Brad Olsen: Infometrics Principal Economist on New Zealand and Australia meeting with South East Asian nations to boost business and security

Experts from Australia and New Zealand are meeting with leaders in Malaysia to discuss how to improve business and security.

The three groups are expected to discuss new opportunities and challenges - and outline new solutions.

Infometrics Principal Economist Brad Olsen explained what could come out of these discussions.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now there's a big event going on in Malaysia bringing
the three regions of New Zealand, Australia and Southeast Asia
together and informtric's principal economists. Brad also never want to
miss a party. Is at this party?

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Brad, Hello, good afternoon.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
So you guys are all there to kind of nut
out how we all make money off each other.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Yeah, oh, I mean I don't think that's the official word,
but that is definitely part of it. I mean, you
look at Asian and the sort of wider Southeast Asian region.
It's important to New Zealand, it's important to Australia, and
so I'm part here as part of delegation with the
Asian New Zealand Foundation to have some of those conversations. Normally,
right for these international things, you get the diplomats in

(00:39):
the room, you get the Prime Minister in that in
the room. Those are good conversations. But sometimes you want
to take it down a level. You want to get
the business people, the academics, the policy researchers to actually
sort of talk a little bit more, you know, unhinged
almost about things. But I mean you look at the
numbers and you sort of see why this sort of
conversation is important for New Zealand. Over the US twelve months,

(01:00):
twenty six billion dollars worth of two way trade between
Asian and New Zealand. If it was a country, it'd
ab our fourth largest trading partner. So all of that
is critically important, and especially to time when we're trying
to grow our exports. We're trying to think about who
and how we trade with and diversify our options. So
it's a good conversation bear part of so what.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
Business opportunities have we got in these regions that we
are not already tapped into.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
I mean there's quite a few. There's obviously trying to
continue to upgrade what we've already got. You know, if
we look at what we trade often into Southeast Asia,
it is the traditional exports for the New Zealand, the
likes of you know, dairy tourism, fruits and meats and
the like, but also importantly making sure we've got the
ability to get the stuff we need in from the region.

(01:46):
So the likes of a lot of our oil, a
lot of our vehicles, a lot of our manufacturing comes
from Southeast Asia into New Zealand and that's also coming
at a time when, of course you look at sort
of the security issues around the world, there's a lot
of geopolitical positioning. There's concerns around you know, the US
elections coming up, about a week of Chinese economy, and

(02:07):
increasingly we're seeing more and more businesses across the world
looking to Southeast Asia in terms of manufacturing, so they're
not caught up in too much of these geopolitical issues.
That means that if New Zealand wants to still maintain
good supply chains and good ability to move stuff in
and out of New Zealand and trade with the world,
we've sort of got to be here. So I think
a lot of it is about shoring up what we've

(02:28):
currently got and ensuring that we're sort of part of
the conversation rather than being bypassed.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Are we all heavily heavily, heavily heavily reliant on China
managing to make this thing work?

Speaker 2 (02:40):
In a sense? I think actually what's come out in
the conversation so far today has been a little bit
of a focus on well, how do we do it
ourselves a little bit more, And that's not deliberately moving
away from China or towards any other area. It's more
saying well, instead of sort of trying to second guess
how every other country in the world might do their
own thing, and the worries around all that risk, like

(03:02):
you say, of having eggs all in the one basket,
How can New Zealand how can some of the other
partners that we work with, like Arzion next year it's
fifty years of you know, engagement and diplomacy with the region.
That sort of says that actually, we can work on
some quite cool stuff together. We can think about particularly
New Zealand's got some good stuff in the green energy
space that Southeast Asia is looking at. So I think

(03:24):
there's a lot where we're offering up our expertise. We
obviously have a lot of people that come, a lot
of travelers from New Zealand that head out to the
region as well, and then it's that sort of the
goods and the services trade. So I think there are
some big opportunities. I mean, you look at the numbers
and I think this is the surprising challenge. New Zealand
often doesn't think as much about sort of let's call

(03:46):
it countries five through twenty in terms of our top
ten or our top twenty trade opportunities. We think of
the few big ones at the top, it's actually still
a lot of those slightly smaller but still pretty big
trade opportunities that we could grow to a whole new level.
Brilliant stuff.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Brad enjoy yourself, really appreciate it. Thanks for talking to
us from Malaysia. That's Brad Awsome in for Metrix Principle Economists.
For more from Hither Duplessy, Allen Drive, listen live to
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Speaker 2 (04:10):
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