Speech delivered by the High Commissioner of New Zealand, HE MR DEREK LEASK
Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen
It is a great thrill and an honour to be here. Thank you kindly for the invitation.
I have been asked to speak about NZ Foreign and Trade Policy. I want to address that through the telescope of the London High Commission. There are four main elements of my job here, and these nicely summarise New Zealand’s foreign and trade policies and our priorities in Britain and in Europe.
These elements are:
1. Looking after New Zealanders in Britain
2. Maintaining a vibrant Bilateral Relationship with the UK
3. Working closely with the United Kingdom across the foreign policy, defence, security agenda
4. Pursuing New Zealand’s trade and economic interests in Britain and Europe
New Zealanders in Britain
New Zealanders, like the British, are great travellers. Everywhere you go you will find New Zealanders, so inevitably everywhere you go you find some New Zealanders in trouble.
With around 200,000 New Zealanders living in the UK we get only about 20 difficult and significant consular cases a year, mostly involving sad cases of New Zealanders who have died or are very ill here in the United Kingdom.
Consular work is not part of our core diplomatic business here, but it is certainly an important part of our overall business. But for the most part, we can trust the British system as your systems and standards are very much like ours.
There are of course many parts of the world where the consular task is much trickier. New Zealand still relies on Britain to help us out in the myriad countries where we are not represented. We help in our small way in assisting British travellers in the Pacific.
Maintaining a vibrant Bilateral Relationship with the UK
The second of our objectives here in London, is maintaining a vibrant link with the United Kingdom.
In the case of Britain, and also with Ireland, the objective of a vibrant relationship is an objective of the New Zealand public. It is an objective with palpable political force. Governments cannot ignore it. Where this vibrant relationship most obviously finds its expression, is in the everyday connections between Britain and New Zealand.
To illustrate the extent of these links let me give you some figures:
Every year around 120,000 New Zealanders visit the UK, while 280,000 Britons go the other way. A working holiday scheme for our young people allows around 5,000 young kiwis to visit the UK, while 9,000 go in the other direction. There are healthy flows of skilled migration - 3,700 in each direction. The figure for New Zealand students is quite low at 450. Around 2500 British students go to New Zealand.
New Zealanders are here in the UK in their droves. We permeate academia, the arts, business, finance, commerce, sport, the military and have even insinuated ourselves into your parliament.
I would like you to understand what this means to us, and why it is such an important public and political objective to maintain our close links with Britain.
The first reason is simply historical – New Zealanders value their heritage enormously. 80% of us claim our heritage from Britain and Ireland, and we want to be able to share in that. It is a good heritage – it is about family; about values; about democracy; shared constitutions and a shared Head of State; about shared sacrifice; about love and respect on the fields of Twickenham.
The second reason is perhaps not so obvious from this end of the telescope. It is all about our world view. We are a country of 4 million people in the Pacific. We could be very insular, but we are not. Why? Because we travel. There are two places in the world where we can freely travel - Australia and Britain.
So, one of my key objectives has been related to British immigration. My first year in London was dominated by it. There were firm proposals in the British system for tightening up on immigration. These could have sorely affected the ability of New Zealanders to visit and work in the United Kingdom. The proposed changes would have restricted the working holiday scheme, removed ancestry visas and reduced the six month visa free period granted to New Zealanders, to three months.
The driving force was of course the fact of European immigration, which is free inside the European Union. Therefore, there was a desire to deal effectively with the rest of the world. And New Zealand got caught in the wash. We argued hard. We were listened to. The rules were tightened but the fundamentals were allowed to stay in place. I cannot over emphasise how important that decision was to New Zealand. I can assure you that immigration will remain on the top of my priorities and we will continue to work to maintain New Zealanders access to the United Kingdom.
Working closely with the United Kingdom across the foreign policy, defence, security agenda
There is a high level of intersection with New Zealand and British foreign policy.
The reason for that intersection is fundamental. It is once again about values and democracy and human rights – a shared view of what is responsible international behaviour – and a willingness to share the burden of arguing for and on occasion fighting for what is right.
We have done it before. I will be taking part next month in Remembrance Sunday, and each year on the 25th of April, ANZAC day, we commemorate the sacrifice of New Zealand soldiers fighting alongside British counterparts in two World Wars. Next month I will be attending the unveiling of a statue of Sir Keith Park, which will sit on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, before moving to a permanent home in Waterloo Place in 2010.
And we are still doing it. Terrorism is a global problem. We all have to counter it. New Zealand is supporting the United Kingdom in Afghanistan, and we recently committed our SAS troops to the fight there.
I should say something about the emphasis in our foreign policy. The first point to note here is the regional one. Just as the UK focuses on Europe, and the United States and the Middle East, we focus on our part of the world.
Australia is central to our economic, foreign policy, and defence thinking, and the Pacific is at the heart of our interests. It is our neighbourhood. Many Pacific Islanders have migrated to New Zealand and the region continues to be the focus of our aid effort. It is also a significant focus of our defence effort. New Zealand is actively working to promote stability and security, good governance, and economic growth in the Pacific.
Of particular concern is the current situation in Fiji. Fiji has been ruled by Commodore Bainimarama since a military coup in December 2006 and has now been suspended from the Commonwealth for failing to hold democratic elections in a timely manner. New Zealand will continue to urge Fiji return to democracy.
So while the Pacific is our focus, at the same time we have to think global, because many of the issues we are dealing with are global. This is not a new phenomenon. Wars, trade and the economy have been global for a long time, as have concerns about human rights and development.
But new ones keep getting added to the mix. Terrorism on a global scale is a reasonably recent phenomenon. Climate Change has come to the fore as an issue requiring global action. And we almost had a large scale global recession, something we thought we would not see.
New Zealand has a direct and vital interest in supporting international efforts to eradicate terrorism, and promote peace and stability. As I mentioned earlier, like the UK, New Zealand is committed to insuring that Afghanistan is stable and can eventually provide for its own security so that international terrorists will not find safe haven. The government in Wellington is acutely aware that terrorists who strike in our geographic region have links back to Afghanistan.
On climate change, New Zealand acknowledges that reaching a global agreement on emissions reductions post-2012 in Copenhagen is a huge challenge. We continue to play an active role in all major UN climate change negotiations and remain committed to a successful and ambitious outcome from the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009.
As part of this commitment, New Zealand recently announced a domestic emissions reduction target range of 10% to 20% below 1990 levels by 2020. In setting this ambitious but achievable target, we have carefully balanced economic opportunities with our environmental responsibilities. New Zealand faces a set of challenges which are unique among developed countries and arise from large agriculture and forestry sectors, a high proportion of renewable energy and limited opportunities for further reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
At the September meeting of the UN General Assembly, our Prime Minister, John Key, announced New Zealand’s ‘Global Alliance’ initiative which aims to increase international co-ordination and investment into research of new technologies and practices to reduce emissions from agriculture. New Zealand recognises that there is an urgent need to address global agricultural emissions as the world looks to increase food production to feed a rapidly growing population. While it is still early days, the proposal has already received a significant level of international support which is hugely encouraging.
The other significant issue facing both New Zealand and the United Kingdom since I became High Commissioner is the global recession. New Zealand’s recession was not as bad as it was here - we did not have such a significant banking crisis as you did here. Our banks were not as exposed. But it was a global downturn and we are part of the global economy, so we still went into recession.
While everyone was struggling to deal with the situation, we at the High Commission were in a key position, able to talk to people in the City on New Zealand’s behalf to get a flavour of what was going on behind the headlines. We were able to stay closely in touch with British financial institutions, the British government, British companies, and with analysts and commentators, aiming to ensure that New Zealand policy makers are well informed about the range of British concerns and assessments about the economy and the actions being considered. And we shared with Britain a very clear view about the need for global action and global commitment against protectionism.
Pursuing New Zealand’s trade and economic interests in Britain and Europe
Britain remains central to New Zealand’s economic interests.
We are not in the position we were in when Britain joined the EEC in 1972. That was a position of dependency. Before you joined the EEC, Britain took a third of our total exports, 90% of our butter, and 80% of our lamb and mutton.
Our trade now is relatively secure. The UK is the fifth largest importer of goods from New Zealand - lamb, wine, and fruit are the top three imports.
What New Zealand must deal with now is a very different challenge.
This is a world of global markets, global companies, global brands, global ownership, global financing. And New Zealand has to respond by being globally competitive.
Governments can respond by providing globally competitive infrastructure,globally competitive education; globally competitive regulation, globally competitive tax structures, standards, competition policy, and so on.
But the key consideration will be the capacity of New Zealand companies and New Zealand managers to be globally competitive.
They need to connect to the world economy, to engage and form relationships with key players around the world.
We see Britain and London as one of four or five key centres of the new global economy where New Zealanders must make those connections.
The UK is an attractive market for NZ companies looking to grow overseas, especially as a base for European headquarters, and there are already over 100 New Zealand companies with a presence in the UK.
And I regard it as core business for me, for New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, for Investment New Zealand, and for Tourism New Zealand, who are all based in New Zealand House alongside the High Commission, to help good New Zealand companies gain recognition and make worthwhile connections into the London “market”.
Conclusion
Ladies and gentlemen, it has been a pleasure to be here this evening to share with you broadly the four main elements of my job here. I look forward to your questions.
Thank you ladies and gentlemen.