Diplomatic appointments

Michael Field in the SST writes:

Women are rapidly disappearing from the frontline of New Zealand’s diplomatic service, with Foreign Minister Murray McCully overseeing a halving in the number of females serving as ambassadors and high commissioners.

In the last year of Helen Clark’s government 30 per cent of posts were held by women; under McCully it is 16 per cent.

McCully, who gets the final say in the appointments, blames the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFat) while the ministry has told the Foreign Service Association (FSA) women themselves are at fault.

“We have had some explanation from the ministry that women are not applying for the posts,” FSA representative Warren Fraser said. “It is not something we instinctively feel is true but we have not been able to verify ourselves.”

It is a pity neither the story nor the FSA has verified this, because it is quite central to the story. If the decline in the number of women at high Commissioners and Ambassadors is because they keep getting rejected in favour of men that is a very different story, to one where simply few women have applied.

Political commentator Matthew Hooton blogged during the week that McCully’s agenda was to promote “Gen X” men, people now in their late 30s and early 40s.

I blogged what Matthew said in NBR (it was the print edition not a blog incidentally), and he never said McCully’s agenda was to promote men. The addition of “men” is made up, and I note not in quote marks. Matthew said:

To the fury of ageing baby boomers, Mr McCully has aggressively promoted top Gen X talent.

Vangelis Vitalis, 43, has been appointed ambassador to the EU and Nato; Taha Macpherson, 40, to Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority; Reuben Levermore, 36, to the Philippines; and Justin Fepuleai, 38, to Afghanistan. Ben King, 39, is John Key’s new chief foreign policy advisor in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

While a late baby boomer, Patrick Rata has been appointed ambassador to South Korea after Mr McCully discovered him in a back-office role having committed the ultimate Mfat sin – taking a couple of years off mid-career, to be Mr Moore’s right-hand man at the World Trade Organisation.

Yes the examples given were all men, but there is a world of difference to say that his agenda is to promote men.

All his six recent appointments were men and only one, Afghanistan ambassador Justin Fepuleai, was not white.

Good God, so now they are trying to paint McCully as racist and sexist. The trouble is, rather than five in six being “white”, I think it is “two” in six. If anything, someone could accuse McCully of bring politically correct in recent appointments.

I understand Taha Macpherson is Samoan and Patrick Rata is NZ Maori. Adding them to Justin Fepuleai and in fact three out of six are Maori or Pacific Island. And a fourth is a Greek immigrant, which arguably doesn’t fit the rather bizarre categorization in the story of being “white or “not white”.