I want to congratulate the organisers, Dr Hood, express my respect to the other speakers, The PM, express my regrets that I missed many of their presentations, and acknowledge the ongoing importance of the subject of your conference to the peace, tranquility and progress of our young nation.

My subject is New Zealand and the world.

New Zealand, our gentle, isolated, lucky country. Once the social laboratory of the world, with guaranteed markets rescued from obscurity by refrigeration, named lovingly as Godzone by Richard John Seddon, enjoyed many lucky luxuries. Luxuries we indulged in. Within a short 150 years we cleared the bush ruthlessly, pioneered state/private/co-operative partnerships to build railways, ports, fertilizer factories, dairy companies, public education and health and welfare systems. We were not ideological, practical people did things that worked.
I tell visitors to New Zealand, Jack is as good as his master, and he better not bloody forget it.

Our political franchise was made wider, quicker than any other nation, a land of equality and opportunity. Many mistakes were made and are still being made, not vicious, selfish mistakes, but mistakes made from goodwill, the enthusiasm to correct old grievances and advance the common good.
Generally, equality has been more important to us than individual success, or even individual liberty, we often resent winners and our lawn mowing democracy is unmerciful to tall poppies. We are suspicious of authority, I tell people in great capitals that New Zealanders will do almost anything they are asked but nothing they are told. This is not altogether a bad thing.

I recall reading a small story in the corner of page 3 in the Christchurch Press:
A Kiwi, born on the West Coast, had left home, had lived in the States and excelled at mathematics, writing books, eventually winning the coveted Field Medal for Mathematics - a more elusive prize than a Nobel. Let’s call him Bruce.
He returned to the Coast after many years, went to the local bar to order a beer, and noticed some of the patrons as old school mates.
Eventually, one came up to him and said “You’d be Bruce, wouldn’t you?” “Yes,” the distinguished Kiwi said, “and you might be Barry.”
“Yep,” came the reply, “they told me you have written a book.”
“Yes,” said Bruce.
“F…..ng show off,” said Barry as he walked away.
I say this, not because I recently had a book published, which will be on sale soon in New Zealand – A World Without Walls – but I have, but because the story rings true and says a lot about us.
Maybe because of our isolation, the absence of neighbours, we feel we can afford such luxuries of comfortable criticism. Visitors are always plagued with the question, “what do you think of New Zealand?” I remember President Nyere’s reply at a press conference:
“I don’t know, we just got off the aircraft.”

Perhaps these attitudes explain why, if you study all these things that are now creating our wealth and opportunity, all in their day, were subject to criticism, even abuse, by protected and jealous sectors.
The export of Education, Tourism, The America’s Cup, the reform of our waterfront, immigration, abolishing protectionism,(without which there would be no Warehouse, no Stephen Tindall), the restructuring of our key industries – meat, dairy, fisheries. We can always fill a hall to stop something, but couldn’t fill a phone box to start something.

Some people see a New Zealander as someone who wears a shirt made in China, a suit made in Thailand, who drives a Japanese car, and works for an Australian company which is owned by an American pension fund, with an English boss.
I see a New Zealander as someone who climbs Everest, splits the atom, makes stunning movies, sings great songs, wins the America’s Cup, and invests more in Asia than Asia invests in New Zealand.
People who did not invent sheep or cows or kiwifruit or even rugby. But improved upon them, adding technology and discipline, focus and enthusiasm, and can out compete anyone, anywhere.
It’s also good that the small country syndrome means you haven’t made it, unless you can win and be best internationally.

Things are changing for the better, and this conference testifies to this fact.
But we still have this syndrome, and I have used it in my day. Let’s be the Switzerland of the South Pacific, a Southern Sweden, Ireland, or Norway.
Sorry folks, we are what we are, we are where we are, and that’s it.

Now if I were God, and it wouldn’t take me six days, and I was to create a nation, this is what I would do.

I think I would place it in the South Pacific, flanked by a moderate sized economy of similar values. This would put us in the area of greatest growth, Asia, the Pacific.
I’d put this new land in the Southern Hemisphere because all those things that were a disadvantage in another age would become advantages.

Our computers could work when others were asleep, our vegetables, fruit and tourism would be available to the markets of the North in a different more lucrative season.
Its ski fields, lakes and beaches would be free at the most profitable times.
Getting off-time computers and smart technology right, needs an open communications system, tourism is all about airlines.

I’d give this country basic English law, secure property rights, trial by jury, an independent judiciary, a Parliament based on Westminster principles, and a professional public service.

It would be good if this country had English as its main language, because at any one time over 200 million people are learning English as a second language, and it’s the global language of commerce and law.

I’d open every university and school, provide for private/public partnerships, and create new schools of higher learning and target doubling students from everywhere, every 5 years. I’d want tens of thousands of New Zealand students, learning Chinese, Spanish and Japanese.

I’d make sure this new country was a series of long islands – you can’t have enough beach fronts – and ensure that these islands went North to South to ensure climatic differences. I’d put a few dozen islands out from the mainland, the greater this nation’s economic zone for fisheries and aquaculture, which should be encouraged to the maximum.

I’d want the business world to lend young leaders to assist Government at all levels, and structure the public service, taking the best of the British ideal of competent, honest public service, but establish university colleges to seek out top people into public service. The French civil service could teach us something here.
Then we would keep and nourish them by ensuring that these top civil servants were very highly paid. About half what Singapore pays.
This school would attract young officials from all over the developing world on World Bank and ODA scholarships because the greatest need of poor countries is a competent, honest public service.
This would be elitist, but because we understand that money alone will not solve these problems, our investment in officials, from the Pacific, Africa, and the Americas, these battalions of graduates would in time be the leaders of the future. A good investment and smart diplomacy.

And because in the enthusiasm to build this new nation, not enough attention was paid to indigenous people, there would be scholarships to create a broad infrastructure of competent executives who could handle the money we would have to invest in handling their grievances.

Because everyone will have read Juan Enriquez’s book, As the Future Catches You, policy makers and shakers like yourselves will understand when he says,
“The brutal truth is that technology is not kind, it does not say please, but slams into existing systems and destroys them, while creating new ones. Countries and individuals must either surf these powerful waves of change or get crushed trying to stop them.”

Governments will have to co-operate with and facilitate the new forces unleashed by the democratisation of information. How Governments, companies and individuals co-operate, humanise and share these problems and globalised opportunities will define their relevance and success.

This country we have invented would have the most public, transparent and open policies about the opportunities of genetically engineering and the chilling brave new world of this research. It would be open, because that gets the public and investors, scientists, and the public on side. Transparency is the oxygen of good governance and is a cleansing element and good insurance.

Its guidelines would lead the world. We will do this because we can see the future, our skies are that clean. As Enriquez reported and warned:
“Lone individuals are giving birth to new industries that rapidly become bigger than the economies of most countries on earth, but create very few jobs.
Those who can speak the language of genetics will acquire direct and deliberate control over all forms of life. Those countries and individuals who remain illiterate will be shut out of what is rapidly becoming the greatest single new driver of the world economy.”
This is chilling stuff, for now it is beyond our moral, ethical, legal and political capacity to cope, but cope we must.

We are like the spectators of the Manhattan Project, watching in awe at the first nuclear bomb being exploded. Excited, but frightened at what we may have unleashed. This is a valid comparison, because understanding the danger, leaders drafted international treaties, established international agencies to globally manage and set best practices to, as best they could, contain and manage this thing of terrible beauty.

We should listen to the critics, we need armed watch dogs, but we should remind ourselves of Norman Borlaug , who in the 1960s invented super-wheat, super-rice, saving millions of lives, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for his work.
Now, this new country we invented should be a leader abroad and an incubator at home to set best practices, because the future is to be faced, not feared. A society scared of science is reduced to witchcraft and politically correct show trials and the burning of books.

This new country ought to study and emulate the trade policy of New Zealand, it has much to commend itself over the period of many governments. Because it is a new country, and its history draws on the best of the old world, it can see the opportunities to its neighbours and itself of freeing trade and managing globalisation under agreed international rules and institutions.

Because it has an egalitarian ethic and cares about the poor at home, and given its multicultural history and Pacific experience, and is able to relate to the needs of the majority of people in the world who are not rich and are not white.
Therefore, it is with an easy conscience this country can serve its self interest knowing when it helps others it helps itself.

As a beneficiary of globalisation, its duty is to promote and explain its virtues, opportunities, and dangers.
I wish I could find who invented the word globalisation.
In the absence of other “isms” it’s the ism that that defines our age.
Globalisation as a phrase is seen as some gigantic invisible hand, gobbling up the world.

Internationalism, universal human rights, universal standards, seem principled and ok. But it’s not globalisation that poor countries fear, its marginalisation.
Is globalisation, new, what does it mean: for citizens, governments and corporates - can or should it be stopped?
It’s not new: there is less trade, less movement of peoples than 100 years ago. The aberration of human progress was after World War 1. The Great Depression, made more deadly and lethal by protectionism, where world trade from 1929 to 1932 dropped by 20%, world industrial production fell by 32%.
From which the twin tyrannies of last century – facism and marxism – arose. Then a hot and cold war.

In the main, it’s a good thing, and occasionally we should celebrate the progress of the past 50 years and give credit to the ideas that have seen the greatest advances on all fronts for most people in human history.
These ideas are freedom, freedom of markets, people, the right to choose, to choose at the ballot place and market place.
Those countries that have done best are those that adopt these pillars of good behaviour, good clean governance, accountable leaders, property and civil rights, free media, an active civil society, and religious tolerance.

Some examples:
30 years ago Ghana equalled South Korea, now South Korea equals Portugal. South Korea’s GNP per capita did not reach $100 until 1963. Malaysia and Haiti were equal in 1960.

In Chinese Taipei, workers got $7.50/month 50 years ago, now it’s $7.50 per hour.
Burma and Thailand were equal after the war, now Thailand is 25 times richer.

Argentina was richer than Canada, Australia, and New Zealand 100 years ago, what went wrong?

What’s important to people?
Infant mortality down in most countries (but Russia) 121-89 South Asia.
Life expectancy: 85% of the world’s people can expect to reach 60. In the last 5 years in developing countries, life expectancy has been lifted by 9 years.
10 years ago in South Asia, 6 out of 10 lived on a dollar a day, down to 2 out of 10.
30 years ago 35% of the world’s population was hungry, now 18%
Illiteracy – almost halved in the past 10 years.

None of this would have happened without business leading in their search for products, ideas, markets, solutions and profits backed up by good governance, good public servants, honest, accountable politicians, proper property rights, and that has been the story of history, the lessons of our progress as a species.
Knowing these lessons of history, this country would be a key supporter to conclude the Doha Development round, because success here will help millions out of poverty. It would be like adding a new China to the world economy. Success in agriculture alone would return to Africa 5 times more than all the ODA governments donate. It would save OECD countries a billion dollars a day it spends on subsidies to make food more expensive and restrict choice.

I don’t get involved in domestic politics any more, that’s why we invented a country to talk about.

But still being a small country, it can find its smallness as an alibi, an excuse not to come first. Too often a small country can say, too bad, we lost but we are small.
Venice, a great trading city-state, tiny Victorian England, ancient Greece, New England were small (at the time of the American revolution, the US had a population about the size of New Zealand). Yet they unleashed the genius of generations, produced, acknowledged and promoted individuals, ideas and ideals that still nourish and inspire millions everywhere.

Occasionally, I have melancholy thoughts about our new country, so free, so far from everyone and everything. This can give rise to a false sense of safety and security. If I compare it again to New Zealand, I recall a visit to that country of the great, late Willy Brandt, a former Chancellor of Germany, Nobel Prize winner, and Chairman of the Socialist international who was asked by an aggressive New Zealand MP, why Germany allowed nuclear weapons on German soil.
He replied, “I have always found that idealism increases in direct relationship to your distance from the problem.”

New Zealand has, for generations, been an internationalist nation, a strong defender and promoter of global institutions, seeking civilised responses to global problems. It’s put its faith in the rule of law, and thus global governance, and that’s a good thing. In the search from Kant’s day to ours for perpetual peace, this noble search has faced evil. We have seen the Hitlers, Stalins, Pol Pots, Bin Ladins and Saddam Husseins. Robust international treaties and muscular diplomacy have not always worked. But it is the first, best option.

As we talk and as I wrote this, another dramatic page in history is being written. New Zealand troops have been in Afghanistan, our forces are on station, policing waterways.

But I admit to being puzzled, perhaps out of touch, when I read articles, statements and letters about the war against terror. There is no moral equivalence and there should be no moral or military ambiguity about this challenge and danger we face. There is no place to hide, there are no safe neighbourhoods. There is no difference if a New Zealander is murdered in New York, Bali or Auckland. War will be war, whether it’s sanctified by the UN, or by the Pope or King in older times. In an interdependent world, which has only begun to integrate politically, options narrow as opinions widen.

But I just cannot see the moral equivalence that commentators and clergy write of an attack on those who provide a safe house for terror and those who commit terrorist attacks.

To begin with, the terrorists have tried to maximise civilian casualties, the response has been to stop them but to minimise civilian casualties.

And I admit to being puzzled by those who say if the UN blesses the troops then this is an independent foreign policy. This could mean contracting out your policy to decision by a few countries.

The US faced down Soviet Russia without UN sanction, but the UN was used by Ambassador Stevenson to expose the evidence to the world of Soviet missiles. A useful example of public explanation and the theatre of diplomacy.

For me, I believe we are up against something not seen in generations. A battle being played out between modernisers and those who seek a return to a religious order not seen since the Middle Ages, those for whom the reformation, and the Age of Enlightenment and Age of Reason washed by.

Perhaps the years from 1945 to the fall of the Berlin Wall were an historical detour. Anyway, more about that in my next book.

I want to conclude on a more happy note. For me, the images that define the hope of ages are not the foul destruction of the Twin Towers or suicide bombers, but the photograph of the Berlin Wall coming down, the smile and victory dance of Nelson Mandela free at last, the young man facing down the tank in Tiennamen Square, and the faces of the young girls going to school for the first time in Afghanistan.

I went to Cambodia, who will join the WTO soon.
It doesn’t get worse than Cambodia – millions murdered, Phon Penn had a population of a million reduced to just 30 people. Less than a 100 graduates were left alive.
Yet when I flew into that ancient capital late at night there were only a few dozen lights. What were they? Bars, brothels? No, they were cyber-cafes with queues of young people waiting for their chance to learn a part of another future, a wider world.
That’s inspiring. That gives me hope. That says it all for me and from me.