New Zealand is lucky to have a Reserve Bank governor in Alan Bollard speaking out about lifting our economic performance. It’s good to hear him going on about Australia being a lucky country and New Zealand being a lucky neighbour.

It would be marvellous indeed to hear our government ministers talking up the importance of trading with Australia with the same enthusiasm.

As I noted earlier, Australia hasn’t gone into recession, and the harder we ride on its coat tails now, as its economy rises, the faster we’ll get back into the black.

New Zealand has several enormous advantages over other nations in trading into and with Australia, and we cannot possibly have exhausted all the avenues open to exploit them.

Duty-free, two-way trade under the Closer Economic Relations agreement (the last trade barriers came down in 1990) is the first amongst them. CER is still a great deal, but for the first time in years, our exports of manufactured goods across the Tasman have virtually stalled. For the 12 months ended September 2008, manufactured exports to Australia earned us $5.70 billion; they were up a meagre $18 million to $5.72 billion for the same period in 2009.

CER could be an even better deal if Australia were to see to its own interests and agree to stop the double taxation of dividends. All that requires is agreement for a dividend paid in Australia or New Zealand to be taxed only in the country where it was earned.

Secondly, the Kiwi diaspora in Australia numbers over a million people, and on average they’re more skilled and better paid than your average Australian or any other migrant group resident there. We can presume they’re still fond of their mother country, though most of them hear little over there of what goes on here. They represent a great, unrealised opportunity.

Thirdly, our cross rate with the Australian dollar has lately moved back under A$80 cents, well below its 10-year average of A$85.6 cents. What with Australian interest rates moving up ahead of ours, it’s likely the kiwi/aussie trend will remain favourable for New Zealand exporters.

So the question arises: Why haven’t we got an ‘Export to Australia’ campaign going full tilt by now? Why aren’t we taking far more advantage of Australia’s luck?

Our tourism industry is never shy about promoting the wonders of New Zealand to well-to-do Australians.

Why aren’t we putting the same investment and energy into promoting other forms of trans-Tasman trade? New Zealand exports to Australia are losing market share. Six years ago, manufactured exports there (excluding dairy, meat and seafood) accounted for 38.4% of the total of manufactured exports; now it’s 36.7%. Why aren’t we launching ourselves headlong into a country whose wealth is spiralling upwards at a time others are fading, and which just happens to be our nearest neighbour and best route to joining the rich nations?

It can’t be because no-one in the Government thinks exports of anything other than agricultural products are important.

We need a full-scale trade spearhead launched across a wide front into Australia, encompassing services like management, education, transport, logistics, engineering, IT, film, advertising and publishing to piggyback on our traditional SME exporters of processed food, machinery, chemicals and other niche manufactures.

Getting into Asia will always remain an objective for Kiwi exporters. But if we want our country to recover faster, we need our small to medium exporters to plunge headfirst into a country where language and culture present no barriers, and where consumers are well heeled and understand Kiwi quality.

Bruce Goldsworthy is manager of Manufacturing and Export New Zealand for the Employers & Manufacturers’ Association (Northern)