NZ-Australia trade talks swing to Asia

By GREG ANSLEY

SYDNEY - New Zealand and Australia will this month try to accelerate formal ties with Southeast Asia ahead of a feared weakening of resolve to further liberalise world trade.

The meeting in Chiang Mai, Thailand, between Trade Minister Jim Sutton, Australian counterpart Mark Vaile and the Trade Ministers of the Asian Free Trade Area (Afta) is seen as crucial to counter emerging barriers to agricultural reform and a new round of World Trade Organisation talks.

Concerns voiced at a New Zealand business networking session in Darling Harbour this week echoed those felt by many at the World Economic Forum in Melbourne, where growing national reluctance was matched by violent street demonstrations.

Developing countries' doubts about the benefits of free trade - which some believe has benefited the rich at the expense of the poor - are already being felt in talks to link the CER with Afta.

Key Afta members Malaysia and Indonesia were among those who warned at the Melbourne forum of potential trouble for trade liberalisation.

Wellington and Canberra have also renewed a bid to shake their closer economic relations (CER) system out of its torpor and remove such long-term thorns as taxation and business law harmonisation. The Trade Ministers met in Auckland this month.

New Zealand's High Commissioner to Canberra, Simon Murdoch, who has been intimately involved in CER since the late 1970s, said there was a new determination to broaden the agreement.

"That meeting in Auckland two weeks ago was in my mind the most energetic, the most dynamic, that I can remember in a decade," he said.

Mr Vaile said the aim now was to strengthen CER to enable both countries to face a fast-changing global market - where new trade blocs are expected to form in America and Asia in the next 10 years.

Among key factors were new trade negotiations and China's membership of the WTO - almost assured by the United States Senate approval on Tuesday of permanent normal trading relations with Beijing.

Ahead of this, New Zealand and Australia will be pushing the CER-Afta link at Chiang Mai, described by Mr Vaile as one of the most important trade forums he and Mr Sutton would attend in their lifetimes as ministers of the Crown.