Seeking opportunities in a turbulent world: Bill English reviews his government's approach to international affairs.

• Author: English, Bill

We live in turbulent times, but this is nothing new in the history of international affairs. Although the international environment is beyond New Zealand's control, an optimistic approach will serve it well. New Zealand likes to focus on those areas where it can make progress, such as the Pacific Islands and Australia. Trade is another such area. Our goal is to have 90 per cent of our export trade covered by free trade agreements by 2030. In a world where protectionism is apparently growing, we are making more progress than we have made for some time. Hopes for the TPP are not dead.

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We hear a lot at the moment that we live in turbulent times, but we should not immediately jump to the conclusion that the world is any more turbulent at the moment than it has been in the past. The endless repetition and rapid transmission of events in the world does not necessarily mean much greater instability or much greater threat than there has been. When you are at the end of the world, as New Zealand is, we are the place where all the waves eventually wash up. But we cannot control any of that environment and, in my view, a bit of naive Kiwi optimism can take us a long way.

I have always thought it is relatively pointless analysis to say everything is horrendously complicated and going very badly. Cicero said it, Cato said it, Saint Augustine said it, everyone has said it: it does not tell you what you should do. Part of our job, of course, is to work out what to actually do. Nothing has really changed about New Zealand's basic adherence to the institutions of our international framework. But there is no doubt that global authority is much more contested, and I have seen this just in my recent trip through the Pacific.

Not everyone takes notice of what New Zealand does. I turned up in one country that will remain unnamed. We were driving down the street and I saw a lovely big billboard welcoming the Rt Hon Prime Minister of New Zealand, John Key. That was before lunch. But by after lunch, no doubt, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had discovered it was an old one left over from John Key's last trip. When we came back they had changed it.

Much of the discussion has been about the relative influence of a range of countries in the Pacific, whether it is New Zealand, Australia, China, the United States--or Russia to some extent. And there is certainly a sense of flux about who is looking to have the most interest in the Pacific and plenty of discussion about the effectiveness of their interventions, because, as that discussion matures, I think people start to understand that the size of your aid budget does not mean that you understand the Pacific the best. Of course, regardless of the volatility in the rest of the world, the Pacific still remains our primary focus and the part of the globe where we can exercise our influence as part of our contribution to global stability. And we are very much tied to the Pacific Islands states.

One of the common themes I adhered to on my trips around four or five of these countries in recent weeks was simply to acknowledge their contribution to New Zealand. While we accept their gratitude for the very good aid projects and other support we are providing, they have supplied us with tens of thousands of people who are in our businesses, in our workplaces, changing our culture, growing our families and supporting our communities. That is as close a link as you can possibly have, next to our links to Australia.

Of course, with Australia we are finding a bit of uncertainty. We cannot make the assumptions that we always made about Australia. The sense of the special relationship gets a bit eroded at the edges, but I do not think it is really called into question in the way the media sometimes portrays it. We are, for instance, from 1 July starting a process with Australia whereby tens of thousands of New Zealanders will have a new opportunity for a path to citizenship. That may not be covered in the media, but it was an arrangement made between Prime Ministers Key and Turnbull a year or so ago. So in our near-neighbourhood, the connections and relationships are close and remarkably stable. I do not think they are going to change, regardless of what happens in the rest of the world.

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