Wanted: A place in the sun

Press, 31 August 1977, Page 27

Wanted: A place in the sun

STUART McMILLAN

The world not only finds it! hard to accommodate some of New Zealand’s agricultural produce, but also finds it nard to place New Zealand in the conventional categories of world traders. Unfortunately this difficulty cannot be dismissed as so much the! worse for the world or so much the worse for the c- nventiona) categories, but ; also as so much the worse, fo r New Zealand. New Zealand would seem! to belong to the First World —- the Western developed j societies — Western Europe, Canada, the United States, Japan, and Australia. It is one of the 24 Organisations for Economic Co-operation •nd Development countries which form the so-called “rich man’s club.” Its system of government, •t least one part of its culture, its family and

.financial ties with Britain and its institutions make i ('unmistakably a “child ol f Europe." I In the aspirations of it: t people, New Zealand als< i comes close to and in some f cases exceeds the aspirations • of rnanv countries with whicl > lit finds some identity ol > ) interest. > So what are we thinking labour, is a Western demo- : | cratic society with a J, reasonably high standard of (living. But a developed II country? It all depends on I one’s terminology. Certainly II the country is not undevei- . oped in the sense that , vast resourses exist which ; have not been tapped. : Perhaps developed but not i industrialised is the best description. Which brings out some of the contradictions in our position. It is a country : whose wealth has been built) on the exports of agricul-

ural produce. It is a country vhose wealth has given its ■eople high aspirations. And zet the trick does not work my more: the agricultural iroducts are not buying our ,vay into the rich league. All of which makes it :ound like a familiar picture or agricultural producers in his world. Apart from the lil-producers, the countries which have grown fastest economically over the last few years have been the ndustrialised countries. To some extent it has been at the expense of the countries which import most of their industrial goods. There is absolutely no sign of the gap between some of the rich industrial countries and New Zealand closing. Indeed, it would seem that the rich may get richer and the poor poorer.

So perhaps New Zealand (does not belong in the First I World after all.

I The Second World is generally taken to mean the centralised economies of Eastern Europe. New Zealand is not run that way and does not belong with this group. The Fourth World consists of those countries without resourses, many of which live in abject poverty. Plainly, New Zealand belongs elsewhere.

This leaves the Third World, though we do not fit this classification neatly either. It is true that like many Third World countries we produce commodities that fluctuate wildly in prices from time to time (though the fluctuations look as if the rises will not again pull us out of the troughs). Meat and wool are considered by the United Nations Conference on Trade and DevelopIment to be commodities (which one day might be [eligible for backing by an (international fund, though

this country’s comparative affluence certainly will not hasten that day.

To some extent New’ Zealand is cast in the same mould as some of the Third World countries. It must beat on the gates of the industrialised countries to get attention and entry for its products; it suffers as the price of industrialised goods rises.

But New Zealand differs in one important respect from much of the Third World. It is neither an oil-producer nor the producer of any other mineral in any quantity. Many of the Third World countries have banded together, over the last few’ years, in producer cartels of which the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries is only one, albeit the most successful. New Zealand has no links w’ith Third World countries through such organisations.

But in any case it is somew'hat doubtful if Third World countries would regard New Zealand as being one of them. Recently pressure was brought to bear on New’ Zealand from the Association

of South East Asian Nations to gain easier access to New Zealand’s markets. Where we have felt we have belonged, in the First World, others seem prepared to place us there.

In practice, New Zealand appears to have hovered somewhere between, closely identifying itself with the First World, but regarding itself as sympathetic to the demands of the Third World. It tends to be a slightly removed sympathy because the needs of New Zealand and those of many in the Third W’orld do not coincide — Third World countries often want access to world markets for their industrial goods, or price stabilisation for such crops as coffee, tea, sugar, and so on. New Zealand wants access for a small range of produce which has been bought mainly by the richer nations. The size of the problem is

appaiem in tne difficulty the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) had in seeing that a reference to agricultural produce was included in a trade pledge given by the O.E.C.D. The pledge committed nobody to anything much, yet there was a fuss about the inclusion of agricultural products. The awkwardness of New Zealand’s economy affects the oincial dogma of trade.

One of the interesting points to observe about the resolution of all this (the possibility of there being no resolution is too depressing to contemplate) is whether because of trade, New Zealand will change some of its foreign policy stands. New Zealand has frequently seen its interests to lie with those of Britain and the United States, which rank first and third as markets. If New Zealand found huge outlets in the Middle East or in the

Soviet Union will it continue to see its interests lying completely with the big Western Powers? At the moment it seems unthinkable that the country should join most of the Third World in the non-aligned nations in the United Nations (which are probably as rigid and as uniform in their policies as either of the traditional aligned blocs). My guess is that the country is going to have to exert any leverage it has and we are all going to see much more playing off of one country against another than we have seen before. If the world cannot fit us snugly into an appropriate category, we will select from the First Second and Third Worlds those countries which suit out purposes for the time and set them against one another. It will be a case for our own survival or: if you cannot join them, beat them.