Key at the G20: NZ has other trade agreements in sight like the Gulf States deal

John Key said New Zealand would use the opportunity at the G20 to talk to some of the leaders he hadn’t had an opportunity to talk to at recent APEC or East Asian Summit gatherings.

 He singled out Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz as New Zealand seeks to progress the Gulf states free trade agreement and the European Commission chair Jean-Claude Juncker about the free trade agreement New Zealand is looking to progress with Europe.

Key said he may visit the Crown Prince early next year following an invitation at today’s meeting. “We are really close with the Gulf states deal and there’s a lot of opportunities there … The signs we are seeing from the officials are positive.”

However he said a free-trade agreement with Russia wasn’t on the current agenda. “We were really within millimetres of signing a free trade agreement with Russia and we stopped that. That’s on hold. The Russians have been wanting to progress that and New Zealand has been saying no.'”

“New Zealand’s approach is that we are standing strong with our partners and until we saw a point at which they saw sanctions being removed and a general change in flavour, New Zealand’s position won’t change.”

Even though New Zealand companies aren’t officially part of the trade sanctions, companies such as Fonterra Cooperative Group haven’t been taking advantage of the trading opportunity at the request of the New Zealand government, Key said. New Zealand law doesn’t currently allow such trade sanctions and the opposition Labour party favours such sanctions having the backing of a UN mandate so wouldn’t support a law change, he said.

“There would be great opportunities for our dairy companies, particularly Fonterra obviously, to exploit that, and our dairy companies aren’t doing that,” Key said. ” We are taking a voluntary approach.”

Meanwhile, Key said leaders at the G20 would likely have a “pretty broad ranging economic discussion” focused on global growth and how to make sure the global economy is more robust.

Topical issues such as Ebola, ISIS and climate change would likely also come up for discussion.