Faulty foreign policy hidden in plain sight
One thing I feel I have learnt reporting and travelling Asia since the early 1990s is how our obsession with free trade has affected our world view. Exports to China raised New Zealand well over $21 billion last year, making them our top trading partner accounting for 36 per cent of our total export receipts. But we all know that relationship comes at the price of avoiding offence.
Dalai Lama visits, Taiwan sovereignty, Uyghur rights, Hong Kong pro-democracy groups, disputes in the South China Sea – all subjects best not mentioned.
It’s been the situation for years. The best example ever happened in November 2018 when our PM Jacinda Ardern sat down with her Malaysian counterpart at the 13th East Asia Summit in Singapore. Not bothering with preliminaries, then prime minister Mahathir Mohamad launched into a heart-felt tirade about the threat China posed in the South China Sea, pointing out serious implications for New Zealand security.
In the brief news clip, you can see the panic ripple around the attending New Zealand foreign affairs team, one of whom hastily whispers to Ardern who immediately swings around to order security to clear all media from the room. Last seconds, a security guard puts his hand over the lens. End of newsclip.
This sort of advisory power-wielding over our politicians from our Foreign Affairs ministry can be traced directly back to a massive shift in our foreign policy which occurred in late 1988.
A lot happened that year in the world. Panamanian General Manuel Noriega got indicted for drug running by a US Federal Grand Jury, the USSR pulled out its 115,000 troops from its disastrous war in Afghanistan, and Iran and Iraq called it quits after eight years of bitter conflict.
It was also the year Al Qaeda formed in Pakistan and declared war on the United States, and the first alarm bells started ringing about the burgeoning ozone hole above our country.
But for the average Kiwi, far more riveting changes were happening at home.
Heading the country was David Lange and his fourth Labour Government, Geoffrey Palmer was his deputy and Roger Douglas had the finance portfolio, while Russell Marshall had Foreign Affairs and Mike Moore Trade.
Together, they subjected New Zealand to some of the most trying reforms in our history, the wide range of radical new policy changes quickly dubbed ‘Rogernomics’. Historians now refer to the post-1984 era as the ‘Reform Years’.
But it was the swathe of report findings a few years later which would provide justification for all the changes to come. The Royal Commission on Social Policy released first, recommending that our traditional Social Welfare system be remodelled more corporately.
Hot on its heels came the Gibbs Report on the state of our health system, ‘Unshackling the Hospitals’, became the rationale for setting up the Regional Health Boards which we endured until their recent disbandment.
The next deconstructive slammer was the Picot Report on education administration, which set up a new template ‘Tomorrow’s Schools’, supposedly run by parents.
No report or consultation was necessary for the state sector; the State Sector Act of 1988 proving the biggest-ever shakeup of our State assets and civil service.
Confusion was rife, but it must be said that considerable optimism also pervaded. ‘Out with the old and in with the new’ was one catch cry widely bandied around at this time.
Awash in it all, barely anyone seemed to notice in December 1988 when it was announced a new Ministry of External Affairs and Trade (MERT, later MFAT), would merge the old Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) with the Trade Policy Branch of the Trade and Development Board.
The Dominion was the only newspaper to report that news, giving it exactly three lines on page five.
But as one ex-MFAT staffer explained it to me; ‘That so-called merger represented a cataclysmic change in the way we conducted foreign policy. Overnight, our entire overseas focus was directed to trade, trade and more trade, to the detriment of everything else’.
Before this merger, New Zealand diplomats were charged with conducting our overseas foreign policy and attending to bi-lateral and multilateral affairs, all the while maintaining strong focus on what was termed ‘cultural diplomacy’. This latter concept got scrapped and replaced with the new mantra of ‘trade, trade, trade’.
Another long-term ex-staffer told me that without a doubt the country lost a lot of fine foreign affairs talent around that time. ‘They quit in droves, all just disgusted with the changes’.
Under the reforms, all divisions and sections with the old MFA were disbanded, the entire 643 staff ‘resiloed’ into three new divisions; diplomatic, administration, trade promotion.
Public Affairs had been one of the largest divisions within the old MFA, employing 200 here in New Zealand and around all our embassies overseas. But under the reforms, Public Affairs got chopped down to just six ‘information officers’, their new job to do nothing but drum up trade.
No longer would they distribute books and films about New Zealand through all our overseas embassies, nor arrange cultural events and functions to enhance mutual understanding.
And they certainly didn’t produce any more booklets like Disaster Management in the Pacific, still regarded as the survival bible on many far-flung Pacific islands.
One of Public Affairs’ commissioned films, Faces of NZ, still holds the record for being the most widely viewed short film in our history, enjoyed by foreign audiences in over 70 countries.
Another immediate casualty was the NZ External Relations Review, a semi-glossy quarterly largely read in-house, but also found lurking on shelves around every public library, university, high school and polytech in the country. Their covers used to celebrate racial diversity, and foreign affairs staff vied to be featured in its pages, the profiling considered an essential rung on the departmental ladder.
Covers from the first issue of 1989 dropped all exotic location visuals in favour of badly taken snaps from this trade conference or that.
By all accounts, it didn’t take long for speed wobbles to occur, simply because there was no cultural backup.
One story relates to our first official trade delegation to China, early identified as our best target market on account of its huge population and spurting growth.
At the end of the final celebratory banquet, all paid for by New Zealand taxpayers, the Chinese delegation unexpectedly asked to retire for a short discussion before they signed.
They came back after half an hour, advising the deal was off, so sorry, it just didn’t suit them any more. But thank-you for coming.
Some discreet enquiries by foreign affairs officials subsequently provided the reason, simply that one of the Kiwi businessmen had left his chopsticks pointing up out of the bowl after he’d finished his meal.
In China, this is the portent for death, an exceedingly bad omen and a bad look for the potentially lucrative deal.
We have learnt a lot since then of course, our top trade negotiators today as savvy as any in the world. But the dominance of our trade message remains to the detriment of everything else.
Formation of the Asia 2000 Foundation by the Government in 1992 went some way to demystify and encourage cultural understanding with our trade partners.
Staffed almost entirely by ex-MFAT staff, it still covertly pushes the trade barrow.
Not to be missed too is the ‘New Zealand is open for business’ message which our PM Ardern spouted all through her recent spate of trade missions, a line no doubt fed to her by the MFAT lackeys who tagged along.
Isn’t it time we changed our message? Most people will appreciate that relationships built on financial deals are prone to sudden collapse. But those built on solid cultural understanding endure.
If we are to live with the emerging China super-power, wouldn’t it be better for our leaders to engage us more about China’s political agenda and expanding sphere of influence in the Pacific region
It may not be as sinister as many of us have been led to believe by our foreign policy that, for the sake of profits, still sweeps everything under the carpet and sends a negative message.