PM makes credible showing amid a sea of old dudes
OPINION: There are few experiences so artificial as attending global summit conferences as part of your own country’s media contingent.
Trapped in a bubble of your fellow citizens, there are times when you might learn as much watching at home on the telly – except that you wouldn’t.
That’s the point of these lavish bunfights: They force attention on global issues that domestic political pressure can sideline for reporters, just as much as politicians and the phalanx of officials who scurry after them.
The partisan bubble effect was striking at last weekend’s Apec summit in Vietnam, where the New Zealand media were given early insight into the angry reaction to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s failure to show up at a meeting where a new version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership was to be signed.
The Australian media were fed a line that it was just a glitch until they realised Kiwi Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had already blurted, at which point their narrative changed to angry complaints of betrayal.
Meanwhile, Canadian media reported at first that the meeting simply ‘‘did not happen’’. If a tree falls in a forest and Justin Trudeau isn’t there to hear, did it make a sound? Apparently not.
Then it was said to be a scheduling mix-up, and then it was a triumph of brinksmanship that won a better version of the TPP, redubbed the Comprehensive Progress Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), all thanks to some tougher labour and environmental standards.
Ardern and Trade Minister David Parker, facing a backlash from the more Left-leaning parts of its base at home, were happy to push the line that the CPTPP was a kinder, gentler TPP; a PC TPP, if you will. The Left won’t buy it, but to the wider domestic audience that cares more about export access than the arcana of the investor state dispute settlement (ISDS) argument, it was proof this is a government that isn’t going to throw out the trade baby with the ISDS bathwater.
However, there is no escaping that Trudeau handed United States President Donald Trump a small victory by scuttling the expected mutual signing of a new TPP deal in Vietnam among the 11 participants after Trump withdrew from the trade and investment pact in January.
Instead, the TPP-11 presented disunity and agreed to more negotiations on four key areas.
The TPP is out of ER, but may yet require CPR.
The suspicion has to be that Canada was happy to sow discord on the TPP when it has far bigger fish to fry in fending off Trump’s efforts to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico.
By inviting Trudeau to Antarctica, one has to wonder whether Ardern’s relationship with the only other Apec leader to share her secret sauce of youth, hope and optimism doesn’t portend an icy relationship between the pair.
That would be in striking contrast to the ‘‘bro-mance’’ allegedly struck up at last year’s Apec in Peru between Trudeau and John Key, who was making his swansong appearance on the world stage, not that anyone knew it then.
Last year, New Zealand was represented by a long-serving leader who knew everyone, who wrongly – but with trademark selfassurance – insisted to Apec audiences that Trump was ‘‘a business guy’’ who would come around to the TPP’s logic.
At Apec this year, Ardern’s challenge was to strike her own tone: stylish; appearing to walk the talk on inequality, sustainability and climate change; unmistakable in a sea of old dudes.
There is, of course, far more to effective national representation than standing out in the crowd. But as groundwork for future outings goes, Ardern has made a credible showing and on her own terms.
The TPP is out of ER, but may yet require CPR.