Key on Foreign Policy

I missed in all the Peters excitement that John Key gave a foreign policy speech this week. Nor most foreign policy is bipartisan, so no major surprises, but a few things of note:

The past 20 years have seen a plethora of FTAs signed between countries and groups of countries. Their very nature is that they are exclusive. The greatest risk to our economy is that we are excluded.

Indeed. While NZ First and the Greens want us to be excluded!

There is much that New Zealand can do to improve our role in the Pacific, and the first thing is to ensure that our aid programme there is focused and targeted properly. While the National Party acknowledges that the main target of New Zealand’s aid effort is already the Pacific, we have stated that we believe a greater proportion of our budget should be targeted there.

I agree. It is our backyard, and the area in which we can have the most influence.

It is also important that this aid is properly focused. New Zealand’s aid in recent years has been targeted at “poverty elimination” – the focus should be on economic development.

Poverty elimination or reduction is necessary in the short term, but indeed economic development and growth is the only long-term solution to poverty.