A coronation and a new era in trade

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

For royalists as well as many people who are ambivalent about royalty, Saturday night’s coronation of King Charles III was well worth sitting up into the early hours of Sunday morning for.

The pageantry surrounding the event is what sells it to millions. For many the sight of the Gold State Coach surrounded by mounted service people, even including a band playing on horseback, was really memorable. How those riders are able to control their mounts in such a tumultuous occasion with all the noise around them is amazing.

And the key moment, when Charles received the Crown of St Mark, was really significant.

Everything on these occasions leads up to the balcony appearance at Buckingham Palace, where for the first time in the lives of most people there was the chance to see a newly crowned monarch.

Naturally Kiwi eyes were on Prime Minister Chris Hipkins as he entered Westminster Abbey in a korowai.

Hipkins was obviously impressed by the occasion, saying the atmosphere was “quite phenomenal” and everyone in the Abbey was “a little subdued in the sense that we all wanted to do it right”.

While the weekend focus was on the coronation, Hipkins had already made his visit worthwhile by being able to announce an early start to the NZ-UK Free Trade Agreement.

The agreement, which will eventually eliminate tariffs on all New Zealand exports to the United Kingdom, has been brought forward to come into force from the end of this month.

Tariffs on 97 percent of exports including wine and honey will be removed from May 31, saving exporters about $37 million a year.

It will take five years for dairy and 15 years for sheepmeat and beef tariffs to be completely removed but these industries will enjoy duty-free quotas in the meantime, with the volumes for these increasing gradually over time.

Hipkins said this was a big day for New Zealand exporters to the UK and the agreement would give them a much-needed boost; it was predicted that it would grow the NZ economy by $1 billion annually.

The UK is New Zealand’s seventh largest trading partner and a crucial market for some of our key exports, so the fast-tracking of this deal will help our economic recovery.

But trade is trade and the real reason Hipkins was in the UK, and why many thousands thronged the streets of London or sat in front of their televisions around the world, was the 1000-year-old ceremony in all its glory.