 Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for coming. We're really delighted to have you here, and we're very delighted to welcome Foreign Minister McCully. Everything I've heard so far is that this has been a very successful visit. And I think it just reflects a sentiment that we all feel that it's about time. You know, we've had a long period between our two countries where there was such a natural opportunity for us to work together, but we couldn't find a way to do it. And we're finally getting over all of that, and it's really encouraging that we have it. I think it predated the tragic earthquake that New Zealand experienced, but it brought us all so much closer together. We had a delegation through Ambassador Moore's Good Offices. We had a major delegation in Christchurch when that happened, and odd nothing brings you closer together than this. And it just cemented a commitment that we have to each other, and I think that's been reflected by the spirit that Foreign Minister McCully has received in coming. But it's also been a long overdue rapprochement. You know, I was up in Capitol Hill when it started going sour, you know? And it was really two governments that took us in that way. It wasn't two peoples, but it takes a while sometimes to overcome that, and all of a sudden you just stop and say, well, why are we mad at each other? I mean, I can't remember. And so let's get on with a new world, and the new world is one where there's so much where we will benefit together, mutually, we'll benefit by working closely with each other, and I'm so glad that I've lived long enough to see this happen. So Foreign Minister, we will turn to you for your remarks, and then my colleague Dr. Mike Green is going to keep this terribly indisciplined group in control to ask decent questions of you. Please help me welcome Foreign Minister McCully. Thank you very much, and can I just reflect on those sentiments very briefly? If you are ever planning to have a tragic earthquake, you should always make sure that you've got a high-level delegation of Americans in town, because from the sense of shared threat and tragedy that arose from the earthquake, there has been an amazing outpouring of generosity from the American people, led by those who were present in many cases in Christchurch. I just wanted to take this opportunity to put on record the enormous appreciation of the New Zealand Government and the New Zealand people for not just the warmth and good wishes that flowed our way, but their material assistance, and in particular I want to mention the American friends of Christchurch who have made such a material contribution to support those who need help in Christchurch at the moment. I want to mention in particular Dr Peter Watson, whose work in this respect is greatly appreciated. You may have heard those of you who know that Dr Watson and I do know each other, that we were in the same class at law school, that is only partly true. We were enrolled in the same class, I was off playing politics most of the time, and as evidenced by his subsequent career, he attended the lectures and learnt something. But I just wanted to say, Peter and Dee Dee, how much we appreciate the leadership that you've brought to this particular American Friends of Christchurch group and the generosity that American people have shown to us. So can I just please put that on the record? And the other introductory comment I just wanted to reflect on is the fact that where there have been differences, they have not been differences between two peoples. And the acid test for that, from my perspective, was when we decided to try and do a few things in New Zealand that we thought would make the relationship work better, there were some who thought, well, there's a latent anti-Americanism or something that's driven this attitude in New Zealand over a period of time, and I've never believed that. And anyone who saw Hillary Clinton's visit to New Zealand last November would have seen the evidence. It was given the Rockstar treatment in New Zealand. Even in the function I posted at Parliament, it was amazing to see significant members of our community, leaders of our community, give her the Rockstar treatment in that way, and it told me a good deal about the sentiment that exists between the two peoples, as you say, and we're very pleased to have the opportunity as policy makers to build upon that. I want to thank you indeed for the opportunity to say a few words about some key features of our foreign policy, and in particular some of the areas in which those foreign policy interests intersect. I'm in Washington this week to continue the wide-ranging dialogue between New Zealand and the United States about the areas where we can work together. I met with the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, yesterday. We discussed the progress that we had made since November when we signed the so-called Wellington Declaration, which was about establishing a framework within which we could cooperate more generally, but also specifically that we could make our partnership more effective in the Pacific. The topics we discussed ranged from Afghanistan, where we're working shoulder to shoulder to challenges in the Middle East and North Africa, and of course to the growing engagement of your country in Asia, particularly through the East Asia Summit, something I'll say something about in a minute. But it's clear from the discussions that we've had, and we've had a wide range of discussions in the space of a day and a half, that there was a very strong sense of partnership emerging on a number of different fronts. Our small South Pacific country has its heritage deeply rooted in Europe. Our values and principles are strongly focused around the rule of law, human rights, and a commitment to democratic institutions, and these are deeply embedded in our thinking. They are a basis for the strong sense of alignment we therefore have with US foreign policy, and that's why we work together on a range of issues that cause the world so much difficulty. But in other respects, despite those origins, New Zealand is defined by its geography. Our economic prospects are deeply intertwined with those of the rapidly growing economies of Asia, yet both our makeup and our geography give us an increasing involvement in and responsibility for the future stability and security of the Pacific. I often refer to the former, the Asian region as our zone of opportunity, and the latter as our zone of responsibility. In both of these two respects we see dynamic, evolving situations in which the growing sense of alignment between our two countries should see us working increasingly closely together. New Zealand's relationship with its closest neighbour, Australia, is both our greatest asset and our greatest challenge. For 30 years our two countries have enjoyed probably the world's most complete free trade deal, and the massive degree of economic integration that's happened has been overwhelmingly positive for the New Zealand economy. At the same time, the fact that our people and capital have complete freedom of movement to Australia represents a constant challenge, unless New Zealand can present opportunities that are the equal of those available across the Tasman, both our capital and our skills will gradually migrate there. The fact that we live on the edge of the Asia Pacific region at a time that is widely regarded as the Asia Pacific century is our big opportunity. And the architecture now in place, and will now be put in place, should provide a strong basis for pursuing this opportunity. We were the first developed nation to conclude a free trade deal with China, and our exports have doubled in the three years that the FTA has been in operation, with China now moving past the US as our second largest trading partner behind Australia. Ratification has just been completed of the FTA between the CER partners, that's New Zealand and Australia, and ASEAN, creating a market of over 600 million people, including economies like Vietnam and Indonesia. Big countries in our terms growing at an excessive 7%. So we're also in FTA discussions with Korea and with India, and we're very close to concluding a free trade agreement with Russia. But it is the prospect of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, bringing the possibility of a single Pacific market, including the US and New Zealand, along with other Pacific Rim countries, that holds the best promise of a game-changing initiative in our wider region. And it's here that economic leadership from our two countries is important to the TPP proposal succeeding. And can I say I've been greatly heartened by the positive sentiments, quite determined sentiments that I've heard around Washington in respect of the TPP over the last day and a half. But it's not just an area of trade that our two countries were able to cooperate in relation to the economies of Asia. This year the US joins the East Asia Summit, an organisation that New Zealand's been a party to since its inception. We very much welcome this initiative on the US part, which will bring that body much closer to becoming the regional clearinghouse on matters of regional security, trade, economic and disaster management cooperation. The character of US participation in the EAS later this year will have a key influence over the shape of regional architecture for some time ahead. And it's been very valuable here in Washington to secure a closer understanding of how that process is seen by the United States. We New Zealand are very keen to play a very constructive role here. US interests in Asia and the US determination to engage more actively in the region will see our two countries work more closely together in the years immediately ahead. But it's in relation to our involvement in the Pacific neighbourhood that I wanted to focus most of my comments today. When it comes to the Pacific our two countries have much in common. New Zealand is a country comprised of two large Pacific islands. The United States has one state, Hawaii, and three territories, Guam, the Northern Marianas and American Samoa, which are also islands sitting in the Pacific Ocean. And just as New Zealand has special constitutional relationships with the Cook Islands, Tokula and Nui, the same is true of the United States and the three compact states in the North Pacific Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands. In September of this year the 16 nations of the Pacific Forum, including Australia and New Zealand, will hold the 40th anniversary in Auckland, coincidentally on the same week as the opening game of the Rugby World Cup being hosted in New Zealand. And in fact on the post-forum dialogue will occur on the same day as the opening match between the Orblacks and Tonga. So it was an occasion that we wanted to take full advantage of. I welcome the opportunity for New Zealand to host this milestone meeting because the government of which I'm a member has attempted to sharply elevate our focus on our own role within the region. In the past week I've been to both Tonga and the Cook Islands. So that next few weeks I'll be in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Nui and probably Fiji and probably also in the Cook Islands and Tonga again. I say probably Fiji because that is a visit that is planned as a member of the ministerial contact group of the forum in relation to Fiji's forum status and that meeting is yet to be confirmed. The reason we're so focused on New Zealand's role in the region is simple. We are in a population sense very much part of the Pacific region. Let me illustrate my point. There are now a little over 170,000 Samoans living in Samoa. There are over 130,000 Samoans living in New Zealand. There are just over 100,000 Tongans living in Tonga and over 50,000 Tongan New Zealanders. In relation to the realm states the equation is a little different because those people have as New Zealand citizens a free right of access to New Zealand. So in respect of the Cook Islands there are 60,000 Cook Islanders living in New Zealand and 12 and a half thousand remaining in the Cooks. In relation to Nui there are 22,000 Nuians living in New Zealand and only 1,000 on a good day living in Nui. So I hope I illustrate my point that we are very much a part of the Pacific region. There has been substantial migration to New Zealand and there is now a complex web of family and other connections between New Zealanders and other citizens of our region. These equip our country in a unique way to play a role as a regional facilitator especially in our own part of the Pacific which of course is Polynesia. These features give us a capacity to deliver to our partnership with Australia and the region a level of engagement that compensates to some extent for a relative lack of size and budget and we are very focused on this reality at a time when Australia is dramatically increasing its ADA spend from about four and a half billion to eight billion dollars some of which will find its way into the region and for New Zealand to add real value without the same size checkbook we have to become more effective facilitators, more effective managers within the region if we are going to give value and we are very intent on doing so. So for New Zealand hosting the 40th meeting of Pacific leaders is an opportunity for us to advance an agenda that we believe is critical to the future viability of the region and its members. I want to mention just three areas in particular which I hope to see our co-operation enhanced in the immediate future. First I want to say that we very much welcome the fact that USAID will again become a presence in the Pacific region and we understand perfectly the challenges of having a coordinated presence around the Pacific. Between New Zealand and Australia we are developing an almost instinctive capacity to avoid duplication so in some cases that means that we simply hand a check to the Australians and say hey we want to be part of your program in places like Nauru and that is how it works in respect of the Cook Islands and Nui they do the same with us. I would like to think that between the two trans-Tasman partners we could offer the opportunity for partnerships that would ensure that the US could establish a strong and visible development presence in the region relying substantially on our facilitation skills. I want to perhaps say in relation to this that we have as a government made some changes to our policy in terms of the aid side of the shop. The aid function used to be a separate agency it has now been brought back inside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs it's now a division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I was responsible for leading the charge on this because I wanted total alignment between diplomatic and development functions and it seemed to me when you're a small player with not a very big budget and when you're intent on doing important game changing things in your own region then you simply can't afford to have a lack of alignment between your diplomatic and development roles and so we've brought those two together. We've allocated a significantly increased size of the budget to the Pacific side of our work and we'll continue to do so at the same time as resisting budget pressures to cut the development budget we've managed to maintain it and so in addition to stepping up our work in places like the Cook Islands Tonga and Samoa we've increased our budgets by about 40% in the couple of years I've been in this job in each of those cases we were able to turn to high priority areas like Tarawa and Kiribati and if any of you have been there recently you'll know that presents one of the biggest development challenges in our region where you've got humanitarian issues that you might expect to find in some parts of more difficult parts of Africa. We were intent on making a serious difference there we were spending about three million dollars a year in Kiribati when I took this job on we'll spend thirty million there next year and we're working really hard to leverage the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank and I think we've got about seventy seven million dollars worth of partnerships out of our work with them in the last few months and I say that to illustrate that we are very intent on playing an increased role ourselves within the region and we want to see that as a base for enhanced cooperation and hopefully for really strong partnerships between USA, New Zealand and Australia in our region. Second in relation to governance I think we need to acknowledge that there are remain significant challenges for us to deal with in our own region. Political instability has sadly become too great a feature of too many Pacific nations and that's one of the reasons we simply need to stand fairly firm on Fiji. It'll be quite clear about this that Fiji is not the only country in the Pacific that could find itself being run by military dictatorship if that sort of behaviour was to become acceptable or fashionable within our region and I'm not going to go naming names I simply say that if you're a glass half empty sort of guy looking at the changes of government and the fragility of governments across the region it wouldn't be too hard to cry yourself to sleep at night. There are challenges there driven by political instability and I think we need to be very joined up in the way in which we deal with those and here can I say that the approach that Dr Kurt Campbell has brought to the maintenance of relations and in the Pacific has been absolutely first-class we have very frequent very direct very meaningful communications in this area and our countries work very closely together. So we need to find an active there's a need for active complementary diplomacy and development work from New Zealand Australia and the United States focusing on improving governance across our region. I think we also need to say to some of our other partners who are active in the development world within our region that we want them to work more closely with us as well and I say quite directly that an ongoing conversation I have with the Chinese government is our strong desire for them to join us in partnership and some development work within the region and also for them to work with us in relation to governance issues in the region. Third point is that there are two sectors in particular that call for a strong and immediate focus in terms of our development programs. Firstly the provision of renewable energy and secondly the management of the region's fishery stocks. All of the smaller Pacific nations are being hammered by the cost of imported diesel for the purpose of generating electricity in some cases they're paying two or three times what you would pay for diesel in the United States. For many it represents arguably the largest single strain on their economies. Many many reports have been written by consultants about renewable energy within the Pacific yet little has been done to introduce renewable energy into the region. There have been some spasmodic attempts but on a serious scale it just hasn't happened. Leading up to the Pacific forum leaders meeting later this year I hope that this is something that we can change and that is a statement of intent. We are working very hard to try and make sure that we get practical projects planned, designed and off the ground and that we start having conversations with prospective partners. The Pacific badly needs for both environmental and economic reasons. Renewable energy in large doses over the next couple of years. It would be a game changer for many of the small Pacific nations and New Zealand is determined to lead the charge and work with development partners to achieve this. The fisheries resource of the Pacific represents the largest single economic asset for some of the poorest countries that we have in the region and if I could go back to Kiribati as an example again a country that's got arguably the biggest challenges of most types within our region. They have an EEZ an exclusive economic zone that is just over 3.5 million square kilometers which is colossal. New Zealand thinks it's got a large EEZ I think about 2.2 million square kilometers so this is a large economic asset for a country like Kiribati. That is the case with so many Pacific countries they see too little benefit for this resource in terms of the direct return to the owners. Across the 14 Pacific nations that are members of the forum last year around $2 billion worth of fish was taken out of the collective zone. Estimates I've seen started about $400 million and work up from there in terms of illegal and unreported catch. Now that is a lot of wealth to go disappearing out of the hands of some people who don't have very much to start with in excess of $400 million a year in unlawful fishing. So that is something we need to do something about. At the moment the US Tuna Treaty hangs in the balance. It's an area where we want to work with the US administration. There needs to be a fair return provided to the Pacific Island countries for resources that are taken from the EEZ and enhanced opportunities for their participation in the fishery. But we also recognize that it needs to happen on terms that will secure the continued presence of the United States in the fishery. It's important to us in the context of our own development objectives and the overall upgrade of fisheries management in the region that we work together to achieve this. My point here is that some collective work from partners to ensure improved fisheries management, better surveillance, training of observers and monitors and training of Pacific people for employment in the fishery sector could materially improve economic outcomes for many Pacific countries. And to go back to the Kiribati example, we're trying to secure a better approach to the management of the fishery. We're trying to step up the surveillance work we do. We're trying to ensure that we upgrade the fisheries training centre so that they can insist that they have a certain number of people on the boats that are trained in the centre and more directly participate in their own fisheries business. New Zealand's currently the largest provider of aerial surveillance of Pacific country EEZs and the role of our new offshore patrol vessels will ensure a significant increase in New Zealand's surface patrolling of the Pacific from this year. It's an area where we want to work more closely with the United States and I raised this in a number of my meetings while I've been here in Washington. With the US Coast Guard, we're looking to step up our engagement and through the Coast Guard's Oceania Maritime Security Initiative, which I understand is undertaken in conjunction with some of the government agency partners here, we want to enhance cooperation. Again, it's an area where you can see that collective action from the forum should emerge later this year. So I hope that we will face up to the fact that there are still very substantial challenges for us to confront in the Pacific region. There are issues affecting both the environmental and economic sustainability of our region that cry out for attention and the areas in which New Zealand and the United States have got a shared interest in ensuring that we make progress quickly. I want to close my remarks by underlining just how seriously we take our commitment to the Pacific region, how highly we regard US engagement in the region, how much we want to be in partnership with the United States because we think we can materially change the future for some people who live as our neighbors and increasingly in New Zealand's case, our family, who are capable of having their lot in life improved very substantially if we all work together. So these are significant challenges, but the challenges that we wish to see us take together. Thank you very much. Minister, thank you very much indeed for a compelling and strategic and comprehensive presentation. I'm pleased and honored to serve as the convener for the Q&A session. I must confess, I'm a little bit jealous. I was the senior Asia official and the National Security Council staff under President Bush and we made progress on some of these issues, but we never quite got over the goal line in the way that my friend Kurt Campbell is doing in partnership with your government today. Kurt's a good friend, so I won't be too jealous, but we never quite had the stars aligned quite right. It wasn't just frankly five, six years ago, Wellington and Washington, there was a broader regional context. Canberra's views matter on this. Tokyo's views mattered enormously. The stars are aligning in a way that there's progress now and that there's very, very broad recognition of what we saw. And I think that people saw at the end of the Clinton administration that this is not just a sort of a la carte relationship, it's indispensable as we try to work in the same direction to create, in particular, an Asia-Pacific architecture that's inclusive and open, but is also creating a community based on norms and rules, not just membership. And we have basically identical views on that and can't achieve that without each other. I also want to echo your comments on Peter Watson who has been with the Friends of Christ Church playing both an indispensable but really quite inspiring role in US-New Zealand relations, so much so that I have copied his example. We at CSIS have created a task force to help Japan on recovery and Peter has been helping to export or import to us ideas based on what he's doing with the Friends of Christ Church. So thank you, Peter. It's been very important. There was a lot in the speech. There are aspects of the relationship people may want to go into further, the intelligence and defense relationships. One thing that stood out for me in particular was the minister's suggestion that New Zealand might find opportunities to dialogue with Beijing about development assistance to the Pacific Islands. I think this is an area of both opportunity and concern. The fragile states, the governance issues can be significantly heard or helped by Beijing's attitude towards development. I would add to that Taipei's. I think, from a personal perspective, Taiwan has an important role in terms of development in that region. We got to find ways to dialogue with Taipei as well. But I was struck in particular that you are trying this out. We in the US have had very limited success on development dialogues with China. It's not necessarily intent. It's that their development bureaucracy is scattered and there's no central control and it's very hard to have a strategic dialogue about aid in that circumstance. But I was struck by that because New Zealand, the first FDA with China by developed OECD country, may be in a pivotal position to start testing that prospect that we can work with Beijing to improve governance and development in the Pacific Islands. I wanted to ask one question and then open it up to the floor. I was struck by your remarks also about the East Asia Summit. I'd be curious how you view the broader architecture. APEC is a little bit important to us this year. I'm sure it is to you as well. Architecture is a misnomer. Architecture suggests intelligent design, beauty. What we have in East Asia is an overgrown garden of often competing and often redundant institutions. I've worked in the White House. I've seen the President's schedule. It's very, very hard to get the President of the United States to take what is essentially a week of time. It will now in most years be two weeks. So my old White House staff personality tells me we've got to make this EAS worthwhile. We've got to figure out what the future of APEC is. I wonder if I could start with a question about how you see the overall evolution of regional architecture. There's talk of aligning APEC and ARF. Are we just going to have to live with this confused pluralism and diversity and play our game on every front? Are there prospects to rationalize or bring together more cohesion to the regional institution building? Let me start with that question and then we'll open it up. Would you like to? The answer to your two questions is yes and yes. I think that we are going to have to work with the program that is there to start with but there are real opportunities for rationalization. How we go about that is going to be very important. Simply telling ASEAN that you want to rearrange their program is not likely to guarantee too much success. Working in a consultative fashion is something that can be effective over a period of time and I have been quite focused on this in my visit to Washington simply because we're engaged in discussions now that will shape the agenda for the first EAS meeting in which the US will be involved. We've got a few weeks in which to try and influence the course of that. The chair of ASEAN Indonesia have been quite open and seeking New Zealand's views on that topic and I've been in turn been anxious to understand what is going to work for the United States so that we can contribute to a process of ensuring a good structure. If it's not going to capture US attention, it's not going to work for us either. There's no point in us supporting as we actively have the engagement of the US and the EAS without ensuring that it's going to maintain your interest and engagement. I think that there are some obvious steps that can be taken to rationalize the very substantial program and I think those things will happen over the course of two or three years, four or five years if we approach this in a constructive manner and I think there are one or two issues around with the way in which the ASEAN chair will move over the next couple of years which will make that more challenging for us but New Zealand's prepared to put its shoulder to the wheel and try and play a constructive role here. So we think that it's all doable, we think it's great that the US is on board and we want to make sure it works for you as well as for the rest of us. Thank you. I'll ask people to raise your hands and identify yourselves except for the first person who I will call on and identify Ernie Bauer who runs our Southeast Asia program and has really injected an enormous amount of energy here at CSIS into strengthening US and New Zealand relations. Thank you Mike. Mr. Minister, welcome to CSIS. I wanted to follow up a bit on Mike's question and ask specifically about the way and I realize it's sort of related to your area of responsibility but shared with your colleague the Minister of Defense. How is New Zealand thinking about maritime security in the Asia Pacific region and I think that's if you've been consulting with the White House and and the State Department and Defense Department I'm sure you've heard a little bit about concerns about maritime security. Could you share New Zealand's view on that issue and in the context perhaps of the upcoming ARF and the EAS? Well suffice to say I think we're on New Zealand and the US are very much on the same page in that respect in terms of our objectives and I think we've got a range of opportunities to explore those objectives. We've certainly got an appetite for seeing maritime security issues on the agenda for EAS discussion. We of course participate in the RCA region forum, 80M plus meetings and so on and we think that the EAS format will should lend itself to pursuit of good objectives in the maritime security area. I think that there are a bundle of other topics that will reinforce these objectives for example if we can get a and Kevin Rudd's been actively promoting this outcome focus on regional disaster management capabilities and so on which gets our people in uniforms working together in a soft way during exercises and and so on. I think these are good ways of moving ourselves forward and enhancing relations with countries like China through those means. Priscilla Huff, Radio New Zealand. Is there something the US agenda is huge? Is there something that you feel or message you've brought that you would like the US to pay more attention to? You've kind of hinted at that about the fisheries but is there something you feel coming from the region that US Washington need to pay more attention to this? No, I don't. I've got to say that the interactions we've had here as on previous occasions have shown the US administration to be highly attentive and to have the format just illustrate the point and in general terms we had a visit from Secretary Clinton in November of last year. I was invited to come back to maintain the momentum of those discussions here which we've done and the Secretary of State yesterday made the point that the President Obama was looking forward to a visit from Prime Minister Key before the end of the summer here. I mean that shows a level of attention to New Zealand and New Zealand's agenda that we can hardly complain about but I did make the point in my prepared remarks about both fisheries policy and renewable energy because with the USAid re-engagement in our region there's obviously some consideration here into what the priority areas might be. I'm mirroring in a public way what I've been saying privately for some time about the priority that I personally and our government places on those two areas. They are profoundly important and we can make progress quite quickly if we work together and I'm hopeful that and I'm not asking for the USAid budget to all go on to those two objectives. I simply want to make sure that they held up high as areas where New Zealand's giving them priority and we hope the forum leaders will give them priority later this year. Hi, how are you? Connie Lawn for Scoop and Zed and others. Welcome back. Two things. Do you think in light of this nuclear disaster in Japan the US is finally ready to drop its silly nuclear prejudice against New Zealand and also are you satisfied with the amount of intelligence sharing with the United States if you can talk about that? I knew you'd ask me patsy questions. Yes, naturally of course. Welcome back. Nice to see you again. Look, I think that there are political ramifications all around the world from what's happened in Japan. You just need to look at the elections in Germany recently to see that the way in which political parties deal with the nuclear energy debate is profoundly important. But I don't think there are any particular messages for the New Zealand US relationship in that sense. We're very comfortable that we've got a strong platform for the relationship and as I hope I've just said we couldn't be happier with the level of engagement that we have. Sorry, the second part of your question. Oh yeah, intelligence, yeah. Well, I've got to go to the non-aligned movement meeting in Bali next week. I'm dropping through with some of the officials and I've just collected some cufflinks from various agencies around the town to swap around with my normal ones. No, look, I'm very happy with the level of intelligence that we've got being swapped between our various agencies and for New Zealand to draw the value that we do from that relationship is fantastic and in return we are determined to give value from our own work. Mutaya, could you speak clearly into the minister's cufflink when you ask your question? Thank you. I'm Mutaya Lagapa in the East West Centre. Minister, I noted two key words. You said opportunity, you looked at Asia and you said opportunity and look at Pacific and you said responsibility. So I just wanted to follow the responsibility part of this and ask you what do you see as New Zealand's responsibility in the Pacific? You did lay out some challenges and stability development and so forth but even more basic than that, what do you see is in fact the responsibility of New Zealand towards the Pacific region? I think that I very much see our role as one of having responsibility in the region. We're one of two local countries that make a significant contribution to the overall development budget in the region and as I say because our checkbook is smaller than that of our Australian friends, we feel an obligation to give better value for money in terms of the facilitation work we can achieve in the region. I think we are uniquely placed to do that because of the complex web of family relationships that I spoke about. I think that because we have that strong Pacific influence in New Zealand and the strong indigenous Maori influence in New Zealand, there is a New Zealand style that many of our people can bring to work in the region that is not especially threatening, which is consultative and which is constructive and so I do believe that we are well equipped to be able to facilitate projects, to undertake work in delicate areas like governance and the rule of law, which where it's inherently difficult to communicate good messages in a way that doesn't appear condescending. So I think for all of those reasons New Zealand has a responsibility to lead a significant amount of the development work within the region. We've got a responsibility to lead the work on governance in particular. I think we've got a responsibility to ensure that the money is well spent and here I make no apology for saying that I'm taking quite a tough line on regional organisations where I think it's very easy to go and dump a check into a regional fund and say well we've discharged our responsibility. I think instead New Zealand's got to be the first country to say we question whether we're getting value for money out of that size of commitment to a particular fund and we need to ask ourselves whether we could spend that money more effectively bilaterally. That is the test that we need to keep applying. If we're going to change the future for people in our region we need to make some tough calls about those things. Minister, if I could briefly follow up on that in particular how we leverage our own aid resources to strengthen governance and democracy in the Pacific Island states and at a time when there are other sources of money pouring in that are not at all tight and you mentioned the need for dialogue with Beijing I think everyone would agree. But what about opportunities to do if not donor coordination you know more strategic dialogue with countries like Japan which is shifting a bit more towards governance in its budget and Korea which is a DAC country now increasing or even Indonesia which is hosting the Bali Democracy Forum which includes countries like Syria so it has its limitations but nevertheless it's part of their foreign policy personality. Are there opportunities to broaden this a bit beyond because of course we and you in Australia have a particular history with these countries that might limit what we can do? I think it's not just an opportunity it's a responsibility we have to work harder in this area and you're quite right Japan is a very significant donor within the region I'll be going there in the latter part of next week and we've already arranged some of our conversations to focus on precisely this point. We want to have a much more structured relationship with Japan and without getting into specifics that means we need to be a bit flexible in some respects for example some of Japan's funding is tagged to their own technologies providing for example renewable energy solutions well we're not going to get bent out of shape about that if joining a partnership with Japan requires us to commit to their technology and its world-class technology well we should be flexible enough to try and make that sort of thing work and that's something we are intent on doing with regard to China it is going to be a drawn-out process but we were thought to be friendly enough and possibly small enough to have to be given the opportunity to have the first free trade deal that China had with a developed country we should therefore be best placed to be the first country with which they decide to undertake development partnerships and I'm going to go on asking and proposing until it starts to happen and I think it will happen I honestly think we will make that step quite soon in relation to can I just pick up your earlier comments in relation to Taiwan that is that is more difficult in some ways but yes important player in the region you know when you think about this in these terms China now has more diplomats in the Pacific than New Zealand and Australia combined okay and there are six of the forum countries six of the 14 forum countries in the Pacific that they don't even recognize you know there are there are there are six countries that that recognize Taiwan so yeah they're an important player in a place like Solomon Islands for example recognizes Taiwan New Zealand and Australia are spending a quarter of a billion dollars a year between us to try and stop people killing each other and we've largely achieved that in recent years and now the trick is to try and find a way of scaling that budget down with people still not killing each other but again I hope this will be one area where we can partner USA because the US has got a huge history with Guadalcanal from World War Two and Tarawa and I hope we can do the same thing there and then reach out to other donors and say hey we've we've agreed to do these things on these terms and we want you to join us I think that that is arguably one of the one of the most difficult challenges we're going to confront but it's a very important one. Joe Bosco with the Ernie Bowers program here and this is a follow-up actually to Ernie's question. Mr. Minister given the tragic history of the earthquake that struck your country recently I wonder how the efforts are going within the ASEAN Regional Forum for cooperation among foreign militaries and particularly including a the development of a standard of forces agreement has there been much progress in the past year on that? You're really asking the wrong minister on on that one but I can say that from my sort of higher level understanding of it very good progress is being made and our defense minister Wayne Mapp who's been here quite recently has been very fully engaged in that work and I think that the short answer to your question is it's it's more moving in a very positive direction. Mr. Doug Hartwood, the Mountain Institute. Picking up on your comments of your discussions here in Washington the last couple of days you noted that for TPP that you were encouraged by sort of an awareness or an engagement and interest and so forth and the the partnership study that was issued in in Christchurch in February spends on the economic dimension of it places a high high emphasis also on TPP. From New Zealand's standpoint today what do you see to be the main hurdles and how can the United States and New Zealand work together to avoid to overcome them? Well the big hurdles in these matters are always political in nature and I've got sitting in front of me Ambassador Mike Moore who of course was the director of the World Trade Organization who should really be answering this question for me. All I can say is that you know there are a number of challenging political decisions confronting governments but I believe the determination is there to ensure that we have a high quality basis for moving forward and can I say that I am encouraged that while Japan has had a very significant setback in recent times that in deferring their own aspirations for TPP it's been very much couched in terms of a postponement and there's been no resiling from the very challenging political debate in that country that Prime Minister Khan has kicked off so I think we can see that those political challenges are being confronted with some real leadership actually. I think we have time for one more. Yes in the back. Al Santoli, Asian American Initiative. Mr. Minister I have a question about water levels and the impact of water. Australia has been going through some difficult times with the El Niña. Other countries in the region are having either too much rain, not enough rain. Two part, one is the impact in New Zealand especially in your mountain, your snow caps and your mountains has there been any effect and secondly is in ocean water levels. How is that impacting neighboring island nations and also New Zealand's own coast? Yeah well I think our experience and this is a purely anecdotal response on that. Our experience has been the same as many others that we've experienced both extremes. We had a formal official drought in Northland in New Zealand just before Christmas and now the place is the subject of pretty serious flooding and land slipping and it's been going on for some time so clearly we have some challenges from nature there. With regard to sea levels I take considerable interest in the debate not particularly from a climate change perspective but because there are decisions we have to make about how we're going to spend money in places like Tuvalu and Kiribati that require one to turn one's mind to how much the water is going to undermine any expenditure initiatives that we engage in. There are some texts that suggest that at the same time the action of the tides is actually building up some parts of the atolls as well. I don't know the answer all I can say is that we are intent on ensuring that people on islands like Tuvalu and Kiribati which some would say don't have a great future because of climate change are given every chance to to establish a future and hence my earlier comment about committing something like $30 million into to Kiribati over the next 12 months to do some quite signature development work everything from sanitation to solid waste to roading to fresh water which is a problem there. The airport runways, two runways in fact, one in Curta-Tamati island the other in Ontario that need to be resealed if they have ongoing transport communication so we're operating on the basis that these countries have got a future and we're determined to see that that future is a significantly better one than their recent experience. Minister, thank you. We have had I think an excellent discussion. It really reveals the breadth of our agenda but also at least for me highlighted how much New Zealand is in the front lines of issues that are going to determine what kind of future we have in the Asia-Pacific region from questions of whether we can engage China on development to whether or not we can create a trans-Pacific trade framework. So we all on both sides of the aisle in and out of government who care about the region appreciate what you're doing and appreciate you're taking the time to share your thoughts with us today. Thank you.