It's hardly surprising that the domestic steel industry is unimpressed. Some of the big players have made the point that missing out on a contract like that means they will have to go looking for smaller jobs, in competition with smaller businesses that would otherwise have had that market to themselves. Being big, they will no doubt be able to undercut the smaller outfits, which will inevitably struggle, perhaps even go under.
There might also be an issue around the quality of the Thai steel, although if everyone does their job properly that should not be a concern. The fact that all too often we do have issues with quality, as pointed out last week by MP Winston Peters in relation to cheap imported plumbing products and more recently cheap, sub-standard steel from China, has more to do with people not exercising the required vigilance than the not uncommon belief that if something is sourced in this country it will always be superior to its imported equivalent.
So why shouldn't Sky City buy steel from Thailand, assuming that it makes economic sense to do so? No reason. And to squeal that New Zealanders are being cheated of the chance to make an honest living is simply to perpetuate the view that we have a God-given right to export our wares but are entitled to shun the exports of others.
Either we have a global market or we don't. Just be aware that if we don't, we must accept that it will be harder to sell our stuff overseas than it is now.
This attitude goes back donkey's years. One of the classic cases in times past was the insistence of one or other of the teacher unions that teachers from Britain should not be allowed to work in New Zealand until they had retrained here. This same union had no difficulty, and still doesn't, with New Zealand-trained teachers working in Britain. After all, they are very well trained, and the rest of the world should be grateful for the opportunity to employ them. No real argument there, although the unions will never accept that not all teachers are created equal.
It might well have been the case, and might still well be, that New Zealand-trained teachers who head overseas are the cream of the crop. They might also be from the other end of the spectrum; perhaps we should be grateful that someone in another country has given some of them a job so our kids won't be saddled with them. We don't know, although it would be fair to say that some countries at least choose their imported teachers with great care.
The point is that some of us see what we produce, be it teachers or steel, as infinitely superior, and the equivalent resource from elsewhere as inevitably inferior. And in terms of people that doesn't only apply to teachers.
Some might remember the story years ago of an ophthalmologist who arrived in, if memory serves, Palmerston North, and set about decimating the cataract surgery waiting list. This did not go down well with the local ophthalmologists, employed by the same DHB but also enjoying the benefits of private practice. If the waiting list disappeared then so did their lucrative second income stream. It was not in their interests to have the public hospital offering surgery without a wait of months or years.
So they challenged this man's qualifications. He was stood down while the process meandered along, and eventually left for some more receptive, and fortunate, community somewhere overseas before it was completed.
The cataract waiting list was restored, and everyone was happy.
At about the same time an ophthalmologist who trained overseas, possibly India, was denied the right to practice here because his qualifications were not of the same high standard as ours. He too eventually gave up, and took up a job in Edinburgh, training ophthalmologists, including New Zealanders, who then came home. The fact that he wasn't good enough to work here but was good enough to train New Zealanders seemed to escape those who had objected to him working here.
The same arguments apply to every export industry that helps keep this country afloat. We pat ourselves on the back for being wonderful, innovative people when we hear stories of New Zealand companies that have established markets overseas, and we complain when other countries start producing milk in such quantities that the price paid to our dairy farmers is affected.
Who do these people think they are, producing milk for their own consumers when they should be buying ours?
There might well be another agenda for critics of the Sky City steel deal though, in that it creates the chance to have another go at the government that approved the convention centre plan. One such critic was last week defending the Prime Minister's assurances that the project would create jobs, albeit arguing that those jobs would not be in construction or hospitality but in prostitution and addiction counselling, making beds and cleaning toilets.
It is difficult not to see an element of 'I told you so' from people who decried the government's role in allowing for the building of the convention centre, who seemingly believe that every time a casino installs another poker machine it creates another gambling addict. It's hard to see the logic of that, but even some who don't see casinos as the work of the devil can be relied upon to complain when New Zealand dollars are spent overseas.
Will the same arguments be raised when a New Zealand steel producer finds a buyer overseas? Nope. That will be hailed as an export success, another sign of good old Kiwi initiative, another example of New Zealanders making the most of a global market opportunity.
What they should be railing against is importing farm workers, chefs and truck drivers. That's the real import/export scandal, but we're not supposed to mention that, even though the immigrants happy to do those jobs are allegedly preventing New Zealanders from finding work. If they wanted it.
