OPINION
Brand and reputation matter, especially when you’re a pint-sized player in a remote corner of the world.
So building New Zealand’s brand, by doing what we can to influence for the better what people think and feel about us, is profoundly important.
Over time, successive governments have understood that, and got on with making New Zealand a desirable place to live, visit and do business, so we’re attractive to the likes of investors, skilled workers, tourists and students from abroad.
Ensuring that the face we present on the international stage is the best it can be is in everyone’s interest.
And as clichéd as it might be, New Zealand’s reputation for innovative ideas, fairness, tolerance and looking after our mostly clean and green environment, along with a longstanding ranking as one of the least corrupt countries, has helped to curate an image that pulls the world in.
We mess with any of that at our peril.
But messing with it is precisely what Christopher Luxon’s Government seems dead-set on doing.
Jose Torres, an international expert on these matters, says that when nation-branding strategies fail, it’s generally because political calculations intrude – like when a new Government puts its narrow political priorities ahead of its predecessor’s ideas for promoting the public good.
Winding back smokefree laws, going after the wages and conditions of our most vulnerable workers, instituting a raft of measures that will dilute our Māoriness, repealing the ban on offshore oil and gas exploration – the world must be wondering what has possessed Luxon’s Government to launch this brand-trashing spree.
The coalition’s plans to ditch smokefree laws have made for unflattering headlines around the world. There is shock and incredulity that we would renege on what was a world-first move to protect future generations from the devastating impacts of smoking.
Seeing dozens of health professionals put their names to letters of protest that accuse a newly-elected New Zealand Government of being heartless, immoral and irresponsible will have international observers shaking their heads in bewilderment.
New Zealand has long had some of the most innovative tobacco control measures in the world, beginning with Helen Clark’s Smoke-free Environments legislation 33 years ago. Smokefree campaigners globally have always regarded us as progressives and exemplars, but that assessment might now have to be revisited.
Similarly, the upcoming repeal of the Fair Pay Agreements Act strikes a blow against New Zealand’s recent workplace record.
Statutory minimum wage levels have risen steadily since 2000, by 75 per cent in real terms, and apprenticeship numbers have been greatly boosted. Payments to address historic pay equity issues have been world-leading. Paid parental leave has been greatly extended.
But it was last year’s fair pay legislation – giving vulnerable workers such as cleaners, security guards, bus drivers and supermarket workers the bargaining power to ensure they get fairer wages and conditions – that was the jewel in the crown.
It offers the best path for arresting the downward drift of wages and conditions for the low and modestly paid.
The newly installed Government has decided, however, that the law is a blunt, business-unfriendly tool and will be gone by Christmas as part of its 100-day plan. This is despite Treasury warning that doing so will disproportionately impact women, youth, Māori and Pacific peoples, advice that this week found its way into the public domain.
Again, it’s hardly reputation-enhancing stuff for our country.
Then there’s the plan to mount a review of Treaty of Waitangi principles and start undoing several Māori-related policies and practices. That will disrupt a widely held perception of New Zealand’s race relations that is encountered abroad, namely, that we’re a tolerant people and respectful of minorities.
The truth of course is more nuanced. In a country where Māori comprise half the prison population, where institutional racism still handicaps the Māori experience, and racial bigotry too often rears its ugly head, it’s a perception that rests on less-than-robust foundations.
Those foundations are about to be weakened.
In preparing to dismantle the Māori Health Authority, remove the concept of co-governance, purge legislation of references to the Treaty and instruct the public sector to prioritise English-language names, the coalition Government will have outsiders looking askance at the land of exemplary race relations.
Also on the list of reputational threats is the promised repeal of the oil and gas exploration ban.
Introduced in 2018, this bold move in support of New Zealand’s climate change obligations was greeted with acclaim around the world. But this week at the UN climate summit, Cop28, its promised repeal became a source of international embarrassment.
Because it intends to lift the ban, the New Zealand Government – barely a week since taking office – suffered the ignominy of picking up the first Fossil of the Day award at the summit.
It’s easy to dismiss the award as a gimmick, some grandstanding greenies wanting to make mischief. But the fact that the award was the outcome of a vote among a network of 1900 civil society organisations from 130 countries is a reminder that the world is watching.
New Zealand, the clean and green land which everyone thought had sent the deep sea drillers packing, is about to invite them back again.
If large amounts of good publicity help build a successful brand, then the inverse must be true too.
A successful brand begins to wither when the negative impressions become dominant.
- Mike Munro is a former chief of staff for Jacinda Ardern and was chief press secretary for Helen Clark.
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