'Leadership' vital to transforming NZ, says Mulroney

Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney says "transformational leadership" is needed if New Zealand wants to make fundamental changes.

Mr Mulroney, who took Canada into free trade with the United States in 1988, told a seminar in Auckland yesterday that the test of leadership was the ability to make real changes.

In the 1988 election, which became an effective referendum on free trade, he argued that Canadians could not cling to the status quo, because it was no longer an option.

"It's free trade or disaster, because the status quo is not going to hold," he told them.

Although it was highly controversial, he said free trade had been a great success. Canadian exports to the US had risen from $C100 billion ($NZ155.2 billion) to $C360 billion a year, trade with the US in goods and services had risen from 23 per cent to 40 per cent of Canada's national output, and three million new jobs had been created in Canada.

He said there were two aspects to change - leading change and implementing change.

"Leading change is a matter of vision. Implementing it is a matter of management.

"But they go together, since if you cannot persuade the voters of your competence to implement that which you envision, they are unlikely to authorise it.

"Envisioning change and managing change in democracies such as ours require the consent of the governed. It is no easy task, in an industrialised democracy, to persuade the voters that it is in their interests to change, to foresake the certainties and comforts they have attained, and to set sail on a sea of uncertainty."

The seminar was organised by the Herald and the University of Auckland as part of the Catching the Knowledge Wave project.

The chief executive of Te Puni Kokiri, Leith Comer, made a strong plea for the status of Maori to be improved.

"Strong Maori mean a strong nation," he said. "We have to seek improvement, both for demographic reasons and to capitalise on Maori strengths."

Auckland City Missioner Diane Robertson told the seminar to look at the social figures as well as the economic figures showing the need for change.

"We used to be third in the OECD [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development] for child health. Now we are 26th," she said.

Carter Holt Harvey chief executive Chris Liddell said the first step was to communicate "an imperative for change."

Then the country needed "bold targets," strategies to achieve those targets and organisation that implement them. Then it had to keep score.

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