NZ Inc changes tack on Gulf trade
The wheels came off the free trade agreement bandwagon when Prime Minister John Key cancelled his role to lead a trade mission to the Gulf states in April 2010.
The wheels came off the free trade agreement bandwagon when Prime Minister John Key cancelled his role to lead a trade mission to the Gulf states in April 2010.
The wheels came off the free trade agreement bandwagon when Prime Minister John Key cancelled his role to lead a trade mission to the Gulf states in April 2010.
It has taken nearly two years since that fateful decision – which occurred when two air force servicemen were killed in an Anzac Day helicopter crash north of Wellington – to restore relations with the sensitive and snubbed Arabs.
Readers may recall Mr Key was scheduled to leave Gallipoli and join the large New Zealand trade and diplomatic mission – numbering some 90-strong business people representing 60 companies – in Kuwait.
Mr Key may get his chance to make amends sooner rather than later this year, as Foreign Minister Murray McCully says he is working on a final sign off.
The Gulf FTA has been signed and will deliver huge benefits to exporters of goods and services such as education. But ratification has not been possible because Saudi Arabia has insisted on pushing the live sheep trade issue.
Mr McCully says he is working “at the highest level” with the Saudis, who have had a representative here this week. (Saudi Arabia, incidentally, now has the Gulf’s largest diplomatic mission based in Auckland to assist some 8000 students here.)
Working on two fronts
At a Middle East Business Council lunch today, Mr McCully revealed two separate diplomatic and trade initiatives that have kept the FTA alive. One is a “food security partnership,” which he and Trade Minister Tim Groser see as a way for New Zealand to become a potentially big earner of overseas income.
Importantly, this will not come from sending many more New Zealand products to the Gulf state but by forming partnership to boost food production in places such as Africa, where half the agricultural land is under utilised.
In his speech, Mr McCully outlined the thinking:
"The bottom line is that in future New Zealand will be a nation that holds the world’s leading farmer methodologies and practices, most advanced food technologies, and strongest food brands – but increasingly we will find ourselves actually producing food in other countries."
For example, he mentioned his recent visit to Ethiopia, which is the world’s 10th largest livestock producer but needs to shift its agriculture to a more commercial scale.
He also revealed his Gulf trip was the first by a foreign minister to Qatar since 1984 and the first to Kuwait since 1994 – both shocking oversights.
Making public service pay
Another new tack is to exploit intellectual property contained in the public service.
Although Mr McCully only gets media coverage because he is reducing the headcount in his ministry (and probably not before time), he wants to see New Zealand expertise put to use in areas such as education, health and energy.
He noted how many New Zealand experts have had to leave the public service to fulfil these roles in the Gulf and elsewhere, with the returns going to those individuals and their businesses.
He has appointed a coordinator in his office to enable his ministry to lead such arrangements, which involve matching overseas governments’ needs with New Zealand expertise, both public and private.
An example is about to be partly privatised Mighty River Power, which Mr McCully says has geothermal expertise it can offer to countries that are urgently need it, such as Japan, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.
"Mighty River Power," he says," is capable of becoming a significant global player in geothermal energy, riding a huge wave of interest in renewable energy, provided they have a balance sheet of sufficient size and owners with a basic understanding of the opportunity."
Asked why Australia was working on a definite plan while New Zealand didn't have one, Mr McCully replied:
“We should sit down and plan like a business, not a government. Ministers should be the marketing arms of that business. We have to have people in the market who can recognise opportunities and act on them.”
Apart from more ministers paying a visit to the Gulf, this will be music to ears of exporters who might be worried the ministry is reducing its frontline services.
“There will be no diminution of our representation in the Gulf,” Mr McCully promised, adding that the lack of a ministry presence in Dubai will also be looked at.
All this reflects to the new purpose Mr Cully and his chief executive John Allen are bringing to a ministry that has failed to move with the times and reflect New Zealand’s future needs in the decade ahead.
Packing their tents
The brief outburst of protest movements around the world looks to be over, as the ruthless forces of repression in Syria deliver a devastating end to the Arab spring that sparked it.
It took only four and a half days for Lucy Lawless and co to beg to be arrested so they could end their short-lived sit in on a Shell drilling rig at New Plymouth. It took four and a half months for the Occupy London campers to be evicted from outside St Paul’s Cathedral.
The campers outside Ireland’s Central Bank in Dame St, Dublin, have been ordered by the Garda (police) to leave before the four-day St Patrick’s celebrations start on March 16.
When I saw them a few weeks ago, they looked too settled in (they have occupied a large concrete plaza) to move on voluntarily, so we shall see.
The whole exercise has exposed the futility of today’s extreme left-wing politics. It takes on to know one, so Patrick Hayes’ account at Spiked Online of a new book from Verso in London makes good reading.
Among his choice observations:
Occupy resembled more a survivalist cult than a traditional protest. Little wonder that, as the book recounts, groups were set up to crochet hats, scarves and gloves, “as it was going to get cold soon.”
And the unwelcome intrusion of New York’s homeless, who were given this message:
Go away you smelly tramps, this is our public space, not yours. Your lives may be difficult, but it pales in comparison to our banker-induced angst.