Foreign Affairs to examine embassy costs

Press, 4 February 1987, Page 45

Foreign Affairs to examine embassy costs

By

PETER O’HARA

NZPA staff correspondent London A diplomat, Neil Walter, is returning to Wellington from six years in Europe, to head a search by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for ways to cut or redirect overseas staff and get payment from organisations using its posts. Mr Walter, aged 44, has spent the last 18 months as the Deputy High Commissioner, in London, after four years as second-in-charge at the Paris embassy. In March, he will become the assistant secretary for administration at the department’s headquarters. He will succeed Graham Fortune, aged 45, who will head New Zealand’s post in Geneva. Roger Farrell, aged 41, will move to the London job from the No. 2 role at the Brussels embassy. The review that Mr Walter will oversee has to balance the Government’s drive to reduce costs, and possibly staff, in overseas posts with the need to maintain diplomatic and trade ties. The Government wants to economise “where it can do so without detriment to its foreign policy and trade objectives,” Mr Walter said.

“It’s not simply a question of achieving economies. You have to look at the Government’s objectives and goals in a region, and work out from that what you need to achieve those goals — taking into account the continuing importance of our access to, for example, the European

Economic Community.” Europe remains politically important to New Zealand, “notwithstanding the fact that we are expanding our contacts in other parts of the world.”

Continued access for butter and sheepmeat is of “very immediate importance”. The Ministry had to look at a range of its specialised activities in Europe. New charges are likely to be made to organisations which use the Ministry’s expertise in overseas posts. Private enterprise is already levied with fees, when it calls on embassies and high commissions for some trade assistance, as a result of a departmental structure called Tradecom. The principle of “user-pays,” or “cost-shar-ing,” as diplomats prefer to call it, is spreading.

The Government Stores» Board of the Treasury has taken over the responsibility for the large-scale purchasing of supplies and equipment that the London High Commission had been doing for Government departments. The departments are now charged for the service. Other charges by overseas posts can be expected, as the review produces results over the next few months.

Every post and position is coming under scrutiny from the Ministry. Crossaccrediting of staff — where diplomats take responsibility for links with more than one country — is being examined, as well as the numbers of people at individual posts. The London post has

been a target for costcutting. Staff at New Zealand House in The Haymarket have been pared to about 170 — less than half the level of the 19605.

The latest casualty in the search to make economies has been the High Commissioner’s private secretary. The post had been filled by Ministerial secretaries from the Beehive, the last one being Les Gibson. Mr Gibson has returned to Wellington to the office of the Minister of Defence, Mr O’Flynn, six months before the end of a fouryear term. The work has been shared out among other staff in the High Commission. One extra local staff member has been taken on in the reshuffle, however, to help with the workload. The saving is by not sending a staff member and his family from Wellington to London.

The possibility of a further reduction of staff in New Zealand House is now slight, unless a change in the High Commission’s role is ordered by Wellington.

“If there is to be a further reduction, it would come out of a review of the role and activities of the post,” Mr Walter said.

Some tasks at the London post have diminished in importance since Britain’s entry in the E.E.C., together with New Zealand’s more intense diplomatic focus on other regions of the world. Information jobs were axed at the High Commission two years ago, so that the money could be spent in new posts like Africa.