Promoting the New Zealand brand: Murray McCully reflects on his eight-and-a-half-year stint as New Zealand's foreign minister.

AuthorMcCully, Murray

After more than eight years in office Murray McCully resigned from his position as foreign minister. Although initially keen to minimise overseas travel, he found that such activity was essential to performing his role. The official visit and the formal meeting are the essential currency of international relations. He sought to bring an independent New Zealand perspective to foreign policy and strove for bipartisanship in formulating foreign affairs and trade policies. At the heart of his approach was his belief that New Zealand has a great international brand, a proud history and a unique contribution to make to its region and to world affairs.

In May I tendered my resignation as New Zealand's minister of foreign affairs, having served in this capacity for nearly eight-and-a-half years. At the outset, I want to acknowledge--and I have said this many times to my staff and to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade--that the real foreign minister is always the prime minister. An effective prime minister/foreign minister team needs to present a seamless face to both the outside world, and to the New Zealand public. I have had the privilege of enjoying a highly successful eight-year partnership with John Key and would like to place on record my appreciation of his quite extraordinary leadership and management style. I have every confidence that Prime Minister English--and my successor Gerry Brownlee--will take the opportunity to build strongly on the platform that we have established.

It has been, in my view, a defining period in New Zealand foreign policy. In this article, I will provide my perspective on it--not in the nature of a comprehensive tour of the foreign policy waterfront, but rather a few strategic reflections on my term in office. I started in this role eight years ago with the intention of minimising my international travel, and operating as much as possible from home. That did not work out so well. I very quickly learned that the official visit and the formal meeting are the essential currency of international relations. So for a New Zealand foreign minister that means becoming accustomed to the demands of constant long distance travel, and the challenges associated with conducting many important meetings and media interviews through that fog of jet-lag that makes your brain work half a second behind your mouth. In return, I have acquired many friendships, a huge amount of phone numbers and email addresses, and the ability to be both more effective and more efficient as a consequence. I will strongly recommend that my successor follows a similar path.

In Opposition before I became foreign minister, in both policy documents and speeches, I said that a National-led government would run an independent foreign policy--that we would not seek to join or re-join alliances, and that we would bring an independent New Zealand perspective to foreign policy. I also said that, so far as possible, we would strive for bipartisanship in formulating our foreign affairs and trade policies--that as a small country with large international interests, New Zealand could not afford to have its key positions and relationships change according to the vagaries of the domestic political cycle.

New Zealand foreign policy needs to be conducted in decades, and not in three-year political cycles. So, during my term as foreign minister, I have deliberately sought to ensure that the settings we have established would stand the test of time--that there would be no great need or incentive for successors to seek major policy change. I have sought to respect and enhance the equities created by my predecessors and hope that my successors might do the same.

Underpinning principles

When asked to identify the principles that underpin New Zealand's foreign policy, most fall back on democracy, the rule of law and human rights--and that is undoubtedly true. But if we relied upon those principles alone, New Zealand would be indistinguishable from many of our Western friends. So what are the additional values that New Zealand features which make us independent and, occasionally, different?

First, I would say that New Zealand's style is to be respectful of other nations and their differences. I have found that when you are as small as we are, being respectful is a fairly useful default setting in conducting foreign relations.

Second, in pursuing principles of democracy, the rule of law and human rights, we try to be constructive and ask ourselves whether others who might be the focus of critical scrutiny need a lecture, or need some help. The New Zealand way should always be to offer help where it will be genuinely accepted. Megaphone diplomacy is not, in my view, New Zealand's natural style--and nor should it be. In my time as foreign minister, I always asked whether our proposed actions would make us part of the solution or part of the problem.

Third, I believe the New Zealand approach is to be strongly protective of the space for small nations in multilateral...

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