As far as your points on the pact: I wounldn't expect the origional document to provide for nuclear power or weapons since the latter had only just been invented and the former hadn't. I suspect such aspects were added later through side agreements. Alliance treaties usually mutate through time by the addition of side treaties, agreements, or understandings. Countries seem strangely reluctant to ever throw away old treaties. Even Mr Bush wants to amend the ABM treaty into uselessness, rather than simply scrap it. Go figure...The mysteries of politics (shrug)...
And you are right; a new treaty could be worked out, or a compromise made. Even in the U.S., nuclear vessels are only serviced at a limited number of ports. This is primarily for ease of security, because "service" just means stocked with food and water. Nuclear power plants are only refueled in a few (I'm purposely not being specific, for obvious reasons), super secure sites in the US. NZ could easily designate one base to service Nuclear powered ships (on the public claim that only it has the "specialized facilities"). In truth, most of the warships, would be serviced there - to preserve face on the US "don't ask, don't tell" policy on who's nuke and who isn't. It's not like there are gonna be THAT many ships there - penguins aren't high priority targets. NZ bases are primarily useful for extending the patrolling range of southern fleet ships. Assuming you built the base way out on South Island some where, it should be out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Let a few dozen protesters brave the cold, South Island isn't heavily populated, as I recall. I imagine the press would get real tired of covering 12 guy's freezing to death outside the gates of the base.
I gotta go. I have to drive my sweety into town to get her driver's license renewed. More later.
Now that America has scaled down its nuclear weapon capacity, and we have all seen how effective and safe (unless you live in Russia)nuclear power can be when used properly, the anti-nuke faction in NZ needs something else to cling to. I think the world agrees that nuclear weapons are a bad thing. If only we hadn't invented them. But we did, and I think the last thread of rationalisation supporting anti-nukes in NZ is the position that America was responsible for inventing such evil weapons therefore we will punish them by not letting them park their ships here. Of course, this fails to recognise that when the technology is there, someone else will find it (ie. Russia). It is a very unfortunate characteristic of many people that, when faced with having to admit one is wrong, one instead finds other ways of rationalising one's views. When it is to the detriment of one's country it is very unattractive.
Hopefully, something good can come out of the recent tragedies, in that by working side by side with the US again we can re-build our military relationship. It is only unfortunate that National is not still in power because that government would have been more enthusiastic about utilising such an opportunity.
Hope the drivers licence got safely renewed.
Can't see any new ports being built in the South Island - New Zealand is a fairly mobile country - it wouldn't mean much for a couple of bus loads of protesters to come down from Northland or the Coromandel (upper North Island places, know for certain cultural activities such as cannabis cultivation). People would get pretty suspicious anyway - 'what have you got to hide?' kind of thing.
I think the easiest solution is for the US to resume training with New Zealand (which is a big problem - the US refuses to attend any international exercise New Zealand is part of - which really means we can't attend). That and resume conventional ship visits - the anti-nuclear thing can be sorted out later - maybe 5, 10 years later. No great rush. On the first conventional ship visit a few protesters will probably insist on turning up in the harbour, to which the general public will say 'what the fuck are they protesting about now?.' Probably end up undermining the cause. Well maybe anyway.
I don't know about any additions to the ANZUS treaty - but you might well be right - it'd be interesting to find out - I can't find much about it at the moment.
Anyway - you guys have yourselves a good weekend - hehe, I know I will. I'm lacing up my marching boots and probably going to be working on my appreciation of torrential rain, mud, automatic weapons and anything else they've got planned for us! Haha - fun and games!