Then Trade Minister Tim Groser was deeply disappointed when John Key called him home from Moscow in May 2014 just as he and top trade negotiator Vangelis Vitalis were on the cusp of concluding the deal.
In the right circumstances, New Zealand ought to complete their work.
Similarly, the CCER idea was mocked by some sections of the Wellington foreign-affairs establishment as some sort of Peters-inspired colonial relic. Even now, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade makes no reference to CCER on its website.
But CCER offers New Zealand another pathway to deals with India and post-Brexit UK, while also promising New Zealand's Pacific neighbours better access to those markets, plus Canada, Australia and beyond.
For its part, the Commonwealth is an organisation in search of a mission and will be holding the first-ever meeting of its members' trade ministers in London next month. The Wellington foreign-policy establishment ought to take CCER more seriously.
Important re-sets
Since October — and despite the Manus Island blip — Jacinda Ardern and Peters have agreed a fairly conservative foreign policy but with a couple of important re-sets.
In the last fortnight, their approach has been outlined in a series of foreign-policy speeches in Wellington, Sydney and the Pacific.
Ardern began her first big speech talking about trade, ahead of traditional Labour priorities like disarmament and climate change. She endorsed the Trans-Pacific Partnership and emphasised the importance of global rules, including those of the World Trade Organisation. Jane Kelsey has not taken over the Ninth Floor of the Beehive.
The first important re-set is Ardern and Peters' renewed emphasis on the Pacific, as further underlined by last week's tour.
This is not driven entirely by neighbourly affection.
There is a growing sense that New Zealand has been naïve about China's global ambitions, flattered by the attention of the Four Firsts including the 2008 FTA. Whether Japan in the 1940s, France and the US more recently, or China today, New Zealand prefers if the Great Powers wouldn't mind keeping out of our region. In the last decade, China has established a footprint in the South Pacific that challenges that overarching strategic goal.
No one in the New Zealand foreign-policy establishment is critical of China, and nor should they be: China is just doing what emerging Great Powers always do.
Nevertheless, its moves conflict with New Zealand's objectives and Ardern and Peters have sought to check China as far as a small country ever can with last week's Pacific tour and cash handouts.
Old friends
The second re-set evident in the Ardern-Peters foreign policy is a re-emphasis on traditional relationships.
In a section in her big speech headed "friends," Ardern named just four countries: Australia, as New Zealand's only formal ally; the US, despite current differences on climate change and trade; the UK, with whom Ardern said she was eager to start negotiation for an FTA; and China.
The Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), which was such a priority for the Key-English government, including building a sheep farm in the Saudi desert, wasn't mentioned at all. Extraordinarily, and in stark contrast to Helen Clark's outlook, nor did Ardern even mention the EU.
Securing a post-Brexit FTA with the UK now seems to be a higher priority for New Zealand than the proposed EU-NZ deal.
But there is one big problem. With the UK now suspecting Moscow of responsibility for perhaps a dozen murders on British soil, the NZ-UK FTA and CCER both stand in total contradiction to even talking about the Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan opportunity. Like Groser before him, Peters needs reluctantly to walk away.
Matthew Hooton's PR and lobbying firm Exceltium has clients in the UK, New Zealand and the Pacific with interests in the policy re-sets discussed above. These views are his own.
