'The Nation'
Tim Groser
Interviewed by DUNCAN GARNER

Duncan We're a country that prides itself on punching above its weight on the world stage. It's certainly become an old cliché, but there is some truth to the idea that New Zealand has secured more influence amongst leading nations than most small countries. It can be seen in our presence at major world economic meetings, our role in leading talks on getting rid of trade barriers. And it's crucial of course to our success as the balance of power shifts towards the new economic super powers. To discuss all this Tim Groser, Trade Minister, joins me in the studio. Minister thank you for coming in today. I want to quote what you have written in the NBR this week. 'New Zealand can't compete with hard power and never will, but we can be deeply competitive with soft power.' What does that mean?

Tim Groser – Trade Minister
Well hard power is you’ve got a serious military force, you’ve got massive foreign exchange reserves, you’ve got a two trillion dollars economy. We don’t have any of that, although there's one exception, we are not a small size country when it comes to world agriculture, you know we do play in a bigger league. But with that one exception aside we will never be able to play in those fields, so we rely on influence which is what the term soft power – it's not my term, it's an old term.

Duncan So in practical terms how are we displaying this then? Because we were at the G20 last week, now that’s a big deal.

Tim Yeah I think it's very encouraging, and what I think is even more interesting is that we've also been invited into the major economies forum, which is the corresponding big boys' club in climate change, as a quote "special observer". Now I think there are two aspects to this Duncan. One is you know we have ourselves got to build our political and business and people to people platforms with these huge emerging economies, and there's a whole story around that, and the second is can we help some of these big boys in their bigger agendas by playing essentially a facilitating, call it a chairmanship role. Now that’s why I was there representing New Zealand both at the major economies forum on climate change and at the G20 Trade, because they recognise New Zealand actually understands what's going on in these things, and while we don’t have a big stick, we can actually help some of these giant countries come to an agreement.

Duncan No some people perhaps might say this is sort of self-congratulatory or perhaps looking at rose tinted glasses. Now is that being unfair?

Tim Oh I don’t think it's self-congratulatory, I think it's a statement of fact, I mean we're there, and no one can argue with that, and we're not there because of our size. We are there because we are regarded as flying the centre. So if you take the trade example, the Chair of this meeting, the Commerce Minister of Mexico, says to me before he starts, so we'll turn to you right at the end and you try and sum up. So I mean that’s a statement of fact, I don’t think it's self-congratulatory.

Duncan But with a seat at the table as in any form of life, doesn’t that increase our responsibility? So for instance I want to widen this out, do we have to do more things around foreign aid if you like? Do we have increased responsibilities as a result, I mean what's the position?

Tim Well I think, I mean the foreign aid thing is really about the Pacific and that’s another area where we do obviously have a larger presence, simply because some of the other larger countries ignore the Pacific. No I don’t think it has as much to do with forcing us to you know aggregate more power in that sense. I think what it's about is remaining a smart and realistic country, cos one of the things that New Zealanders bring to the table, and it's not just here. I mean for example if you look in the WTO negotiations, it's simply extraordinary that the last four chairs of the agriculture negotiations have been New Zealanders, and the last time it came up I said look please could you pick on somebody else? But no no.

Duncan Is that because we're seen as a honest broker?

Tim Yeah, and I it's a question of integrity I think and confidence.

Duncan And where does that come from?

Tim Well I think it's come from culture and our independence of spirit. So I mean we've got a reputation for integrity in world politics and not trying to use when we're given this leverage of these roles in world politics, not trying to overtly screw it towards our own self interest. The moment we did this we're finished actually.

Duncan What you're saying it comes out of our independent spirit about independent foreign policy. Does that come out of our anti nuclear stance?

Tim You know it's very interesting, this is a whole other subject, but you know if you look at the roots of this call for an independent foreign policy, they actually start from the left. What it's evolved into is genuine independence which I think is noted, it's now essentially shared by both the two major political parties, I don’t think it has a left wing character.

Duncan You're crediting the left here aren’t you for this?

Tim I'm giving some credit for it historically yes.

Duncan I mean we're here now because of the stance that they might have taken in the 80s?

Tim I think that’s a statement of fact.

Duncan Is it the anti nuke policy that’s got us a half way …

Tim It's part of our growth frankly you know, we – look I remember as a child coming to this country from Scotland and people talking about home, and my parents saying what are these people talking about, New Zealand's their home, they didn’t mean New Zealand. So I think this process of establishing our own national identity has had a number of different elements of it, and I think the anti nuclear movement is a part of that story, undeniably so.

Duncan And are we still doing enough on that issue, because there’ll be some academics around that say we're not signing up to enough of these treaties.

Tim That’s not so. Our Prime Minister just went off to Seoul for nuclear summit …

Duncan The Australians are probably ahead of us on some of that stuff.

Tim Well they may be, it's not my field.

Duncan What about our position with China though? Well has our 40 year relationship with China also been of most importance in this?

Tim Absolutely, and let's acknowledge this, that the roots of this go way back 40 years to establishing a political platform on which everything rests. We would never have this relationship but for sustained efforts of successive New Zealand governments to support a rational policy, quite independent minded towards China. So that the space we're in now, we're starting to benefit from it in a serious way. I mean we have a relationship with China that in my opinion no other developed country has.

Duncan And we have to keep that way though don’t we?

Tim Absolutely.

Duncan And I want to ask you about - I want to put Crafer to one side because of the fact that there is obviously court action pending. Do New Zealanders understand do you think the importance of China to New Zealand? Does it concern you they don’t?

Tim I don’t know what the polls are saying Duncan, but I think look anyone who's interested in current affairs in this country must understand that, so I'm pretty optimistic about that.

Duncan Quite an overwhelming opposition to the Crafer deal and I wonder does that concern you? David Carter was on a current affairs I think last year talking about the perhaps xenophobic attitudes towards the Chinese. Does that concern you?

Tim Well it would concern me if it were true. I'm not certain that it is true, I'm sure some people are xenophobic and racist, but whether it's true generally of New Zealanders I'm not so sure. I mean there was at the end of the day an underlying issue around the actual concept of purchasing land, but what I think is so important is to emphasise how positive a contribution China is making to preservation of jobs, preservation of companies that would otherwise be out of business in very difficult times.

Duncan Do we need to educate New Zealanders more about their place in our world? Are we falling short on that?

Tim Well we can always do more, but I ran a think tank which used to be called the Asia 2000 Foundation, now called the Asia New Zealand Foundation, that’s doing still good work in its space. We're talking about setting up a China Council. So we're moving in the right direction but the question is are we doing enough, the answer will always be no not enough, we need to increase our effort.

Duncan How do we keep in this favoured position with China because everyone is now starting to knock on their door obviously, cos we had the first Trade Agreement, and I know we have the favoured nation status with that Trade Agreement. But how do we keep ahead of the pack if you like and don’t lose this impetus?

Tim Well first of all I have to say that I am personally very surprised that we've held the first mover advantage for so long. I mean quite clearly I'm still expecting Australia to dock into this model, but I'm really quite surprised they haven’t achieved it. Well for the time being we just roar ahead. So what we do here is we leverage our position. Now I mean I went to China myself I think five times in 2010, fewer times in 2011 because of the election. I took two delegations of pretty interesting business delegations up to Chong Ching and Shanghai in the last few weeks. So that’s what we do, we just grind it up.

Duncan You also talk in this article that you wrote in the NBR about we needed to play a broader role in facilitating global politics which requires us to retain deeply experienced people at the Ministry. What are you saying?

Tim Well it should be taken at face value. It takes years to build up the personal networks, the language skills, and the trade craft skills required to do this at a competitive international level. So while we're still working our way through the restructuring of MFAT I mean that’s the crucial component we cannot afford to lose sight of.

Duncan Are you concerned that we are losing some of these people, some of the resignations you’ve already seen?

Tim Yeah we've lost a few very good people, we've always lost a few good people. There are six ex MFAT people in parliament believe it or not.

Duncan There are a few of you. But does it worry you, you know and I'm serious about this. Does it worry you, because you’ve put this on record here, and you’ve made it quite clear, we need to deeply retain these people?

Tim It would worry me if I thought this was the beginning of a trend. So what we've gotta do is people – I mean it's not a bad thing for some degree of interchange, we don’t want people to be insulated just within the MFAT cocoon for the whole of their careers.

Duncan Have they been?

Tim Well I think there are different ways of achieving this objective. I mean getting them out into work in other companies, as several senior MFAT people have or in my case working in the Treasury, Prime Minister's Department, the old Department of Trade and Industry's a way of influencing thinking.

Duncan As a former MFATer yourself, as a former senior person there for a long long time, are you worried about these changes having an impact on our ability to do our job internationally?

Tim Well we certainly need to manage it so that it repositions ourselves in the growth regions. We do want some change in MFAT but we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Duncan Do you think MFAT has failed to recognise the shift over the last 10 or 15 years?

Tim I think many in MFAT have been at the cutting edge of that shift, and have deeply understood it. Others perhaps less so. That’s call a diplomatic statement by the way.

Duncan What you're saying is that many of them took their eye off the ball with a significant shift around the Mexicos, the Brazils, the Chinas.

Tim In any organisation there's always people who will be more at the cutting edge than others, that’s the reality of human nature.

Duncan Very diplomatic. I just want to finish on languages. Should we, given that China and of course the whole of South East Asia is the big market, is our future, is our future survival. Should we be teaching more Asian languages in our schools?

Tim Well unquestionably we should, unquestionably we should be using those Asian New Zealanders more effectively, and I'll give you a good example of what happened recently when I went up to Chong Ching this provincial place of 32 million people believe it or not, 14 of the companies I had, had fluent Mandarin speakers. So I think the only answer to that is for yes, but it's gonna take a bit of time.

Duncan So compulsory early on, or would you like other languages taught there?

Tim I have a personal view on this which is a little unusual so I'll just keep it from the public.

Duncan Well let's make it clear it is a personal view.

Tim Well my personal view is that we should be teaching Maori to every five year old child, and this is turning the usual Pakeha argument on its head, because what I think should happen is that you introduce very young children from New Zealand to the idea of biculturalism and more than one language, and then they will be able to learn other languages as their personal circumstances fit. There's a whole lot of research to back this view up. This is not a conventional view of the Maori language issue, understand that.

Duncan So what you're saying is teach them Maori early because then their brain will open to a second third fourth language?

Tim Absolutely, and also the ability to look at things from a different cultural perspective and pick up on this. So when I was Ambassador to Indonesia for example I would often see highly effective Australian or New Zealand people operating in that market, didn’t have necessarily a lot of experience in Indonesia, but they’d spent 10 years in Hong Kong or Thailand and so on, and so forth. Once you’ve accustomed your mind to working in a different cultural space you can learn another cultural space and or language so much faster.

Duncan Tried to convince the Prime Minister of that?

Tim Oh it's not my role mate.

Duncan Just quickly before we go, Russia, Free Trade Agreement looks like it could be signed this year, just a quick update, is it going okay?

Tim Well I'm very strong on this Duncan I don’t negotiate in public. Let me tell you that it's hard yakka right now, I'm going up to Moscow in a few weeks' time, and we'll see what we can do, but we would not be advancing our negotiation by having a discussion here on The Nation, as much as we would like to do that.

Duncan Tim Groser, thank you for joining us in the studio. A pleasure as always.

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