Winston the Diplomat

I was in Sydney when Winston Peter’s appointment as Foreign Affairs Minister was announced and it was interesting to see the relatively wide and moderately scathing coverage that it got. Other than the shock (to them) defeat of the Aussie Rugby League team by the Kiwis, it is unusual to read much about NZ while absent for a few days and on return it is a bit like a memory gap when people chat of events not reported overseas.
Sydney papers warned readers never to under-estimate Helen Clark who had pulled off the unusual coup of a coalition government without the Greens or the Browns.
A string of Winston’s ill timed epithets graced the international pages and no doubt lifted both his international profile and the concerns of Asians over the anti-immigration excerpts, as well as business leaders reading his xenophobic anti foreign trade quotes, designed for short term gain at home but now likely to lead to long term explanation abroad.
It is fair to say that while Winston is undoubtedly a risky choice as Foreign Minister, it is a bit rich for the Aussies to crow, given their own choice of the accident prone Alexander Downer, widely known at home as Lord Downer of Baghdad, and recently appointed as an honorary wine baron in South Australia.
This is the same Downer who regularly upsets Indonesia and Malaysia, and whose visit here last year representing the Australian Government, who as largest shareholders in Telstra, were looking to influence our leaders to unbundle the local telephone loop, thereby exposing telecom to more competition from Telstra and others.
Did this work?
Er, No actually!
You see, on stepping off the plane in NZ, Downer couldn’t resist taking a swipe at our government for not sharing the supposed military defence burden. Not surprisingly our cabinet told Telstra to travel and have sex as far as local loop unbundling goes. Downer’s remarks are just the sort of throw-away line that does damage if the mouth it is thrown from belongs to the Foreign Minister, and curbing this life-long habit will be Winston’s greatest challenge, most likely leading to his eventual undoing and possibly that of Clark’s carefully constructed coalition.
Remember Winston has been dismissed twice before, once in 1991 from being National’s Maori affairs minister and again in 1998 as Treasurer and Deputy PM. Anyway he does share Helen’s achievement of a place in our history books, hers as first elected female PM and third term Labour leader and his as first full time maverick to be a Minister on both sides of every opportunity.
No doubt Winston will enjoy the new role and without doubt he can be charming and entertaining with the ability to reach the ordinary citizens of both the countries he visits and our own Kiwi expats in a way that some of our foreign ambassadors do not (Jonathan Hunt springs to mind here). Our young citizens living abroad to gain experience are an undervalued asset. They are not lost to us but are opportunities to open doors abroad and later return with new found and much needed skills and international connections. Even Winston would approve of increased re-immigration of our talented youth.
Given his views on immigration and our low unemployment levels it was very interesting to go through the applicant list for a senior position in a high tech company which I chair. There were a surprising number of very skilled senior executives from USA and Europe willing to take pay-cuts in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to come and work in NZ. We are that attractive to these people! Fortunately we got a good Kiwi so no house training was needed, but this balances the often heard need to pay through the nose to meet the supposed shortage of key executives. (Anyone listening at Air NZ?)
The above mentioned Testra paid through the nose to bring Sol Trujillo from the USA to Australia where he immediately declared war on the government who owns the company. It will be interesting to see how Lord Downer handles this situation and I’m sure Winston will love telling him over a whiskey, that seemingly essential tool of international diplomacy.

WAYNE BROWN