Against the Odds: Negotiating for New Zealand's Future.

• Author: Martin, John R.

AGAINST THE ODDS: Negotiating for New Zealand's Future

Author: Ted Woodfield

Published by: Dunmore Publishing, Wellington, 2008, 211pp, available by mail order ($33 incl p & p in NZ) from PO Box 25080, Wellington 6146.

When I mentioned to a friend that I was reviewing a book about New Zealand's trade policy in the post-war period through to the 1980s, he, not unkindly, expressed doubt that there would be much to write about. Perhaps he was reflecting the rather ahistorical approach that a surprising number of New Zealanders take to events before the 'revolution' of 1984, or maybe his understanding that New Zealand was for most of this period simply the offshore farm supplying the United Kingdom with butter, cheese and lamb. As Ted Woodfield's account amply demonstrates, the story is a lot more complicated than that.

Against the Odds is a personal narrative. But those who might be looking for recollections of long days in the Palais des Nations, leavened by lighter evenings in the Old Town of Geneva will be disappointed. (The 1976 IRA bomb incident in Dublin involving Brian Talboys is, however, a reminder of the unusual circumstances in which negotiations can sometimes take place.) This is a critical review from a New Zealand perspective of the major events in international trade over three decades. It is marked by the discipline that characterised Woodfield's distinguished career. In the author's words, the book

tracks negotiations conducted on the main fronts. It sets out the background and describes how the negotiations were conducted, the personalities involved and the outcomes. It is not a full history, but recounts the experience of an official who was directly involved. After university (where he was a prominent student politician at both local and international level), Woodfield joined the Department of Industries and Commerce in 1958 as a graduate entrant to a Public Service in which recruitment as a school-leaver cadet was still the norm in most departments. Over the next 30 years until his departure to take up the position of High Commissioner to Australia in 1989, Woodfield was almost entirely engaged both at home and abroad in arguing the case 'against the odds' for New Zealand's external economic policy. (Personally, I would have liked to have seen included in the narrative an account of Woodfield's five years in Canberra, given the importance that earlier in the book he rightly accords to the trans-Tasman relationship.)

By 1960 the main challenges that were to test New Zealand effectively for the balance of the 20th century were clear. The wartime bulk purchase arrangements with the United Kingdom had expired in the...