Estimates Debate — Vote Foreign Affairs and Trade

Last Sunday the New York Times ran an appropriately titled article called: “Inside the Fog of War: Reports From the Ground”, describing the contents of 92,000 secret US Government records dated between January 2004 and December 2009. They sketched the sad inside story of the disastrous American war in Afghanistan, which, unfortunately, New Zealand is still a part of. I hope that some of the money we are devoting to foreign affairs in the Budget goes towards analysing these documents, because they show how misguided our participation is and why our SAS should be withdrawn from that country.

A week ago the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Murray McCully, attended an international conference in Afghanistan in which President Karzai vowed that his Afghan forces “will be responsible for all military and law enforcement operations in our country by 2014.” This does not square with what the leaked documents say about the Karzai Government and its security forces. According to the New York Times, the documents “recount episodes of police brutality, corruption—petty and large—extortion and kidnapping. Afghan police officers defect to the Taliban with trucks and weapons”, etc. According to these documents, the extremist Taliban is much stronger than we have been led to believe. One report on a meeting with Afghan district officials in Paktia Province quotes them as saying: “The general view of the Afghans is that the current Government is worse than the Taliban.”

The oldest official in the group said: “The corrupted Government officials are a new concept brought to Afghanistan by the Americans.” This is an important point. The US forces have facilitated the corruption of the regime locally and nationally, as ordinary Afghans see it. The US forces have also set a bad example in the conduct of the war, with large numbers of innocent civilians being killed in air strikes and many others shot at coalition checkpoints, according to the documents. Then we have the newly appointed head of the US Central Command, General James Mattis, who said in 2005 that war was: “A hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people when you like brawling.”—referring to the Taliban. He said that the Taliban who had mistreated women: “Ain’t got no manhood left anyhow, anyway, so it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.” So there you have it. The United States Central Command chief, who is running the war of which New Zealand is a part, is a psychopath—if a psychopath is defined as someone who likes killing people, which is the correct definition. New Zealand is, inevitably, complicit in all this. We have officers functioning in the Central Command headquarters in the United States. We have an SAS unit in Kabul, and there are some New Zealand Defence personnel in Kabul, Bagram, and Khost helping in other ways with the US-run war effort. This creates a huge moral problem for us, not least because of the clear violations of international humanitarian law by both the US and Afghan Government forces.

In response to select committee questions, our Government has admitted that: “NZ SAS personnel have been in the vicinity on 22 occasions when Afghan authorities have arrested or detained Afghans.” In effect, they have been a part of the capture of those prisoners. Handing those prisoners over to Afghan soldiers does not absolve us of responsibility for what happens to them later. Our Government cannot escape being responsible for the mistreatment of prisoners against international law, which commonly follows the capture of such prisoners. Replies to select committee estimates questions did confirm that the SAS will be withdrawn at the end of March 2011. We just hope that John Key will not be swayed by American pressure to keep the SAS unit in the field, even in reduced numbers. Any such pressure will come from the American Government, not the American people. A Bloomberg National Poll conducted this month showed that 60 percent of Americans want the withdrawal of US troops to start in July 2011, even if the war is not going any better for them. The Dutch and the Canadians are also withdrawing, and other countries will follow suit.

It gives me pleasure to rise and speak on the foreign affairs and trade appropriations. I will start by saying what a hard-working Government this is. The work that we do is typified by two very hard-working Ministers.

💬 Moana Mackey: No one believes that.

I will mention them in a moment and talk about the work that they are doing for the benefit of the member opposite, and it is hard, hard work.

Murray McCully is out there improving relationships with countries and regions of the world for the good of New Zealand. There is also Tim Groser, our Minister of Trade, whose great achievements in trade negotiations are free-trade agreements all over the place and negotiations that have been started. What an impressive and staggeringly hard-working Minister he is.

On the area of trade, it is worth mentioning for the benefit of members opposite, who are looking very sleepy so late in the afternoon, the very hard work that has been done. We have signed agreements with Malaysia and Hong Kong with regard to the ASEAN countries. We are moving towards negotiations with India, the Gulf States, and Korea. We have the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, and there is that wonderful trading opportunity with that country over the top of the European Union—Russia. What does this mean? It means more work for New Zealand businesses and better access to markets. The businesses of my electorate tell me that that is a great thing.

What can a free-trade agreement do for us? Let us think about that jewel in the Crown—China. Last year the world was in a pretty bad recession, and we know that New Zealand went into recession before many other countries of the world. While the world was doing it the tough way, our exports to China increased by $1 billion because of the free-trade agreement with China. That was $1 billion in tough times. In two-way trade, there was a 15 percent increase. Of that, there was a 43 percent increase in trade for New Zealand companies and products to China. I congratulate these two Ministers and I ask them to keep up that very good work.

As I said earlier, New Zealand’s relationship with the world is improving and prospering. New Zealand aid funding has been increased to $169 million in 2010-11, and a lot more of this will be directed towards sustainable economic development. That is nothing but good news for Pacific Island countries—countries that we have a very close relationship with. It means that New Zealand taxpayer funds will be directed towards making their economies more sustainable, making their businesses better, and growing their economies. I recognise the work that has been put into the PACER-Plus negotiations and I look forward to more work over the current financial year. I believe that the countries of the Pacific are equally committed to making sure that we can get this agreement right as we move forward, so that it will not only be a good agreement for them but also grow the relationship that we and Australia have with them. It is a very important agreement to them and, because they are important to us, it must also be an important agreement to us.

I will touch on China and talk about some of the work that has been ongoing there. It is our second most important trading relationship, and the potential of China is huge. It is unbelievable. I mentioned earlier that our two-way trade has increased. The Prime Minister has set out a challenge to New Zealand and to New Zealand businesses to increase our trade with China to $20 billion over the next 5 years.

I had the opportunity to visit China and to go to Shanghai just last week with a group of Bay of Plenty exporters. They were a trade delegation that went to the expo at Shanghai to meet with their counterparts in order to promote the Bay of Plenty to them. Based upon the reception that our businesses in the Bay of Plenty got, although the increase in two-way trade to $20 billion will be hard work, it is more than achievable. We visited the New Zealand pavilion at the expo in Shanghai. A number of committed and hard-working New Zealanders were there representing our country. I understand that about 2.5 million Chinese people have visited New Zealand this year for tourism reasons. Well, last week the 2 millionth visitor went through the New Zealand pavilion in Shanghai. The reception that New Zealand is getting is unbelievable. What a worthwhile investment on the part of the taxpayer to promote our country to that growing market in China.

Whilst we were there, a number of exporters from the Bay of Plenty used the visit to very good effect, and I want to recognise a couple of them. New Zealand has potential in exporting to China in many areas. We have potential in protein and in the great products that our farmers produce for the agricultural trade in food, fisheries, and farming. There are New Zealand businesses like Comvita in my electorate, which has brought a health product to China, and there is Zespri with kiwifruit.

I will take a call on behalf of my colleague the Hon Murray McCully. I will focus not on foreign policy issues but on the budgetary control and efficiency measures that we are seeking to introduce into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the administration of our overseas development assistance. I know that it is a shock for some members opposite, who have been used to truckloads of money pouring in through the front door to the point where core Government expenditure went from $32 billion in 2000 to $60 billion in 2009, but we are determined to get on top of this problem.

The New Zealand public have gone through difficult times—including an anaemic 0.9 percent average growth rate in each of the last 3 years of Labour’s run in office, which is one-third the level of economic growth in Australia—and we are determined to avoid a situation where more money is considered to be the answer to all problems. We have seen that once we get to that critical point that Greece, Spain, and other countries have got to, it is an extremely hard road back. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is no exception to this. Actually, I think that it has come off relatively lightly in terms of expenditure control in the course of our first 14 or 15 months in office. The budget of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has grown from approximately $439 million in 2009-10 to approximately $500 million in the 2010-11 allocation. The aid expenditure increases are quite considerable. They have gone from $498 million back in 2008-09 to an allocation this year, 2010-11, of $525 million. That is in excess of $1 billion, and I think it is a fairly generous allocation to the ministry. Having said that, this Government is determined to ensure that we conduct a value-for-money exercise on the ministry, as with all Government agencies, because we are using other people’s money. That is called taxpayers’ money, and we are determined that people get value for money out of their expenditure.

With the situation in respect of aid, for example, where we have reintegrated the aid administration into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade—where it should have been all along; the idea that one could completely divorce foreign policy conclusions from aid considerations was always a fantasy—we have insisted that the administration costs be cut by 12 percent over the next few years, and we are on a course of action to ensure that aid effectiveness is absolutely at the forefront of the ministry’s responsibilities. We are trying to refocus on sustainable economic development. This is the absolute key, particularly in the Pacific region, where the bulk of our money is spent. We are trying to refocus on that objective.

I should also say that part of that process is to now turn the attention to adaptation and mitigation in the context of climate change. If I momentarily put on my other hat as the international negotiations Minister on climate change, we are doing this in good faith. I was recently in the Maldives, at a meeting of climate change Ministers. I met there the Samoan Minister responsible for climate change issues. I had met him at a previous meeting of the progressive group of countries. On behalf of the Samoan Government, he put to me a very interesting proposal to use coconut husks as the input to a biofuels industry in the context of renewable energy, and we were able to take that forward. There were also very interesting discussions with the young and extraordinarily able President of the Maldives. We are moving on a variety of fronts to refocus the aid. The Minister will be assisted by an independent and voluntary advisory group, so we will ensure that we hear and listen to outside views as we move forward.

Within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, in terms of its administration of public monies, we are similarly ensuring that we will get value for money. We are doing this in a variety of ways. First of all, in respect of integrated planning, we have conducted the first phase of what will be an ongoing exercise. Under the title “New Zealand Inc. Strategy” we are attempting to try to join the dots of agencies that generally have worked pretty well together, but not in all cases. We are trying to make it more systematic. We will be ensuring that the agencies’ chief executives are responsible for drawing up long-range country strategies, and I hope that we will be able to reassure the New Zealand public in the months to come that they have achieved greater value for money from the obviously quite high expenses incurred in having our overseas diplomats represented in some 39 or 40 countries.

We are also trialling a hubs and spokes model in terms of reducing back-office costs. We will run that out in Europe in the first instance, which will be totally consistent with this Government’s insistence on cutting back back-office expenses and putting more in in terms of what the front shop operates at. I think that that will also lead, in due course, to improved effectiveness. There are a variety of other measures that we are putting in place to try to ensure that we get value for money out of the $1 billion - plus that this ministry is responsible for in all of its operation’s aid, and otherwise. I am very confident that when we go to the people of New Zealand to seek their support for another term, that on this front, as on the fronts of all Government expenditure, we will be able to look them in the eye and say: “You got value for money out of this Government.”

Vote agreed to.

Vote Official Development Assistance agreed to.

Vote Sport and Recreation