ZORAN RAKOVIC: Selling Butter to India, Hiring Officials in Wellington

New Zealand has an extraordinary talent for turning simple ideas into bureaucratic circuses. Give us something as straightforward as “sell butter to India,” and within months we will have created a subcommittee to discuss the butter, a working group to review the butter, and an annual symposium on the future of butter cooperation.

The India free trade agreement is a case study in this national affliction.

The sales pitch is charmingly naïve. “Free trade,” we are told, as if someone in Wellington has finally discovered Adam Smith and decided to give it a go. Lower tariffs, fewer barriers, more opportunity. Splendid. One imagines exporters popping champagne and customs officials quietly packing up their desks.

Then you read the thing.

Instead of getting out of the way, the agreement constructs an elaborate administrative theme park. Committees, contact points, technical working groups, cooperation frameworks, review mechanisms, stakeholder engagements, capacity-building initiatives, and enough “dialogue platforms” to keep a medium-sized diplomatic corps employed indefinitely .

This is not free trade. This is a job creation scheme for officials who enjoy meetings.

Every clause that says “the Parties shall cooperate” is, in practice, a polite instruction to hire someone. Cooperation, in the modern state, is not a handshake. It is a calendar. It means briefing papers, travel approvals, minutes, follow-ups, and the inevitable report that concludes more cooperation is required.

The Goods Committee alone must monitor implementation, review data, address trade barriers, produce recommendations, and report upwards to a higher committee, which no doubt reports to an even higher committee, in a sort of bureaucratic food chain where nothing is ever eaten but everything is digested .

If this is what passes for “less government,” one shudders to think what more government might look like.

The cleverness of the arrangement lies in its language. Nothing is ever described as expansion. Instead, we get “capacity building,” “technical assistance,” “policy dialogue,” and “stakeholder engagement.” These are wonderfully vague terms. They mean whatever a department needs them to mean, usually accompanied by a budget request.

“Capacity building” translates to programmes.

“Technical assistance” translates to consultants.

“Policy dialogue” translates to meetings that could have been emails but weren’t.

“Stakeholder engagement” translates to inviting people to talk about things that the market would have sorted out without them.

And of course, once created, these processes develop a strong instinct for self-preservation. Committees do not meet once and declare victory. They meet again, and again, each time discovering new areas requiring further discussion. It is the bureaucratic equivalent of a perpetual motion machine, except instead of producing energy it produces paperwork.

The agreement is particularly fond of “cooperation,” which is the diplomatic word for “we haven’t quite decided what to do, but we’re sure it will require staff.” Entire sections are devoted to cooperation in agriculture, non-agriculture, traditional knowledge, professional services, student mobility, and, one suspects, anything else that can be described as a “sector.”

By the time one reaches the annexes, the original purpose of selling goods abroad has become almost incidental. Trade is no longer something that happens between buyers and sellers. It is something that must be facilitated, coordinated, reviewed, and, above all, discussed.

One can almost hear the quiet delight in Wellington.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade will coordinate. Customs will implement systems. MPI will handle biosecurity. MBIE will get involved in services and investment. Education will discover an interest in student mobility. Immigration will administer visas. Health officials may dabble in traditional medicine exchanges. Everyone gets a slice.

This is how government grows in the modern era. Not by announcing, “we are expanding the bureaucracy,” but by signing something ambitious, comprehensive, and full of good intentions. The machinery follows naturally, like mould in a damp room.

Defenders will say the agreement does not legally require all this activity. Quite so. It merely invites it. In bureaucratic life, an invitation is rarely declined. “May cooperate” quickly becomes “should explore,” then “requires a discussion paper,” and finally “needs resourcing in the next budget round.”

Soft obligations are the gateway drug of hard work.

Meanwhile, the exporter in Selwyn, who thought this was about selling more product, discovers that trade has become a managed service. There are forms, certifications, processes, and occasionally a helpful official offering “to facilitate market access,” which is a polite way of saying “to stand between you and your customer”.

The irony is almost impressive. A genuine free trade agreement would reduce the need for officials. Lower the barriers, simplify the rules, and let people get on with it. This agreement does some of that, but then builds an entire administrative edifice around it, as if terrified that commerce might function without supervision.

One is reminded of the old joke about consultants: if you put them in charge of the Sahara, within five years there would be a shortage of sand. Here, if you give officials a free market, they will organise it until it resembles a ministry.

There is, of course, a deeper point. Bureaucracies thrive on complexity. Complexity requires expertise. Expertise justifies staffing. Staffing justifies budgets. Budgets justify future work. It is a perfectly rational system, provided you are inside it. For everyone else, it is something of a burden.

New Zealanders were promised free trade. What they are getting is managed trade with a generous helping of administrative enthusiasm. More meetings. More reports. More coordination. More Wellington.

The market, left to its own devices, might have quietly done the job. But that would have been far too simple.

Zoran is a retired structural engineer, standing as independent candidate for Selwyn electorate in 2026 general election. His website is www.zoran4selwyn.nz