Ad hoc foreign policy won't do

Helen Clark's mission to Australia this week will
tend only part of a troubled patch, writes TERENCE O'BRIEN*.

The Government is making every effort to touch the various bases of its foreign policy before the election through high-level contacts with the United States, Japan, Indonesia and, now, Australia.

The prime ministerial visit beginning tomorrow involves a blue-ribbon entrepreneurial mission (drawn from the communications, technology, biotechnology, creative design, food, tourism, construction and marine industries), which is unique in several respects.

The team will visit Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales but not Canberra. It must be a long while since a New Zealand Prime Minister did not include Canberra on an official Australian visit. Helen Clark will, however, meet John Howard in Sydney.

The mission's purpose is to reassert the professionalism, skills and good standing of New Zealand business in the three states, each of which accounts for about a third of New Zealand's trade earnings from Australia. In the wake of the Ansett affair and its impact at the Australian state level, this is a judicious initiative.

At the same time, Parliament's foreign affairs, trade and defence committee has released an inquiry into New Zealand's economic and trade relationship with Australia.

This is the committee's first offering in the lifetime of the present Government. The result is a fairly incoherent document that is not likely to influence the prime ministerial trip, which is focused on the practical end of transtasman economic business rather than the committee's policy preoccupations.

The parliamentarians propose the establishment of an Australia-New Zealand Economic Community, based on an economic union. The report is short on detail as to how this might be progressed and ducks entirely the overriding political implications. But several references to European experience imply that full political union is not ruled out.

The fact is that the European experience is inapplicable in many respects to the transtasman circumstances, because the sort of political-economic equilibrium secured in Europe results from the critical mass in the number of members and the existence of free-standing institutions designed to preserve that equilibrium.

This would be unachievable in the case of just two countries of such disparate economic size and in the absence of any corresponding institutions.

The committee is right in asserting that it is up to New Zealand to produce ideas in the face of apparent Australian indifference to the enlargement of the Closer Economic Relations agreement.

But its raft of ideas (including a special minister for the Australian relationship, an annual high-level multidisciplinary conference, new or revived New Zealand consulates-general in Australian state capitals, and so on) are not part of a coherent strategy. All cast New Zealand squarely in the role of supplicant.

In Europe, the longer-term strategic objectives were agreed before serious flesh was added to the original ideas.

The idea of improved official representation in Australian state capitals seems, however, to resonate with the aims of the prime ministerial visit. But it is unattainable without a Government commitment to additional resources for its foreign relations.

Despite the constant emphasis on the knowledge wave as a foundation for policy, the Government remains surprisingly obtuse over the need to improve its own knowledge and discernment about the world beyond New Zealand shores, not just Australia.

This is something a good deal more than security intelligence. If there is one lesson above all others from the present global political and economic tumult, it is just how little is understood about events and the forces behind them.

Excessive reliance on technology, science and media to supply information (and intelligence) has occurred at the expense of understanding and judgment. Longstanding political determination to minimise the cost of conducting official foreign interests means New Zealand is deficient in this regard, as are larger and more important states.

The strategy behind Helen Clark's Australian visit implies there is no pressing need to cultivate official dealings between central governments. Not everyone would share that conclusion.

The differences over trade policy, to which the foreign affairs, defence and trade committee alludes, whereby Australia has chosen to pursue a free trade agreement with the US while specifically excluding New Zealand, remain decidedly bizarre.

They reflect, however, the emphasis already placed by Australia on political and security bilateralism, and a desire to consolidate without any added complication, through a trade pact, Australia's strategic bilateral connection with the US.

Canberra seeks to become only the second country, after Canada, to forge a full security and trade connection with the US. It is interesting that Canada, for a range of reasons, finds the intimacy of its institutional American connection stifling.

What would New Zealand's reaction be if Australia were offered a free trade pact with the US that excluded agriculture, or, alternately, a concessional preference in the US market for specific quantities of farm products? What, indeed, would New Zealand's response be if it ever received the the second of these?

Such questions are hypothetical - more particularly since the new, huge US package of support and protection for American farmers was announced. But we have not yet debated them openly.

The Prime Minister has played down the prospect of New Zealand seeking a free trade agreement with Japan on the grounds that that country is not ready to reform agricultural policy. Does New Zealand now believe the US is any different?

* Terence O'Brien is a commentator on international affairs.