Peters flat out getting foreigners here, and Kiwis overseas, home

LIKE most other aspects of daily life, the world of foreign relations and its work has been thrown into utter turmoil by the Covid19 coronavirus.

Foreign affairs ministers — including Winston Peters working from the remote Whananaki estuary — and the elite public servants who staff their ministries are resembling eightarmed travel agents as they try to repatriate thousands of travellers stranded around the globe in various states of lockdown.

It has to be their priority: the first duty of any country is to the safety of its citizens.

But what appears to be missing alongside the domestic focus is a coordinated global response to a global crisis from bodies such as the United Nations, the G20, the G7, or the World Health Organisation.

Those who usually assert global leadership such as the European Union and the United States are consumed by their own crises.

It is every country for themselves at present while the virus prepares to engulf developing countries.

The United States seems to have just realised that there is little appetite for using the crisis to continue the geopolitical competition with China.

There is nothing wrong with questioning the veracity of China’s reporting figures, as it has, or criticising China’s appalling decision to expel the best watchdogs of the regime from the Washington Post, New York Times and Wall St Journal.

But when the result of criticism is counterproductive it has gone too far.

The insistence of the US to call Covid19 the Wuhan virus prevented the most basic statements of unified intent at the Security Council and G7 which are an essential prerequisite for unified action.

The United Nations’ Security Council has been woeful. If a pandemic is not a threat to security, what is?

Imagine if Helen Clark had been in charge what would have happened by now — a darned sight more action than is currently happening.

Global action is the best chance of limiting the damage in developing countries to something less than a catastrophe. It is the best way of keeping supply chains open so countries can be fed and civil unrest can be kept at bay.

And, when the health crisis has waned, it will be the best way of getting a coordinated approach to resuming international travel and border vetting standards and tracking the virus. Global efforts should be happening in parallel to the domestic responses.

Mr Peters has been largely out of sight in the first week of lockdown and rightly focusing on immediate demands.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on the day the lockdown was announced, March 23, he was essential to the Government’s response and unlike most other people over 70, Peters was not being asked to selfisolate.

But it no doubt suited everyone in Government for him to ensconce himself in the Far North to conduct New Zealand’s vital foreign relations work.

It allowed him to concentrate on devising a way to get more than 100,000 stranded visitors out of the country. And it allowed the usual machinations of Coalition Government decisionmaking to be fasttracked up when speed is crucial.

Most of New Zealand’s closest partners in the West have gone into a form of lockdown.

Because New Zealand did it formally and suddenly — two and ahalf days from the announcement to the actual lockdown — it trapped tens of thousands of unsuspecting visitors.

From Whananaki Central, over the past fortnight he has been in touch with counterparts in Australia,

Britain, Chile, Peru, Spain, Germany, France and Denmark.

Mr Peters and Ms Ardern continued to privately argue the case of better treatment for Kiwis with their Australian counterparts, as they have since the Government was formed.

Their willingness to lobby publicly on the matter and not just behind closed doors has been one of the most visible differences between the former National Government and this one.

With the prospect of tens of thousands of working New Zealanders in Australia ending up on dole queues in New Zealand, the imperative was even stronger.

It is likely that Scott Morrison was persuaded by the reality that it would be just too hard to exclude New Zealanders or that he would lose too many highly skilled Kiwis from the Australian economy.

But Ms Ardern and Mr Peters deserve credit for perseverance.

They have been deemed eligible for the $A130 billion Job Keeper benefit announced on Monday, which gives businesses up to $1500 per employee a fortnight to keep jobs open and businesses afloat during the crisis.

Ms Ardern and Mr Robertson have shouldered the Government’s public responsibilities this week and are virtually the only members of the Cabinet working from the Beehive.

They have continued to roll out tangible and remarkably fast responses to the economic crisis, including yesterday’s measures to temporarily relax aspects of the Companies Act that could otherwise force directors to declare their companies insolvent.

Mr Robertson is so utterly accomplished in his role he will now relieve the Prime Minister at Friday press conferences.

Peters will remain focused on repatriation of foreigners for some time and he faces the even bigger problem of repatriating Kiwis scattered around the globe.

Before long, he will be more involved in ensuring a credible global response gets under way from international organisations.

The New Zealand Herald.

PHOTO: OTAGO DAILY TIMES FILES The streets of Oamaru were getting dirtier every year. This was the opinion of Mr Arthur Cox, who retired on April 11, 1980, as the Oamaru borough street cleaner. Mr Cox was a familiar sight to Oamaru residents with his conspicuous yellow rubbish cart. He had cleaned the streets seven days a week for the previous 10 years and said there was more rubbish dropped on them every year.