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Salient. Victoria University Students' Newspaper. Volume 39, Number 25. October 4, 1976

NZ Must Relate Equally With Asia

NZ Must Relate Equally With Asia

Once New Zealand develops an identity of its own, then it has to decide how it is going to relate with Malaysia and Singapore and Sea as a whole on the basis of equality and not on the implicit motion of superiority which characterised some of the current relationships.

New Zealanders have to acknowledge the fact that although they speak English and have British forebears, geographically they are located within Sea and Oceania. With a sensitive Prime Minister who behaves like a bull in a million China shops all at once, it is very difficult to be sensitive to Sea and Oceania or towards New Zealanders for that matter.

Another reason why New Zealand has not been able to develop a creative relationship with Sea/South Pacific is because New Zealanders have very distinct language barriers. There is little Bahasia Malaysia taught in New Zealand. Chinese language is reserved for the few who manage to come to terms with it. Japanese is taught with varying degrees of success. Language barriers itself have prevented successive New Zealand governments from putting out feelers which would enable them to sensitively respond to what's happening in South-East Asia.

New Zealand diplomats, for example, when they go to Sea sometimes misguidedly assume that they are going to conduct all their business in English. They breathe a sigh of relief when they are posted to K.L. or Singapore because they can communicate with everybody in English. They feel a little reluctant about a posting to Indonesia for example where it is sometimes insisted that diplomatic exchanges occur in Bahasa Indonesia.

There are then some of the general problems which tend to impede the nature of the relationship between New Zealand South-East Asia. The present government's general cultural, linguistic and social ignorance of the nature and composition of South-East Asian societies tends to be reflected in its political, defence and diplomatic ignorance, the one perhaps being a logical confusion of the other. For example the Minister of Defence Mr McCready still thinks of Sea in terms of "them and us". Singapore as "an outpost for our troops" - what can be described as a cliche-understanding of Sea.