Sunday 27th September, 2009

Q+A’s Paul Holmes interviews Trade & Conservation Minister, Tim Groser.

Points of interest:
- Groser “pretty optimistic” about New Zealand push for UN Security Council seat, but it will be “a massive amount of work”
- “Zero” chance of a “final, certifiable deal” on climate change at Copenhagen
- Global Alliance designed to “pull the brains of the world together, the money of the world together” to cut greenhouse emissions from agriculture
- World can’t walk away from Doha Round of trade talks: “Whether or not they’re going to do the deal by the end of 2010 is a completely open question, but it’s do-able and will eventually be done”

The interview has been transcribed below. The full length video interviews and panel discussions from this morning’s Q+A can be seen on tvnz.co.nz at,
http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news

TIM GROSER interviewed by PAUL HOLMES

PAUL So the world leaders descended on New York City this week for the United Nations General Assembly, among them our own John Key as you’ve seen, and there was with him Trade and Conservation Minister Tim Groser. New Zealand began to gather support for international research into cutting greenhouse emissions from farming, from agriculture, and there remains of course the matter of free access to American markets and the matter of the Dohar. Tim Groser is just back in the country, a very good morning, welcome to Q+A. You are in the country so rarely we could almost call it a state visit.

TIM GROSER – Trade and Conservation Minister
Yeah I have to take a lot of criticism from my cabinet colleagues along similar lines.

PAUL What is that week like in New York City with what 160 odd world leaders, and their entourages, is it hustle hustle hustle?

TIM Yes, I mean this is Paul the summer Olympics of foreign policy, and everyone who's anybody has to be there, so I mean what we're trying to do there is a whole variety of different things from well the Letterman Show which I think was a fantastic opportunity for the Prime Minister to profile New Zealand, in front of 40 million prime time viewers, through to quite serious discussions with other heads of government on issues such as climate change and trade.

PAUL What was the Prime Minister mainly trying to do up there, form relationships?

TIM Yeah I think you’ve gotta look at it in the context of a series of meetings which lead up to that and of course go beyond that into the big boys' club of the G20 meeting just concluded in Pittsburgh, so what we're trying to do is to put some incredible positions on nuclear issues, on trade issues and on climate change, and our own bid for the Security Council in 2015.

PAUL Much has been made of the not once but twice Obama, President Obama singling John Key out for some extra attention. As a former and long serving diplomat yourself, what does that mean, what is being signalled there?

TIM Yeah well I think atmospherics is part of the deal, I mean you can't complete the deal, but it's absolutely part of the deal, I think it's very important when you're talking to the world's number one power, that at the very pinnacle of political power, the President of the United States has some type of pleasant agreeable personal relationship with our PM, I think it's excellent.

PAUL Regarding his speech to the General Assembly, the Prime Minister used his 15 minutes to begin as you say that campaign for a seat on the Security Council. How much work is that going to take, because we're looking at a position 2015 to 2016 elections 2014, how much work is it going to take for us to get on that council?

TIM A massive amount of work, but it's one of the things that New Zealand actually does extremely well. We have been extremely successful, over 20, 30 years on a bipartisan basis of getting New Zealanders into key positions and getting New Zealand into key positions, so I'm pretty optimistic.

PAUL Do we punch above our weight up there?

TIM Well rumour has it that I've sent a memorandum to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that anyone who uses that phrase will be fired immediately, but apart from that look we've got credibility in certain areas. If you look at things like climate change and agriculture, trade and agriculture, and the nuclear issue, yes I think it is fair to say that New Zealand does have some real influence.

PAUL The most interesting for you and from you this week was your push for a global scientist alliance to research ways to cut agriculture emissions, what do you mean, what are you trying to do?

TIM CURA was set up as a deal by industrial countries essentially about industrial emissions, and it really only disadvantaged one tiny country, i.e. ours, because 49% of our emissions are agriculture. The next deal's got to include big developing countries, agriculture is a fundamental problem for them, they’ve got to increase food production, we've gotta find solutions whereby they and ourselves as exporters can increase food production without this relentless growth of emissions, so we want to pool the brains of the world together, the money of the world together into this global alliance.

PAUL And bring them to New Zealand or simply have New Zealanders working in meaningful joint ventures?

TIM We're being very careful about not being too specific about the form this initiative takes, the first step was to float the idea, we've been doing that quietly for the last six months. The Prime Minister's now launched this at head of government level and he's had discussions with a number of heads of government, we'll now start to pool this together into an operational idea.

PAUL So what kind of reaction are you getting?

TIM Unbelievably positive

PAUL You’ve got American support.

TIM Very strong, but it's still informal, we've gotta nail this down.

PAUL But you had a couple of days of informal ministerial talks at the UN did you not?

TIM That’s right, I went to a thing called the Greenland Dialogue, which is a group of about 25 Climate Change Ministers, to look at Copenhagen and the way forward and took all the opportunities I could at that.

PAUL So what did they say about your global scientific alliance to you?

TIM Extremely positive things. I think we've just hit, we've been lucky I think, we've hit the spot, the confluence of certain things like the developing countries realising that the green revolution has run its course, we need much more money spent internationally on agriculture research, and we've gotta increase food production by 50% globally by 2030, and the need to delink this from the relentless growth of emissions. So I think we've been quite lucky with our timing, but I'm very optimistic about this initiative.

PAUL What reaction did you get from these countries to our announcement of an attempt to make between 10 and 20% cuts in our emissions?

TIM There wasn’t a single reference to it in any of the climate change meetings. It is absolutely an absurd way to characterise New Zealand's offer, only the Europeans have got a more ambitious proposal on the table.

PAUL What are the prospects for this global emission for a settlement of an international global emission scheme in Copenhagen in December, what are the prospects?

TIM For a final certifiable deal – zero. The problem is that expectations have been ramped up beyond the achievable and I think people are going to probably draw too pessimistic a conclusion about Copenhagen. What I want are a few key political deals done in Copenhagen, to prepare the basis for the negotiations carrying on successfully.

PAUL Now the trade side of your personality, John Key also used the time in his speech to appeal to the GH to get Dohar moving again, what are the prospects for Dohar, out of 10 say?

TIM If you ask me about time, I'll duck the question, if you ask me about ever I'll say I do not believe that this will be the first out of eight multilateral rounds to fail since the war. The Uruguay round was exactly the same, it went on and on and on, everyone made jokes about the GAT being the general agreement to talk and talk and only a few naïve people like me for example ever thought it would come to a conclusion, well they were wrong. I don’t think the world can ever walk away from this, whether or not they're going to do the deal by the end of 2010 is a completely open question but it's doable and will eventually be done.

PAUL Trade and Conservation Minister Tim Groser, thank you very much for your time, and enjoy your time in our country.

*****

PANEL DISCUSSION in response to TIM GROSER interview

PAUL We welcome our panel – Raymond Miller, Political Scientist Auckland University, Steve Maharey, the Vice Chancellor of Massey University, former Labour Cabinet Minister, and Richard Prebble, former ACT Leader, former Transport Minister and former Minister of many many things. Let's discuss John Key and what we can see of the New Zealand team in New York. He seems to have done very well Mr Prebble.

RICHARD Oh I think he has, except I'm sceptical about the whole week, I think it's all nonsense actually in the terms of things and I actually think the thing he did best for us, was the most trivial and that’s being on Letterman, but shaking hands with the President of the United States probably 40 Heads of Government shook hands with Mr Obama.

PAUL Well yes, and we noticed it very much here of course but it probably didn’t get played in many other places. Raymond Miller what did you make of it all?

RAYMOND I thought he was very effective, he had two roles one was to act as a kind of salesman for the country, that involved a lot of networking, and the other of course was to speak to the United Nations General Assembly. I know Fran O'Sullivan and others have complained that there was too much star gazing and he was buying into a sort of celebrity culture, but he was very effective at reaching out to people, he's very approachable and I'm sure Barack Obama could see a smile from 100 metres away and I think that counts. But also leadership involved a certain gravitas and there was concern that in fact he was being too much the celebrity, appearing in David Letterman and so on.

PAUL Still as a minister he got noticed and he went on, he's not a stand up comic and he braved it and he did it and the lines were good, what do you think Steven?

STEVE I think the Americans would call it slam-dunk, I think it was a slam-dunk week, but I do think around him we have to worry about the way he was reported, I think maybe people should have been paying a bit more attention to some of the serious things he was doing as well. I don’t think it's his problem in a sense that he was constantly reported as a kind of celebrity, but at times it was a slam-dunk week, but underneath all that he got some other good things done.

PAUL He probably did, and certainly Tim Groser was doing some good things with his ministerial meetings and the Greenland Group so-called, because they probably met in Greenland. The methane reductions, Groser's called for a world scientific initiative, Peter Gluckman believes of course for the health of New Zealand science and the vitality of New Zealand science we've really got to be starting to reach out and do JVs with institutions overseas, what's your comment about the global.

STEVE I think this is a fantastic idea, food is it, it's one of the big world issues, more food, more quality, done sustainably is the formula, if we could get leadership in that area, even though we're the only country who worried about it obsessively because it dominates our economy, all other economies that have agriculture have to worry about it, if we can get leadership in this, this will be perfect for us.

PAUL That statistic, 50% increase in demand for food in the world by 2030, a 100% demand for food by 2050. I mean we're in the box seat potentially aren’t we?

RICHARD Well we are but we're also in a seat that we've put ourselves in, because we're the only country that signed up to have agriculture, and we've suddenly found that no one else is doing any research into it because the big industrial countries, they don’t have a problem there. Tim's doing it but gee whiz we're a bit late, I have to say that I'm rather pleased that he's now doing these talks because we committed ourselves to all sorts of things without doing the research.

PAUL We allowed the inclusion of methane into the carbon emissions, didn’t we?

STEVE We volunteered.

PAUL Yes, only sits in the atmosphere for 12 years.

STEVE That’s right, that’s why we have to show some leadership here.

ENDS

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