With respect to the CIA's involvement in New Zealand, there is no evidence of any attempt by the CIA to assassinate former Labour Prime Minister Norman Kirk. It is an amusing concept, though, which does have a degree of currency among some of the more far-fetched conspiracy theorists, along with the idea that the Erebus disaster was no accident, and that Australian PM Harold Holt faked his own drowning to escape to China, to whom he had been selling state secrets...
We don't have many (sub)-urban myths here in the Antipodes, and it's not nearly as wide-spread as the JFK stories in the US, but it is colourful, nonetheless.
The NZ-Australia relationship is similar to the Canada-US relationship. We all tell jokes about our near neighbours, occasionally engage in anti-neighbour sentiment, while the larger neighbour often ignores the smaller. There's often a lot of envy by the smaller with regards to the larger, while the smaller often fails to register on the larger country's radar screen.
You asked who New Zealand's nearest economic competitor is. I don't think the answer is a specific country. Just as within the context of NAFTA, Canada and the US cannot really be seen as competitors, within the Australia-New Zealand CER relationship, we cooperate in a common market for most goods.
New Zealand's major exports are dairy commodities, and meat and wool exports. Australia's dairy and meat production is relatively much smaller, against their relatively very large grain and wheat production. Australia has a substantial mineral export base, whereas New Zealand has virtually none. In terms of economic production, we do both rely on land-based industries, but the relative spread is quite different.
The real threats to our economic advancement in New Zealand is market access. While our economy is extremely open to goods and services, many other markets are not open to us. We face major tariff and non-tariff barriers in accessing many markets; and while the goods and services that we sell are totally unsubsidised, we find ourselves competing, particularly in agricultural commodities, with countries that have no qualms about subsidising agricultural production.
You mentioned in another post that New Zealand's reputation at the WTO has diminished. I'm not entirely sure where this view comes from. The current WTO Director-General is a former NZ Prime Minister, and until recently a senior NZ diplomat was a member of the Appelate Board. We have been vigorous proponents of market liberalisation at all of the Ministerial meetings. We have never lost a dispute that we have taken to the WTO (which include such mighty economic powers as the United States, the EU, Brazil, Korea, and Canada).
It is not correct that our international trade policy team has been gutted since the Seattle ministerial meeting. With the exception of a change of Minister, almost all the delegation that participated in Seattle will be present at Doha next month.
Since Seattle, we have concluded a free trade agreement with Singapore (which is more extensive than CER with Australia), and made significant progress on a bilateral with Hong Kong. We have just begun discussions with Australia and ASEAN over joining CER with the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement.
Following APEC in New Zealand in 1999, there was a view that APEC had "run its course". That view was shared by then-Opposition leader Helen Clark. Political rhetoric aside, New Zealand has continued to make major advancements in trade liberalisation, particularly at the bilateral level, under Helen Clark's government, since the APEC meeting in Auckland. Multi-lateral agreements are a whole lot harder; APEC is a microcosm of the WTO in this respect. If the WTO can reach agreement to include agricultural products, then it would be relatively simple to advance things within APEC. Of course, one of the drivers within the establishment of APEC was to form a clear Asia-Pacific position first, as a means of influencing APEC, rather than the other way around. But progress is still being made.
Now, Australia decided several months ago that it would try to pursue a free trade agreement with the US on its own, excluding New Zealand. As you rightly point out, there are specific reasons why the US might be more willing to pursue an agreement with NZ than Australia. We are still seeking a bilateral with the US, and we have received positive noises from the US on this. The fact that we have succeeded in a free trade agreement with Singapore and almost Hong Kong, where Australia hasn't, is also an attraction to the US.
I can only speculate that the current Government's decision to freeze tariffs on some imported goods, instead of continuing with the proposed phase-out of all tariffs by 2005, may have taken away a degree of the moral force of NZ's international trade liberalisation argument. It is correct that NZ's current message is that it will look at further trade liberalisation only when it is in New Zealand's national interest; however, the level of trade protection in New Zealand is absolutely minimal, anyway, and confined to very limited industry sectors.
For instance, New Zealand has a tariff on imports of textiles and clothing. From memory, the tariff is set at 5%. It is slightly irrelevant in any case, since Fiji, one of the major exporters of low-value textiles and clothing to New Zealand, is part of the South Pacific Free Trade Agreement, and no tariff is levied on their goods imported to New Zealand. Amusingly, considering our anti-nuclear stance, one of the more obscure imported goods in the scheduled zero-tariff reductions by 2005 is the importation of nuclear reactors to New Zealand!
So perhaps New Zealand's stated position on national interest is a departure from our unfettered free trade position of the past. Perhaps it may undermine our call for reductions of trade barriers in other countries. That's a fair call. But in reality, the current tariffs in New Zealand are so small that we are still way ahead of the world in reducing trade protection.
This post has become somewhat rambling, over several different topics, and I apologise for this.
Kind regards,
Hamish Price