Jacinda Ardern and Bill English clash over several issues during the Stuff Leaders debate in Christchurch
On November 12 on the side lines of Apec in Vietnam, the New Zealand Prime Minister is pencilled in to jointly chair an important meeting with the Japan's Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe.
That meeting is set to give the green light to the TPP-11 trade deal, being the original 12 TPP countries, minus the United States.
It could be Prime Minister Bill English or it could be Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in the chair.
Whoever holds the job, the TPP will be one of two immediate and complex issues the next Government will have to deal with in foreign affairs and trade.
The other is the crisis involving the increasingly bellicose North Korea and the disturbingly Twitter-happy US president who thinks nothing of predicting "fire and fury like the world has never seen."
There are several possible scenarios regarding the TPP meeting, depending on the election result and post coalition negotiations.
If Ardern, the Labour leader, is representing New Zealand as Prime Minister, with the likely support of New Zealand First, she may well be explaining to her fellow TPP leaders why New Zealand is withdrawing from the deal.
That is unless Labour can get an amendment added to the deal reserving the right to ban house sales to foreign non-residents.
If Bill English is representing New Zealand, he will probably be putting up his hand to give the deal with go ahead.
Only "probably" and not "certainly" because the price of a coalition with New Zealand First could be a commitment to withdraw from the TPP.
On that issue, we will have to guess because Winston Peters would not say this week, when directly asked, whether he would support a withdrawal from the TPP if there were no changes to it.
He instead offered his reasons for opposing it: "It is a package of rather lethal clauses that deliver for the international corporates at the expense of the New Zealand public."
And he denied his party was resistant to free trade deals: We are not resistant to free trade treaties but we are wary of negotiators who do not hold firm and stand up for New Zealand's best interests."
Labour's foreign affairs spokesman, David Parker, said Labour would be "unlikely to proceed" with TPP without change. But Finance spokesman Grant Robertson said yesterday Labour would not sign up as it stands. Ardern did not rule out withdrawal in a Herald interview on August 22.
The captain's call by former leader Andrew Little for Labour to oppose the TPP ended a 20-year bipartisan approach on free trade deal between the two big parties, to TPP but he was under pressure from the left of his party, and the unions which elected him opposed it.
New Zealand has been at the vanguard of free trade for 20 years and to withdraw from TPP would be as shocking to the world's free-traders as the All Blacks pulling out of the Rugby World Cup because it didn't like one of the rules in the 30-chapter rule book.
Foreign Minister Gerry Brownlee has been in the job only since May when Murray McCully stepped aside after eight and a half years.
Brownlee says a lot of New Zealand's foreign policy is developed around its trading relationships, for example establishing, new embassies in Colombia, Sri Lanka and Ireland were all connected to stronger trade relationships.
As if to accentuate that, to date, National has not actually released foreign affairs policy but only trade policy.
New Zealand's strongest relationship remains with Australia, its only formal defence ally. And Australia remains the staunchest ally of the United States under the ANZUS treaty, from which New Zealand is a suspended partner.
It is in no one's agenda, hidden or public to again join that club which automatically involves the other in each other's conflicts.
Restoring the relationship with the United States has been a signature achievement of the current Government but Brownlee is quick to assert New Zealand's independent foreign policy.
"That enables us to say the United States is a very, very good friend of New Zealand but equally China is a very, very good friend of New Zealand and everything that steps down from that."
Labour's David Parker says that Labour has always operated a more independent foreign policy than National - citing the anti-nuclear policy which saw New Zealand virtually, ostracised by the US for 20 years and the decision not to join the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
He says McCully brought National closer to that position and that was most obvious in the work he did to get the passage of Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlements.
But Brownlee and English had taken National back to the original point of difference.
"It is not hugely significant but it is there."
So how would that be manifest? "They are more likely to agree to military co-operation with the United States outside a UN framework than we would be."
The potential flashpoint involved North Korea has not been a campaigning point this election although it has been raised in televised leaders' debates.
And a clear point of difference emerged this week between Labour and National if any request by the US to New Zealand for a contribution were made.
Labour would not consider it unless it had a UN Security Council mandate - which given the divisions of the P5 on the Security Council would be almost impossible to achieve.
Brownlee was surprised by Ardern's answer.
"That's an abdication of our independent foreign policy," he told the Herald.
It was a very volatile situation and New Zealand had to be very concerned about it.
"I certainly don't want to say anything that starts to get people get very worried about it but we trade extensively with that part of the world - Japan, China, South Korea," he said. "We would suffer significantly if there was conflict," he said.
Differing views over military conflicts have led to some of the most dramatic moments in Parliament in the past three years, including how to best help Iraq fight ISIS.
When Labour opposed the joint NZ - Australia training mission at Camp Taji to train Iraqi soldiers, John Key's responded with his own battle cry to Labour to "get some guts."
Labour had opposed the initial US invasion, and opposed the training on the basis that the Iraqi military was corrupt. But, in face of undeniable success, it has modified its opposition to the extent that it would not bring home the 100 or so New Zealand troops earlier than their mandate - November 2018 - and Parker says Labour has not made any decisions about whether it would extend the mission if asked.
If Labour forms the next Government, Parker is not expected to be Foreign Minister. That could be a position Winston Peters again claimed for himself - having served as Helen Clark Foreign Minister from 2005 - 2008.
And it would not bother Parker. Peters had been a good Foreign Minister, he said, including his visit to Pyongyang in 2007.
"One of the many good things he did was to have some contact with the North Korean regime in a way that no one else in the world managed to do and in a way that, at the time, did ease tensions."
Bruce Cameron: Why the country needs deals like the TPP
Bruce Cameron has been farming for more than 40 years. Photo / Doug Sherring
As a beef farmer, Bruce Cameron has a personal stake in sealing the deal on the TPP, the Trans Pacific Partnership, which cuts millions off existing tariffs on beef and other exports.
But so does every part of New Zealand, he says.
"The more money that can come back to the farmer the more that can be spread around within New Zealand.
"A lot of people forget that farmers are incredibly good at spending money and they spend it right from Kaitaia to Bluff," he said.
"In every provisional town they all get a share of it and they are probably the only sector in New Zealand that spreads the money far and wide."
Cameron has been farming for more than 40 years on a 340ha dry stock property at Glen Murray, southwest of Tuakau.
Like many farmers, he is feeling pretty sensitive about become the target of many political barbs and laments the loss of connection Kiwis have with farming.
He reckons that 40 years ago, about 90 per cent of the population had access to a farm or had an uncle or an aunt or a friend of a friend and had a better knowledge of a farm.
"Now it is barely 10 per cent of the people and I really don't know whether a lot of people don't realise that we produce they food they get."
New Zealand needed trade deals, he said.
Under TPP, beef tariffs to Canada will be eliminated within six years, and to Mexico and Peru within 10 and 11 years respectively.
Beef tariffs in Japan will be reduced from 38.5 per cent to 9 per cent over 16 years, with a big cut to at least 27.5 per cent at the deal's entry into force.
Red meat exports to Japan last year totalled $302 million and attracted $73 million in tariffs.
And until TPP levels the playing field, New Zealand farmers already face higher tariffs than Australian farmers.
If New Zealand missed out on the benefits of TPP to the likes of Australia "then we are limited to what we can spend on our farms in our own economy."
Cameron said he had been wary about some of the conditions the US had put forward for TPP "but if we stay out of the agreement, I feel we are going to lose out more."
POLICIES
NATIONAL -Support TPP-11 (TPP without the US) free trade deal. -Continue trade negotiations with Pacific Alliance and RCEP, launch trade talks with EU, Britain, Sri Lanka, and South American countries, and revive talks with Russia and Gulf Co-operation Council. -Support NZDF to contribute to regional and international security. -Make New Zealand the global specialist on Pacific matters.
LABOUR -Maintain an independent foreign policy with a greater emphasis on multilateralism. -Oppose TPP because it makes no provision for a future Government to ban house sales to non-resident foreigners and likely to withdraw if it could not renegotiate on this point. -Opposes sending NZDF trainers to Iraq but would not bring them home before November 2018. -Focus on Overseas Development Assistance on elimination of poverty.
GREENS -Support NZ withdrawal from TPP. -NZ to give 0.7 per cent of GNI to overseas within four years. -Promote greater advocacy of human rights. -Oppose foreign military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and any intervention without Security Council backing.
NZ FIRST -Set a target to treble exports in real terms by 2025 and make trade facilitation a priority for MFAT. -Opposed sending NZDF trainers to Iraq. -Opposed TPP but non-committal on now withdrawing. -Restore air combat capability to the Air Force and create a Coast Guard sub-service of the Navy for fisheries, search and rescue, Police and Customs duties.
MAORI PARTY -Opposed TPP -Opposed sending NZDF trainers to Iraq. - Appoint seven Māori Trade Ambassadors to help support Māori exporters - Implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
ACT -Maintain and improve relations with traditional alliances including Five Eyes and the Commonwealth. -Pursue free trade area among Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Britain. -Focus aid on South Pacific. -Opposed SC resolution 2334 sponsored by New Zealand on Israeli settlements in West Bank. - TOP No foreign affairs policy
