Trade unions

First published in Column Eight on the 26^th May, 1993

An election year promise: New Zealand will become a nation of brown and white Asians.

Brendon Burns in The Press quotes words spoken by one Rev G H McNeur in 1926. ‘The average New Zealander has not begun to realise that the future of his country is in any serious way bound up with the happenings in China. China is awake. Is New Zealand asleep?’

Burns claims McNeur wondered why we hadn’t understood that our future is inextricably tied to China. Was that what McNeur had in mind? Perhaps, in those days, he was rather more concerned with China as a threat.

In the 1920s many New Zealanders barely knew that nations like China and Japan existed. And during the war one of these people became hated foreigners – for some Kiwis that still are. Perhaps we were wise to wait.

Mr Bolger, in his recent junket round three of the Big Asian nations, at least avoided the appalling arrogance attributed to Sir Keith Holyoake in his Asian dealings. Austin Mitchell wrote: ‘Sir Keith admonished the Japanese to drink more milk and eat more meat, to grow up big and strong and presumably slow their economic growth rate down to New Zealand’s.’

As a thumb-sucking self-secure little nation for so long, tied to Mother Empire’s apron strings, some of us are baulking at all the new trading partners we’re acquiring. We have some mind-resetting to do, especially in terms of viewing Korea, China and Japan as part of our neighbourhood.

Exporters, however, see dollar signs clinking above the heads of the 1.2 billion Chinese. But they look further than that: to other Asian countries – and the Pacific. There’s Papua New Guinea, and of course, the great Pacific nation, Australia.

Trade is all very well, but it isn’t all one way. You can’t just empty your containers on foreign shores while your overseas bank account fills up with dollars. Our trading partners will want to send us something in return.

Australia promotes Neighbours-liness in one of its soaps, but in real life, Crass Economic Return lies across the Strait.

What do we get for our export of expatriates, for example. A million dollar bill for feeding them! do they appreciate us sending them our finest rugby players? No – they stomp their springs all over the face of our national sport by cluttering up our TV screens with something called State of Origin. (Very puzzling – I thought I knew the names of all Australia’s states. Or is this some obscure reference to the confusions of an early church father?)

The more trading we do the more like our trading partners we may being to look. (And possibly like us, although with 1.2 billion Chinese it seems unlikely.)

Will all our New Zealand-made stuff have to go overseas, just to keep up with the rush we’re told is coming? Will we in return begin to wear garments made in places as diverse as Port Moresby, Osaka and Beijing (or even Melbourne!)?

No doubt this trading will eventually reduce our overseas debts. We can begin putting some money back into our own people again, in the form of classes in Japanese, Chinese, Pidgin and Ocker. That may prove more long-sighted than sending people off to Burnham/Waiouru for six weeks.

I would like to contribute this suggestion to international trade in celebration of my new-found Asiasticity. On a recent trip to China, a friend of mine found it necessary to carry toilet paper – at all times. Obviously this produce is in short supply.

Right here in Dunedin we have a company producing the stuff, almost on the wharf. How easy it will be to run the fork-lift across the road from factory to ship.

With all this new trade-unioning, I have another hope. That soon we’ll be able to call our national fruit by its rightful name again: the Chinese gooseberry.

Rev McNeur. Photo courtesy of 
The Presbyterian Research Centre, Dunedin

 think this is a good example of how not to write a weekly column. The title is a pun that doesn't get referenced again the text. The focus starts in one place and shifts halfway through to another. It begins in a fairly serious fashion and ends with mostly oddball humour. It doesn’t sound to me as though I actually had much idea what I was talking about when I wrote it, so it probably can be classed, at best, as a filler.

However, it has a certain historic value: trade is still a big issue, and there are now far more Asian people living in New Zealand than would have been contemplated in 1993, many from India, which doesn’t get a mention in this article.