Q + A Panel Discussions

The panel discussions between Paul Holmes, Dr Jon Johansson, Peter Chin & Fran O'Sullivan have been transcribed below. The full length video interviews and panel discussions from this morning's Q+A can also be seen on tvnz.co.nz at, http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news

Q+A is repeated on TVNZ 7 at 9.10pm on Sunday nights and 10.10am and 2.10pm on Mondays.

PANEL DISCUSSIONS led by PAUL HOLMES

PAUL Let's talk about investments in farms, Crafer of course being the big issue at the moment. Here's what John Key said.

John Key: "You know from New Zealand's point of view the bottom line is you know can we get investment, can we get ultimately value for money.

Guyon: Type of investment that you want obviously. You seem to be saying that's not farms, you're not interested in the Chinese or anyone else, foreign companies, foreign countries coming in and buying New Zealand farms. Not a good thing?

John Key: Well I can't see what it really delivers for New Zealand."

So there's an economic argument there of course Fran O'Sullivan, but he's also reading the mood of the electorate?

FRAN O'SULLIVAN - Herald Columnist

Yes very much so, but you have to say at what stage is John Key actually going to do something about it. If he wants to go down this route he's really talking about changing the foreign investment rules, and actually making you know that you can't buy land if you're a foreigner, and I think you get into a problem. The problem is we have a large number of you know basically over leveraged farms who have bankers who are screaming, who need new owners, and that capital's not necessarily coming from New Zealand, it is coming from elsewhere, not just China, but also the Middle East, because they can see the long term value of those farms.

PAUL Alright Peter, when the Prime Minister's talking about New Zealand, he says he goes in as a leader, and he says to the Chinese leadership that New Zealand has a very proud record on human rights, you reacted quite strongly during the interview to that. What do you mean, do you disagree with him.

PETER CHIN - Dunedin Mayor

Yes I do. I think when you look back at history, and I spose the history of any country, there are always things that we're not particularly proud of, and as a Chinese and as a descendant from poll tax payers, I was very much reminded of the history of the Chinese in New Zealand, and the way they were treated. They were legislated against in terms of poll tax, and it was only a few years ago that the Prime Minister of the day Helen Clark apologised to the descendants of the poll tax payers, for the way that they were treated by New Zealand.

PAUL Yes there's something quite odd really about the leader of a country of four million people grandly lecturing a country of about 1.3 billion people, when you can hear the noise and the energy of that economy going on behind the Prime Minister.

JON JOHANSSON - Political Analyst

You know we have gone one stage which is to actually acknowledge and apologise, remember there was the apology belated though it was Peter, whereas you know can you imagine an apology coming from the mouth of any Chinese leader about the great leap backward?

PETER I think all these things have their place, because I would think also that perhaps some of our Maori brothers would look back and say well even now are there not issues in terms of human rights type issues that we are not facing up to. I think it's very difficult when you stand as you say as a country of four million people, lecturing to somebody that you're trying to do business with.

JON But we haven't been lecturing, this is the point if anything, we've been you know I think John Key has been kowtowing. You know how many times does he want to apologise for an incident on the forecourt of parliament?

PAUL Let's talk about dealing with China now. He says we don't want to become tenant farmers or tenant people in our own country Fran O'Sullivan, he's wanting hi-tech Chinese involvement in the economy, hi-tech Chinese investment, and when it comes to getting the Chinese, he talks about how fractured the wine industry is you know. I think Mr Mahon who's on the programme later speaks about how fractured going into the US our mussel industry has been, and so their distributors drive the price down between our fellows and then they make all the dough and retail prices stay high. Are we gonna have to back much more as NZ Inc going into China?

FRAN Yes I think really right across the board, because several things struck me about the Prime Minister's interview. One, he talked about the foreign investment issued, he talked about Mandarin speaking, he talked about wanting to - in actual fact it would be treble the New Zealand exports to China in the space of five years, overall trade doubling, but trebling that. Nowhere was there any sense of a concrete strategy or urgency, like where is our China strategy, and we've had a whole pile of Ministers go up to China but there has been no published strategy about just how we would implement this, and the government has .

JON And what does a threefold increase actually mean for like resource contention within New Zealand?

PAUL And isn't it amazing that last year for the first time, the number of classes speaking Mandarin became more than Latin. I mean isn't it possible, okay we've got 2000 French teachers we'd have to deal with, and there'd be trouble there of course, but we've gotta learn Mandarin done we Peter? We've been so hopeless.

PETER Yes we have been. I think Dunedin has I think one or two schools only teaching Mandarin, but we have as the Prime Minister has said some nearly quarter of a million of Chinese descent. There's been a huge influx of immigrants in who have language skills...

PAUL Why can't the Chinese students who are going to increasingly come here teach our kids?

JON We would want those people to be actually working on the interface between that relationship.

PAUL Quick word, are we friends with China? Here's what the Prime Minister said about this little question, are we friends with China, or do we have a different relationship?

Guyon: "it's a commercial relationship - is that it?

John Key: It's a commercial relationship - ah well we're geographically in the same sector of the world."

We're a South Asian economy, are we friends Peter or simply a business relationship?

PETER We've got to be friends. If China is going to be basically our biggest business partner the relationship has gotta be more than just business for it to be able to be sustained, and maybe the Prime Minister has got to look at it, perhaps not sorry, European New Zealand has gotta look at that, there's quarter of a million Chinese here so there is an Asian face.

PAUL I understand, are we friends or a business relationship?

JON Well to be fair to the Prime Minister we need to develop broad and deep roots and that's when the relationship becomes one more of friendship.

*********

In Response to DAVID MAHON interview

PAUL So what he's saying essentially is that as China becomes more prosperous more educated, more of its people are housed and educated, the Communist Party will pull back, do you agree with that?

JON I can't see the Communist Party pulling back you know in my lifetime, to the extent that it would become a full democracy Paul. I mean you know you've got the control issue and that's why, I'm not being sympathetic but at least acknowledge the problem from the elite's point of view of how to you control 1.2 billion people and the mechanisms of control.

PAUL What he's saying is they don't really any more. Of course what we're looking at there, I mean you aren't supposed to become a prosperous nation according to western thinkers if you've got a democracy.

JON Yeah they're breaking their property rights Paul, absolutely there's not the freedom and choice that's available in western democracies by any stretch, but the Chinese throughout their history have always been a pragmatic people and a very entrepreneurial people, so you know the system of government in a sense, is in some ways secondary to what's always been their primary focus.

PAUL There's that wonderful quote from Chris Patten the last Governor of Hong Kong who said recently you've gotta remember that in the last 18 of the last 20 centuries China has been the dominant power. He's talking for New Zealanders going, and he said we don't take advice, we go in ad hoc, we break the rules, we don't build relationships, and he's talking about the importance of building relationships, and of course you being a sister city you know the importance of relationships when doing business with the Chinese. Explain that.

PETER Well I think Dunedin has been rather unique, that it is a sister city of Shanghai, which is rather bizarre when you think they've got 20 million and we've got 120,000 we can fit into one of their apartment blocks. But the reality is that they chose us many years ago and the interview there kind of developed on how those things happened, and over the last say five years certainly since I've been the Mayor of the city, the relationship that we've developed with the Shanghai government has been huge, that I seem to have access to the office of the Mayor of Shanghai.

PAUL A very important figure in Shanghai, you've met him three times.

PETER Yes I have and whatever he says happens, so that kind of relationship, that kind of relationship, it's actually quite scary that nobody actually cares too much about me in Dunedin, but in Shanghai the Mayor of Dunedin has status.

PAUL They will when they see the beauty of that stadium lit up to the world.

PETER I'm sure they will. But it is that though.

PAUL New Zealand is a South Asian economy and we ain't got our heads around that, how the politicians have, Clark got it and this government is getting it, the business community not quite yet. Here's what he said about the way we still think.

David Mahon: 'Going to Australia is like going to the rich neighbours for lunch. Going to England is like going back to stay with your grandmother, and it's all very comfortable and it's all really within the sort of Anglo Saxon English speaking world, but the future for New Zealand is Asia.'

FRAN Well I think there is a bit of a conundrum that he referred to, and that is we are a nation of SM Es and they are quite small. Our SMEs are actually facing a tough enough time trying to survive right now let along going offshore.

PAUL SMEs?

FRAN Small medium enterprises. And so I think on that score it is difficult. I have to say that David wearing his hat as a Chair of the China Beachhead's programme, has done enormous amount of work up there but there have been conflicts at times between his view of what's necessary and NZ Trade and Enterprise's view of what's necessary, it hasn't always been comfortable.

PAUL Well he's a businessman isn't he. Trade and Enterprise are Foreign Affairs bureaucrats aren't they?

FRAN Yeah well and he's had good champions David, from people like Tim Groser who do want to see what happens there, but one thing I would like to touch on is what I'm seeing happening now in the China New Zealand relationship, and we're seeing now big companies like China Roads Bridge Corporation coming down here. That is the one that's referred to earlier by Guyon looking at perhaps contracting for Transmission Gully. Subtext to that, it's not a big project compared to what they do in China and some of the other client nations, but it would be the first major foray into a western developed nation, and they see that as a test case for what they might do in America and elsewhere, and also higher into Fisher & Paykel, the people into PG Wrightson. I think this is again sort of those cornerstone stakes, kind of operationalising it here, getting it to be seen friendly here, and then Australia, you know America elsewhere.

PAUL And of course we're of little political cost to the Chinese because we're small, we're non aligned within the OECD.

JON But New Zealand has to make sure that Chinese isn't the way that the same client relationship we had with Britain for most of our history, and that we don't just become supplicants to that. If we're going to have a thriving 21st century economy and especially at the hi-tech end as well, we need to diversify way beyond China as well and we need to be always outreaching, and so we should also be using that relationship to find ways that are gonna work in different cultures.

PAUL Is the rise of China as big as the rise of the British Raj, as big as the rise of Rome, what we're seeing?

FRAN I think it's bigger myself, well it's bigger cos it's in our lifetimes and it is going to wrought profound change in how we do business and how we do politics.

PAUL I've got wrap it people, what's coming up next week, what are you looking forward to next week?

PETER Surviving in Dunedin, just keeping on wondering about what's happening up here in Auckland.

PAUL Continue to wonder, you will not work it out.

JON A deaf advocate is making a submission at a Select Committee on Monday raising the very important issue of accessibility for campaign education programmes and all of that to incorporate easy language in that and subtext and everything for deaf people, and that's part of our community that you know we should support that they have the same information in our democracy as the rest of us.

PAUL Just a thought that's come to mine, I'm mean French and Latin yes and German, and we've also got over to our right across that Pacific ocean we've got a vast number of people who speak Spanish - Fran.

FRAN Well I guess, I'm not sure that the Prime Minister will be back but I'd be looking to see some leaves on the branches around a China strategy. I don't think you can go away and talk about trebling what we do in trade with China, lack of Mandarin all the rest of it, without actually starting to put out some real changes.

PAUL And do you expect to get that?

FRAN Well I would expect to get it and if not I think political parties, oppositional parties and media should be asking some sensible intelligent questions, like why not.

PAUL Get the China plan.

ENDS

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