I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
Back after a two week sprint around the globe. I’ve been offshore a lot in the past year and you can’t help but challenge your perspective.
With an increased focus in the US I’m starting to see the impact of NZ’s increasing ‘non-alignment’. Now I’m no fan of war and Iraq is just wrong but …
- The US is an important economy for us, especially in the hi-tech area
- Our increasingly arms-length relationship with the US is starting to cause grief for Kiwi’s working in the states. This has been compounded with the Thailand/Iraq immigration scandal. Kiwi’s are being packed up and sent home. It’s getting much harder to work there.
- The world is hardly without conflict and we’re really pissing off the Americans and Australians. Who are our allies?
- Close to home the Indo/Oz situation is getting pretty tense.
- We have a bit of a profile as a dream place to visit, and we punch above our weight sometimes, but as a country we’re insignificant.
While it’s easy in NZ to think we’re cool by not allowing nuclear ships here, it’s becoming clearer to me that this pure stance is not without cost. But, it would be political suicide for anyone to mention it. National has had a bit of a go.
I think it’s time to have a debate. It’s time to thrash out the issues around the nuclear ship stance so that everyone understands the cost. We may end up where we are but if this subject remains taboo we run the risk of being world orphans.
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