Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully must be congratulated for the frank, forthright and courageous speech that he delivered at the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs on April 5.
His rationale for fresh thinking in the way New Zealand conducts its international affairs is like a breath of fresh air from the decades old status quo that has only succeeded in bloating both staff numbers and expenses while achieving little incrementally.
In other words, the size and cost of the operation is not only difficult to justify in the midst of present realities, but the present dispensation is also clearly ill equipped to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing global environment.
He has recognised that New Zealand now plays in a vastly different world with new emerging economic powers appearing on the horizon. Over the next few years, New Zealand’s government will have no choice but to function in greatly constrained financial circumstances while hoping to step up achievements in geo-political and trade alignments.
The rationalisation of the foreign affairs ministry that he suggests is not the quintessential slash and burn action that politicians resort to in tough financial times but appear to have been the result of considered thought. He suggests taking ideas out of private sector best practice for optimising establishment and operating costs, infrastructure and for recalibrating achievement yardsticks.
The ideas he suggests are all about pragmatism and practicality to effectively meet the challenges of existent financial realities and emerging political ones in the international arena that will have a bearing on the manner in which New Zealand trades in future and who it will trade with.
New Zealand’s long felt comfort of western world alignments are changing because of a number of reasons and new countries emerging out of Asia, Africa and South America present as much of an unknown quantity as an opportunity.
Mr McCully raises the idea of more private participation in New Zealand’s missions abroad and asks why New Zealand expertise spread across the globe should not be harnessed to gain competitive advantages for Kiwi products and services to give the existing diplomatic system a sharper, more business and trade oriented edge.
Some of his suggestions are the stuff that could quite easily tick off entrenched bureaucratic thinking. In that sense, Mr McCully has taken a risk – for as the old adage goes, politicians come and go but bureaucrats go on forever. It needs to be seen in the right perspective, through the prism of pragmatism, not the rose tinted glasses of political populism and keeping bureaucracy happy.
The tone of his suggestions certainly presages what the government will be all but forced to do in the forthcoming budget. Reports have already begun to make the rounds that hundreds of millions dollars could be saved every year by rationalising government ministries, departments and their operations.
The government has few options other than to cut down on its size, rationalise departments, share resources and bring in result oriented, private sector style best practice processes and achievement scales and standards – exactly what Mr McCully has called for in his speech.
New Zealand is known for its No 8 wire thinking, its innovation and innate inventiveness. Many of the minister’s suggestions may sound radical to entrenched thinking but it will be difficult to argue against its need of the hour practicality and its forward looking pragmatism.