant warring over the Kashmir border.

Whatever happens, someone needs to explain to our political trio, isolated in the South Pacific with no sworn enemies or common borders, that if you keep picking and choosing on moral grounds, in the end no one will want to come and play.

That's why not only the ICC has rules forbidding members to renege on scheduled matches, but so does the International Olympic Committee, soccer's Fifa and the International Tennis Federation.

So, you see, it's not the ICC which is out of step, it's Goff and Mallard.

Anderton is in outer space.