Kiwiblog

Tom Scott hits the mark!

While Phil Goff put out a press release welcoming the appointment, I’ve been waiting for one of the 40 or so Labour MPs who blog at Red Alert, to blog about Moore’s appointment and how pleased they are.

They managed to find newsworthy a blog post by Jordan Carter (the one I highlighted), the Mackenzie farming proposals, The Republican win in Massachusetts, the tax working group and some tale about how an MPs niece thinks the penguin in Madagascar reminds her of John Key.

But not a word of congratulations to Mike Moore. Never mind he joined the Labour movement in 1968, was elected to Parliament as a Labour MP in 1972 and served for 24 years, led them twice in a general election, and helped them avoid a crushing defeat in 1996 (before the rapprochement with Clark, Labour were polling at 14%).

He’s just been appointed to New Zealand’s most important diplomatic post, and none of his former colleagues at Red Alert can bring themselves to blog on it.

UPDATE: Audrey Young covers an interesting point:

Half a lifetime ago, in 1972, Mike Moore was the new young thing in politics, having won the marginal seat of Eden for Labour at the age of 23 – despite a vigorous campaign against him by opponents including the bearded 18-year-old Young National activist Murray McCully.

There were no hard feelings then – McCully ended up at Moore’s all-night celebrations.

Appointing the guy who beat you in your first election!

UPDATE 2: Denis Welch reminds us:

Ironically, when I interviewed him for the Clark book in November 2008, he was somewhat in the wilderness, having been passed over for appointments by the Clark government (he wasn’t even invited to the party’s 90th anniversary bash, which, rightly, rankled).

I’d forgotten they didn’t even invite him to the 90th birthday party. How petty.

The Herald reports:

Former Labour Prime Minister Mike Moore will be named today as NZ’s next US Ambassador.

Moore – who is also a former Director-General of the World Trade Organisation – was nominated by Foreign Minister Murray McCully for the top job.

He will be the second former Prime Minister to hold the role. Former PM Jim Bolger was seconded to Washington by Jenny Shipley after she ousted him as National’s leader.

This is a smart move. As a former WTO Director-General Moore has significant status, which counts in DC.

And with the slow progress towards a possible FTA, his skills and experience will be useful.

I wonder if Helen will congratulate him on his new job!

Mike Moore writes:

The Prime Minister smiles and sails on, changing tack with the wind. He has this non-political image. A sort of James Stewart, Tom Hanks, Henry Fonda, and golly gee, oh shucks attitude as though it’s all so new and surprising. A bit like the young Anna Paquin on Oscar night.

That the most obtuse comparison I’ve seen

Nick Smith had an effective year, although there is something extra terrestrial about him. I would not be surprised to learn he collects Star Trek dolls.

Heh. Nick is an engineer – he is more likely to build his own Enterprise!

Transport Minister Stephen Joyce seems in command of his portfolio and gives confidence to bald men everywhere. Social Development Minister Paula Bennett is a real danger to Labour. She is a cheerful, Westie battler whom people relate to and her approach to welfare is firming up National support.

I think Paula prefers her description.

If success is taking money from the many and giving it to your mates then the Maori Party has done well. They have cost the New Zealand people over $2 billion. That’s about $8 million a week for each of the five seats that National promised to abolish. It’s excused as smart MMP politics. Turiana Turia comes across as a kindly auntie and Pita Sharples as the good-natured principal of an intermediate school on sports day. They escape sceptical scrutiny from the lily-livered liberal media. Te Ururoa Flavell shows substance and could make them a New Zealand Maori Party, not just a Maori Party.

Hone Harawira is the kind of angry, insecure bloke I worked alongside at a freezing works in the Far North. He was honest in his vulgar vomit over non-Maoris but the real reason he should be ejected from Parliament is the way he wears his ties.

Hone gets the prize for the most famous line of the year, closely followed by former minister Chris Carter who, when excusing his overseas travel, warmed us with the news that his food bills were small because he and his partner were not big eaters.

I missed that one from Chris.

The Herald reports on Mike Moore’s new book:

Mr Moore said more wealth had been created in the past 60 years than in all of history. Hundreds of millions of people had been lifted out of extreme poverty through globalisation.

Yet so many have fought against it. An unholy alliance of the hard left and far right.

Mr Moore said globalisation was “not a policy, it’s a process” and while it could be slowed it could not be stopped. Fascist and Marxist states that arose after the Great Depression had been vicious and protectionist.

And one great legacy of Helen Clark (and Moore and Goff) is firmly placing NZ Labour into the mainstream on globalisation and pre free-trade.

Protectionism was the “crack cocaine” of economics. “It does stimulate you for a while but it is addictive and it will eventually kill you.”

Nice analogy.

The cover has endorsements by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and former Czech President Vaclav Havel. It was launched jointly by Foreign Minister Murray McCully and Labour leader Phil Goff.

Again good to see bipartisan support for globalisation and free trade.

I worry a bit about where Labour may go, after Goff. Either Shane Jones or David Cunliffe will I am sure be pro free trade. But Andrew Little may not be, as unions are often heavily protectionist.

Had to laugh reading a recent Q&A transcript:

PAUL:  But what is he doing?   Is he handing the Progressives to Labour, is that what he’s doing?

MIKE:  There’s nothing to hand across – except this.  There’ll be 38 activists who’ll want to go on the party list, who’ll want jobs in head office, in the leader’s office and they represent frequently the most unpleasant and the most unattractive side of the left.  And they will burrow in – they’re the chardonnay socialists who use the word mate because they think workers use it, and then they go to their vineyards and call each other furtively “comrade”.   They are not pleasant and they are not votable.

It will be interesting to see how many Progressive activists get places on the Labour List. In the meantime Jim keeps claiming extra salary and funding by pretending to be a party leader.

Mike Moore has said he thinks Helen Clark is the best candidate for the UNDP Administrator job, and has been lobbying on her behalf. He thinks she has a strong chance to win, rating her ahead of the unanmed other candidates.

Mike Moore has a column on helping impoverished countries, and how one problem is:

Dictators hardly ever quit. They can’t. They may be prosecuted or worse. Those who replace them may take revenge.

He goes on to say that maybe the best option is to offer them immunity, exile and a big pension so that they actually leave office.

Mike Moore writes in the Herald on the food crisis:

What has been the most successful 50 years of alleviating poverty in human history is threatened. What’s happening, what’s new?

Nothing is more important than food. In 12 months, corn and rice prices have doubled, wheat price tripled, soy beans up by 87 per cent, and global food reserves are at their lowest levels ever.

They are staggering increases for just one year.

The rush to biofuels is also impacting cruelly in agriculture, where massive subsidies and high oil prices are encouraging agricultural production away from basic foods. Tragically, rich countries are subsidising bio-fuel production, raising prices. Filling a Range Rover with subsidised ethanol takes as much “grain” as would feed an African family for a year. Rich countries’ fuel substitution programmes often consume more energy to produce than they save. It’s a populist Green response to global warming that does the opposite of what was intended.

People should reflect that Federated Farmers have warned that if the price of carbon reaches $50 then the Emissions Trading Scheme would stop basically all food production in NZ – profits are projected to drop 123%. Now before everyone accuses them of scaremongering – what would have been your reaction if say ten years ago someone predicted biofuels would help push 100 million people into poverty and contribute to a doubling of world food prices?

But how can you encourage poor countries to grow food when subsidies from rich countries can drop similar products into their local market, sometimes at a third of local prices?

The medium- and long-term solution is the Doha Development Trade round, which is now at a critical stage. Unless the players at the WTO can get closer in the next few weeks, the deal will not be cut this year.

I could not agree more. Countries at the WTO who do not stop subsidising their food, are a big part of the problem.

If the rich countries cannot find the political courage to front their subsidised farmers when food prices are so high and will remain high, when can they summon up the willpower to save themselves? Subsidies in rich countries are a direct cash transfer from the poorest consumers to the richest of producers.

Indeed. Yet strangely it is so called left wing politicians like Obama and (H) Clinton who rail against free trade,

Mike Moore makes some excellent arguments:

There are some who oppose New Zealand’s trade deal with China, and want a boycott of the Olympics. It’s precisely because China depends on the global trading system that world opinion on human rights now matters to the Chinese.

Thirty million people perished during the cultural revolution and Mao’s great leap backwards. World opinion didn’t matter to the Chinese then. Now it does, and that’s a good thing.

China is going through the same process as Japan, Singapore, and places like Taiwan. As living standards rise, a middle class emerges that seeks out better social outcomes. Wages in the Pearl River delta in China rose 13 per cent last year.

Seven thousand factories will close this year because wages have moved up and these jobs will head inland, or to Vietnam, even Africa. This is the virtue of free markets and globalisation.

For the first time the Chinese Government is answerable to its own laws – you can now sue the Government.

It’s no longer an atheist state; there are the beginnings of freedom of religion. Over 10,000 Chinese Muslims were allowed to go to the Haj in Mecca. Christians sued the Shanghai Government for wrongful arrest when they expressed their religious beliefs. This is an imperfect and uneven progress that should be celebrated.

All this is healthy and Prime Minister Helen Clark has hit the right note. …

The New Zealand /China trade deal is to be welcomed. Would our competitors turn it down? In fact, our advantage will last only a few years, if that, as others sign up.

All this exposes something else about New Zealand’s political process. Our Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, says he’s not a member of Government except when overseas and may not vote for it. How is this possible?

Peter Dunne has said he will vote for the deal but has the Chinese shaking in their boots by saying he won’t go to the reception. The Maori Party has taken different positions, but one MP said we shouldn’t trade with countries that pay lower wages than NZ. That means we can’t trade with Samoa, forcing them to pay more for goods from anywhere else.

At last the adults in the Labour and National Parties have taken control for a short time and done what is right for New Zealand. This deal is worth a few hundred million dollars to New Zealand, small compared to the Uruguay Trade round, and tiny compared to what this country will get from the Doha Trade round.

Why is it so small? Because the terms of China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation collapsed tariffs in agriculture by 90 per cent. Isn’t it a good thing that China is now inside the WTO and answerable to its rules, obligations, and binding legal disputes system? The WTO and the Doha Round is still the biggest global game.

But New Zealand can do a deal with China and advance the WTO. It’s a melancholy fact the best thing I ever did was leave New Zealand to run the World Trade Organisation. China joined the WTO and the Doha Trade round was launched in my time. Modesty prevents me from pointing this out.

Completing the Doha round would be a better achievement, but to be fair to Moore he can’t be held responsible for that not happening!