Sir John Key on New Zealand, China and the pandemic

Helen asked about China, NZ approach to them, how aggressive will China be and can it drive a wedge between NZ and Australia?

NZ has always had a good relationship with China, the Five Eyes has morphed into making political statements not intelligence ones. NZ is in ANZUS, ok it’ somewhat on ice as far as NZ goes but when John  was PM he sent their SAS to Afghanistan. We, along with Britain and many others observe a one China policy, i.e. acknowledging g their territorial rights, that doesn’t mean we forget about human rights. China is emerging as a superpower, some feel threatened by that but there’s no historical precedent that they’ll apply military action. They’re building greater military power for sure, but many countries are. The recent breakdown in relations is very regrettable and it would be awful if NZ had to make a decision between her traditional allies and China as NZ needs both. Given the migration cultural ties, etc with Britain, you can see how that will pan out.

Moving onto the pandemic, governments took different approaches, will border closures at some point become a negative and would you have done it differently?

It’s actually fairly easy for us, Australia, etc to close borders quarantine, etc, much easier than for the UK where it’s impossible. It’s easier to stop something in politics than start stuff. We would have done something very similar but decisions like this are not just about closing borders, it’s combined with economic measures as well. As regards the pandemic, the UK may come out well. I like Boris even though he does look like he’s slept on the porch, but with mutations, not everyone taking the vaccine it’s hard to know what herd immunity is, it’ll be a rolling maul to use a rugby analogy.

Will the dollar be replace as a reserve currency?

There’s loads of reasons to have confidence in the dollar. Blockchain, what about that? Is crypto useful or a Casino? Getting rid of cash is logical. Alipay and the likes will be the winners.

Brexit?

I wouldn’t have voted for it but I can see why people did. I’ve Come round to the opinion that the problem is the euro, a currency is a safety valve, which Greece didn’t have and they weren’t keen moving to Frankfurt to work, not least the weather’s not great!

There’s lots, lots more in here, a summary does it little justice as he’s s great communicator.