Opening remarks by Chief Executive, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade

25 February 2021, 9.30am

Tēnā koutou katoa

Madam Chair, members of the Committee. 

I have the honour to represent the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade as you conduct the Annual Review for the period 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020. 

I commend to you the Ministry’s Annual Report for the review period.

The Annual Report meets the Ministry’s statutory obligations by reporting against core public sector requirements. The Ministry has provided additional written material in response to questions the Committee submitted in advance of today’s review.

The Annual Report goes much further than meeting our basic minimum requirements. It has a wealth of information about the Ministry and its work; and it tells a number of stories about how the Ministry’s 1,800 people worked together to contribute to our mission of building a safer, more prosperous and more sustainable future for New Zealanders.

The year under review marks the beginning of a very challenging period for New Zealand.

In July 2019, as we moved into the period under review, we were already concerned about a number of factors:

• The international environment was increasingly challenging for a small state;
• Great power competition continued to manifest itself internationally, including in the Indo‑Pacific region;
• The international rules-based order, from which New Zealand and others have gained so much over the last 75 years, continued to come under pressure as some countries privileged self‑interest over the benefits of collective action;   
• On the trade and economic front, increasing protectionist pressures continued to diminish the gains chiselled out by generations of New Zealand’s trade negotiators; and
• Climate change continued to pose a threat to human security, particularly in the Pacific, where for many countries the risks are existential.

It was against that background that the global pandemic emerged.  Risks are now more accute – timelines have accelerated.  We are clear that the world we will be operating in as the recovery phase unfolds will be less open, less prosperous, less secure and less free.  And we can expect the quantum of change to increase proportionate to the tenure of the crisis.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade

The Committee will appreciate, Madam Chair, the breadth and depth of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s work here in New Zealand, and abroad. 

MFAT supports its Ministers to steward New Zealand’s interests across a wide range of international relationships, from our close relationships with the smallest states in the Pacific through to our interactions with major powers. 

The Ministry is responsible for New Zealand’s Official Development Assistance programme, which had a budget of $814.6 million dollars over the review period. Madame Chair, I would like to acknowledge the Committee’s keen engagement with the Ministry on the aid programme.

MFAT is the Government’s specialist international adviser. We lead engagement with the UN system, the WTO and other multilateral institutions.  We provide advice on New Zealand’s approach to nuclear disarmament and arms control. We are also the lead agency for significant regional architecture, including the East Asia Summit and APEC. 

MFAT also negotiates trade agreements and works closely with other agencies to ensure New Zealand exporters are best placed to succeed in offshore markets. 

We provide advice across a vast range of issues, from climate change through cyber‑security, indigenous connections, maritime zones, Antarctica, space and foreign interference. 

We also have a role in issuing permits for the export of controlled goods, including goods that may be provided to foreign police, paramilitary and military forces. 

We are responsible for responding to requests for assistance from New Zealanders offshore.  Our consular staff deal with a whole spectrum of complex cases, including for example the high profile case we are currently managing in Turkey. 

We provide disaster relief and humanitarian assistance – with particular focus across the Pacific region – supporting a whole-of-government approach to emergency response.   

We administer 30 pieces of legislation, including the Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Act, which provides the framework for the Government’s relationship with the Diplomatic Corps in New Zealand. 

Madame Chair, the Annual Report outlines for the Committee the Ministry’s outputs in these areas during the year in review. 

In my comments this morning, I would like to highlight two:  APEC and Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

APEC

One of the Ministry’s major outputs over the review period was our preparations to host APEC in 2021. 

APEC has been at the heart of regional economic diplomacy since its first meeting in Canberra in 1989.  Its cooperative and consensus‑based processes provide space for Leaders and Ministers to regularly discuss ideas and approaches, and drive collaboration, innovation and shared outcomes. It has been an incubator for many of the regional free trade agreements New Zealand is a part of today.

Hosting APEC in 2021 is a unique and timely opportunity for New Zealand.

As all APEC members wrestle with the health, social and economic impacts of COVID-19, it is an opportunity for New Zealand to provide leadership that can advance and sustain APEC as a critical regional institution.

That includes APEC’s development of trade and economic policies to support New Zealand’s and the region’s economic recovery, and reinforcing the role of multilateral institutions in the recovery, in particular the WTO.

We can attain significant returns for New Zealand by embedding future APEC work on some key issues for several years to come.

As host, New Zealand also has the opportunity to initiate new work on issues that are important to us. This year New Zealand will initiate APEC work‑streams on unlocking the potential of the indigenous economy, improving the conditions for trade in environmental goods, and looking at how to maintain supply chains of essential goods and services.

Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented an exceptionally challenging operating environment for MFAT.

Before COVID-19, New Zealand was facing a concerning global outlook clouded by strategic tensions and a weakened international order. The pandemic created significant new headwinds, as well as exacerbating these trends.

As an organisation, COVID-19 required us to swiftly shift focus; to pivot significant resources against new priorities; to adjust our ways of working, and to adopt new approaches.

COVID-19 dominated MFAT’s work in 2020, and seems likely to do so again this year.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, we have been focused on three priorities:

• Keeping our people safe and well both abroad and at home;
• Maintaining and sustaining our offshore network;
• Providing advice to the government on critical foreign, trade, consular, and development activities to inform New Zealand’s COVID-19 response.

Consular response

During the first half of 2020, MFAT managed a consular response that was unprecedented in terms of size and complexity.

From 29 January 2020, the MFAT Emergency Crisis Centre was stood up for what was, at the time, a virus outbreak in China.

The ECC continued to operate until 11 June 2020 – the longest emergency response the Ministry has been engaged in.

More than 400 staff had their work reprioritised and were rostered into Emergency Crisis Centre roles. For significant periods, the centre was operating 24/7.

The consular response saw the Ministry directly support the repatriation of over 5,000 New Zealanders by 30 June and provide consular assistance to thousands of other New Zealanders returning home or in difficulty overseas.  

The load carried by our offshore network has been and continues to be extraordinary. One post alone has so far managed over 9,500 consular enquiries since March last year (compared to a normal year in which it would typically respond to around 1,000). 

Contribution to All-of-Government response

The Ministry’s contribution to the All-of-Government response included:

• Providing insights and reporting across a wide range of international developments to inform the Government’s response to the pandemic.  This included reporting from our offshore network of Embassies, High Commissions and Consulates‑General on the progress of infection rates, other countries’ health systems, the effectiveness of various responses, tightening and relaxing of border restrictions, and trade measures being considered or introduced by other countries.  The timeliness and utility of reporting from our offshore network has been regularly acknowledged by Ministers and public sector leaders;
• Supporting the flow of essential imports and exports, acting to identify and resolve barriers in supply chains and markets, including through launching statements and initiatives with other countries on supply chain connectivity;
• Contributing to the management of the New Zealand border through our inputs to interagency border policy and operational processes, leading negotiations on potential safe travel zones, and sustaining New Zealand’s role as an international gateway to Antarctica;
• Addressing issues relating to foreign nationals in New Zealand and engaging with the Diplomatic Corps as they supported many of their nationals to leave New Zealand in the early stages of the pandemic;
• Tackling the multiple impacts of the pandemic on the Pacific, ranging from supporting Pacific governments’ preparations for COVID‑19 outbreaks, through to preparation for vaccine rollout (including offering to provide vaccines for the Realm and Polynesia);
• Supporting Pacific countries’ suffering from adverse economic impacts including through reallocations of Official Develoment Assistance, and supporting access for RSE workers;
• Contributing to the development and implementation of New Zealand’s strategy to secure access to vaccines; and
• Seconding MFAT staff into a number of other agencies including DPMC, MoH, MBIE and MIQ, to support the AoG effort.

Maintaining our offshore network

Our post network has been maintained throughout the pandemic, with the vast majority of our 60 posts remaining operational.

We closed some Posts temporarily due to the pandemic – Addis Ababa, Bogota, Brasilia, Bridgetown, Chengdu, Tehran, Warsaw, Yangon. We’ve recently reopened Tehran and Warsaw; and we’re now reopening Addis Ababa. 

The pandemic is still raging in many locations offshore.  And our network continues to deal with disruption and uncertainty in response to significant Covid-19 outbreaks, lockdowns and travel restrictions globally.

The ongoing delivery of vital functions in this challenging context is a testament to the dedication and resilience of our staff offshore.

Finding a new normal

The inability to travel for face-to-face engagements due to COVID-19 had an immediate and fundamental impact on New Zealand’s diplomatic engagements.

Ministers and officials adapted rapidly to making the best of virtual platforms for bilateral, regional and multilateral engagements, trade negotiations and even signing treaties.

In June 2020, we established two new divisions to enable MFAT to continue to deliver on the additional COVID-19 related workload. We’ve taken 55 people from across the Ministry and we’ve reassigned them to work exclusively on our COVID-19 response, including in a new Policy and Coordination Division, and a new Organisational Resilience Division to manage the practical impacts of the virus for the Ministry onshore and offshore. We’ve also strengthened our Consular and Protocol Divisions, as well as those which work on supply chains and trade law.  

He Tangata

I want to conclude my remarks with an acknowledgement of the reason why our Ministry has continued to perform at a very high level notwithstanding the huge challenges we have faced throughout the pandemic.

That reason is very simple.  It’s the same reason that our organisation has been a respected government department for 77 years.  It’s because of our people – “He Tangata”. 

And in that vein, I want to take a couple of minutes to reflect on the extraordinary service of our people in the offshore network.

We know that keeping COVID-19 out of New Zealand has been hugely impactful in a positive way.

While we have faced some modest restrictions, even our strictest lockdowns have been relatively short and, with the active participation of the team of five million, they’ve been remarkably effective.

We know the experience in other countries has been vastly different, and our people offshore are certainly experiencing this. 

Take, for example, the senior staff member in one of our biggest posts offshore.  He took up his assignment in August 2020.  Because of COVID-19 restrictions, he has not yet had the chance to meet his team in person.  Although he has conducted 532 meetings over the last seven months – 154 of these with external contacts – only 12 of these meetings have been in person.  The rest have had to be conducted via Zoom.  Perhaps the most stark fact is that, because of lockdowns, this official has only been able to share a meal with someone else – even one other person – just seven times over the last seven months.

Or take a staff member with children based in a northern hemisphere Embassy who is coming up to a year of dealing with COVID-19.  This staff member worries about sustaining a family through a pandemic, including the restrictions that have been necessary to wrap around his children; concern about the impact of 11 months of Zoom schooling on his kids; concern for the well‑being and mental health of colleagues; a sense of guilt about his partner’s ever‑shrinking network with the kids at home all week and few opportunities to meet new people; and anxiety about exposure to the virus in everyday situations outside of the Embassy.  

Or take another staff member - she’s a single thirty‑something and her concerns include dealing with the extreme isolation of being relatively new in a foreign city, meaning for most of the lockdown she’s been in a bubble of one. She’s gone for days without speaking to or seeing another person. Uncertainty has been another significant impact – uncertainty about the trajectory of the virus and the length of lockdowns; and uncertainty about whether she would be able to get home and see friends and family. She’s also managing the monotonyof keeping up with the demands of the COVID-19 work while everything else that brings joy is closed or cancelled. And, like her other colleagues, dealing with the inconvenience of walking on empty streets because public transport is unsafe to use; having to conduct virtually all meetings over Zoom; and, on the rare occasions where meetings can be in person, trying to figure out how to keep oneself safe with people who don’t take proper COVID-19 precautions. 

These are just three stories of the realities that our people are dealing with offshore. They are stories that could be told by many staff at many of our Embassies, High Commissions and Consulates around the world. 

Pre‑COVID-19, we had 866 people offshore, with 255 of those staff being people seconded from Wellington. And I also want to acknowledge that a number of NZ Inc agencies also have people posted offshore, working under the same conditions.

These are the people who are delivering for New Zealand, each and every day. And we should not lose sight of the fact that they are doing so under conditions that are hugely challenging professionally; and even more challenging personally. 

These are extraordinary people showing extraordinary dedication to their profession, to MFAT, to public service, and to New Zealand. 

I’m grateful for the opportunity to publicly acknowledge their service with a group of Members of Parliament who have a direct interest in the conduct of New Zealand’s foreign, defence and trade policy. 

Kia ora.