India and South Asia have been high on my list of activities over the last week.
First it was the Holi Festival celebrated at Three Kings in my Mt Roskill electorate. The Waitakere Indian Association also celebrated Holi this last weekend. Holi is a lot of fun, as a festival should be that celebrates colour, love, the victory of good over evil and spring!
Because our seasons are back to front we celebrate Holi in autumn as does the Chinese Community with its Spring Festival and New Year celebrations.
It’s the kids who really love Holi. Throwing coloured powder over people is something that children would normally get into trouble for but at a Holi festival it’s OK! Those of us who like occasionally to behave like children also enjoyed it, though as you can see from the photograph I seemed to come off second best! Last year Holi was between two other functions so I went to it wearing a suit. That resulted in a large dry cleaning bill. This year I got away with just having to wash my hair twice to remove what looked like a purple rinse!
Festivals like Holi are great for giving communities the chance to celebrate their heritage and culture, and for other communities the opportunity to learn about and enjoy them. We should all have the opportunity to celebrate aspects of our identities that make us unique.
The second big event for the Indian and South Asian communities is the Cricket World Cup. This week in two very similar matches we saw New Zealand defeat Bangladesh and India beat Zimbabwe.
We are all hoping that India and New Zealand get to the finals though it may be hard to keep those Aussies out! The games were both highly entertaining and exciting and all credit to Bangladesh for fighting back so hard.
One of the lasting impacts of New Zealand and India’s shared colonial history is our inheritance from the British of cricket as a game we all love. Both countries have worked hard to perfect that legacy and it must be tough for the Brits to have exited so early from the Cup.
Finally, last Friday I attended part of the India New Zealand Business Summit held in Auckland. Coinciding with the India v Zimbabwe game at Eden Park, the game had the desired effect of getting some big hitters to Auckland from the Indian business community.
India is expected to be the world’s third largest economy by 2025 and it should be a much larger trading partner for New Zealand. In 2008, as Minister of Trade, I reached agreement with the then Indian Minister of Commerce Kamil Nath to undertake a joint feasibility study into a free trade agreement between our countries. The study found that our economies were largely complementary and a free trade agreement would have considerable potential to grow trade to the benefit of both countries. Regrettably, more than five years after that study the free trade negotiators have made only slow progress.
Labour strongly supports efforts to get those talks moving ahead. However with tariffs on agricultural products averaging 34% New Zealand will want to see movement from India in this area as part of a deal. Part of the sweetener for that deal could be help from New Zealand for India in areas such as agri-technology and supply chains which would assist Indian agriculture. India and New Zealand are good friends and a Free Trade Agreement would help cement our relationship.