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New Zealand: foreign policy and the election

Reading Time: 3 mins
  • Gary Hawke

    New Zealand Institute of Economic Research

In Brief

As in most countries, including the United States, foreign policy is not a major issue in the current New Zealand election campaign. A contest among various forms of populism has little scope for looking overseas even if the more important longer-term influences on the prosperity of the various coalitions of voters being wooed are to be found abroad rather than locally.

Indeed, foreign policy has probably come closest to surfacing through the peculiarities of New Zealand’s electoral system. In the last three years, few outside New Zealand could understand how we came to have a Minister of Foreign Affairs, Winston Peters, who was not a member of Cabinet. His party, New Zealand First, provided assurance to the government on issues of confidence and supply but remained less than wholly part of a coalition government. In attempting to position himself as a significant force in the election campaign, he won a major boost to the funding of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Now that the government’s fiscal position has worsened dramatically, that funding must come into question by whoever forms the next government. Current polls suggest that New Zealand First is unlikely to be able to defend its trophy.

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The Ministry certainly needs additional capability, especially in managing the numerous studies and negotiations on free trade agreements and economic partnership agreements to which New Zealand is committed. However, what is known about the Ministry’s plans for dispersing its nest-egg, including consulates in Australian cities and new posts in northern and central Europe, do not inspire confidence even among those well-disposed towards diplomacy, and will make the foreign affairs vote an easy target for an expenditure-cutting government.

The Ministry’s plans should, of course, be assessed through more demanding analysis. That would include assessment of the worth to New Zealand of bilateral and regional economic diplomacy relative to participation in other multilateral venues concerned with areas like civil rights, peace-making, and climate change which would be supported by new posts in northern Europe. Unfortunately, members of parliament, current and prospective, show little capacity to engage in such debates. One of the unintended by-products of the reform of parliament procedures in recent decades has been the loss of an annual foreign affairs debate. The select committee proceedings which were intended to be a more searching discussion of New Zealand’s place in the world only occasionally rise beyond points-scoring and grandstanding.

The two main parties, National and Labour, have shown an unusual bipartisanship in their approach to Asia-Pacific affairs. They share a commitment to participation in an Asia Pacific community which uses internationalization to generate higher living standards for all members. They share a highest priority for multilateral trade agreements, and a commitment to shaping plurilateral and bilateral agreements so that they support rather than hinder the multilateral goal. Both parties supported the New Zealand-China Free Trade Agreement. Both welcome the recent moves by the United States to develop the Trans-Pacific Partnership which currently links New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei and Chile into a more inclusive arrangement of economies on both sides of the Pacific. The election result will not change the New Zealand position that it welcomes the opportunities it is given to participate in East Asian integration, including the East Asian Summit and that it wants to avoid any division between Asia and the Americas.

The agreement extends to the security field although there would be some reconsideration of the role of New Zealand defence forces should a National-led government supplant the current Labour-led one. It is reasonable to expect that any outcome would be a matter of emphasis rather than a major change of direction from the stance of wanting to be a good global and regional citizen. The same is true of the importance to be attached to issues like human rights and environmentalism.

The principal challenge, however, lies closer to home. Any future government will have to confront how it reconciles commitment to Asian processes and institutions with Asian scepticism about US acceptance of participatory diplomacy. The election will decide who confronts that challenge, but has limited impact on how it will be confronted.

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