Agenda: Nats Move Toward UN Based Foreign Policy

National To Consider Defence Force Funding Boost

The National Party would consider a boost to Defence Force funding if a white paper investigating the issue recommended it.

On TVONE’s Agenda, National Party Foreign Policy spokesman Murray McCully said a Naitonal Government would commission a White Paper on defence and it would be counter-productive to rule out funding increases..

“Well it would be silly to have a white paper process and say ‘but the bottom line is we can't spend any more money’, you have to allow for that as a possible outcome”.

Mr McCully did not specify where a funding boost would be directed, but said it was important New Zealand continue to focus on “niche” defence areas; “I think it’s the only way forward…”

National Moving Toward Multi-Lateral, UN Based Foreign Policy

National Party Foreign Policy spokesman Murray McCully admits National has moved toward a more multi-lateral based foreign policy, in contrast to its usual alliance-based stance.

On TVONE’s Agenda Mr McCully said; “I accept that we've moved in that direction just as Labour has moved away from some of its previous adherence to the non-alignment.”

However, Mr McCully said this should not mean that Government “slavishly” follows the lines of the UN and other agencies.

“I guess it is a point of distinction between ourselves and the current government that we have a somewhat more critical view of the UN occasionally than they do”.

Aid Funding Needs To Be “Reprioritised” – National

National Party Foreign Policy spokesman Murray McCully believes New Zealand should focus the bulk of its aid budget on a smaller number of countries.

On TVONE’s Agenda Mr McCully said the aid budget is spread too thinly and should go to places like Tonga and the Cook Islands, rather than African or Vietnamese nations.

“We can't afford to spend it across 100 countries as we do, we can't fund programmes in Nicaragua and the Mekong Delta and so on, as we do at the moment. “

Mr McCully said Pacific countries being “forced” to go to China to get aid because New Zealand and Australia are not “stepping up to the plate”.

“There are all sorts of needs crying out, our delivery hasn’t been big enough to match the demand so far”.

All Blacks Strength Sourced Through Cultural Lessons

All Blacks coach Graham Henry frequently holds meetings with his players to discuss their cultural and ancestral backgrounds.

On TVONE’s Agenda Mr Henry said these meetings were important because they encourage team “acceptance” and “learning”.

“We often have meetings where the guy whose ancestry might be Tongan, or Samoan or Fijian talks about their culture and what it means, what their extended family means etcetera, etcetera.”

Mr Henry said this process was also ensured everybody felt the Haka or the All Black jersey had some personal significance for them.

“We have worked very hard at making sure that each cultural group is represented by the jersey by the Haka. Each Haka is a representative of the pacific islanders, the Maori, the Europeans. Obviously it has a Maori heritage but all those guys are represented in that Haka.”

RAWDON When it comes to foreign policy we're all pretty much in the dark over how National's approach might differ from Labour's, in fact it's been suggested that you could stick a credit card in the gap between the two. Last time there was an election what to do about Iraq was pushed as a major issue and on that point there were clear differences between the two parties, something that National may now regret. Murray McCully is National's spokesman on foreign affairs and he joins One News Political Editor Guyon Espiner.

GUYON Well Murray McCully you talk about National presiding over the most bipartisan foreign policy in 30 years, what do you actually mean by that?

MURRAY McCULLY – National MP

Well I think my starting point, our starting point is that foreign policy is not the province of one Prime Minister or one politician or a political party, foreign policy is owned by the public and it doesn’t suit New Zealand's interests to have our relationships around the world moving around according to the vagaries of the political fortunes of New Zealand's political parties. We're a small country, we're very dependent upon our international relationships and those relationships should be protected, should be the subject of collaborative work by the major political parties as far as that is possible.

GUYON But aren’t you just trying to depoliticise foreign policy?

MURRAY I think that there are sort of two different layers here. I think to the extent that we can get agreement on the big picture direction that should be bipartisan. To the extent that there are different nuances along the way, different areas of emphasis we can debate those.

GUYON Okay I'll put it to you this way, in a political context. Aren’t National just trying to depoliticise foreign policy because it's an area of weakness because you would have gone into Iraq, that has turned into a disaster and now you don’t really want the spotlight to be on foreign policy at all?

MURRAY Well that’s of course the cynical view, I sort of take the view that New Zealand actually does need a bipartisan foreign policy as far as we can achieve that at the moment we've got some very important goals to achieve as a country and yes there has been some contention around Iraq, the National Party would not of course have sent troops into Iraq.

GUYON But how can you say that because on March 18th 2003 when there's a snap debate in parliament the war was about to start, Bill English the leader, Wayne Mapp, speaker after speaker got up and said we will support the coalition of the willing.

MURRAY Yes well there's a distinction of course between supporting the right of the coalition of the willing to go about their work and of course deciding we're gonna be in there as well but we didn’t say we'd be in there too, in fact I doubt that we would have had anything to contribute at the time to be honest.

GUYON So let's just get this straight, you actually supported the war but wouldn’t send the troops?

MURRAY Yeah, look I wasn’t involved in our foreign policy at that stage particularly but as far as I understand it the position was by the then leader and the spokesman that we'd support the right of others to go in but we would not be there ourselves.

GUYON But isn't supporting the war and not sending troops actually worse than ….

MURRAY Well we can argue about those distinctions as much as we like, I mean I'm simply saying to you that looking forward we've got some important decisions to make, we've got some important milestones to achieve.

GUYON Okay and let's look forward, what would you do in that sort of scenario again, I mean voters would like to know if that sort of scenario presented, do you wait for the UN or do you go with your allies?

MURRAY Well I think that you always look to find a multilateral solution, always look to see whether the UN and the other agencies are going to do the business. Now that doesn’t mean you slavishly follow those lines and I guess it is a point of distinction between ourselves and the current government that we have a somewhat more critical view of the UN occasionally than they do, but in these situations of course Prime Ministers are involved in all sorts of discussions with senior officials.

GUYON But it comes down to that though doesn’t it? It comes down to whether you have a foreign policy which is based on an alliance approach or do you go down the multilateral track where you look to the UN for its lead. Now if you're talking genuinely about a bipartisan foreign policy you’ve adopted Labour's multilateral stance.

MURRAY No we haven’t but I accept that we've moved in that direction just as Labour has moved away from some of its previous adherence to the non alignment.

GUYON Which is it because you can't have it both ways can you? You’ve either got an alliance based foreign policy.

MURRAY Yes.

GUYON Or you’ve got a multilateral one, which is it?

MURRAY I accept your point that the National Party hasn’t written that stuff down for quite a long time and I can tell you that you'll see a position paper from us over the next few weeks which will spell out our thinking about that stuff, but broadly we are talking about an independent foreign policy for New Zealand, that’s not something you’ve heard from the National Party in previous times.

GUYON So this is quite a significant change isn't it?

MURRAY It is a significant shift in our thinking.

GUYON Why have you don’t that?

MURRAY Because we've stood back and said look there's been a lot of water pass under the bridge since we last had a really good comprehensive position on foreign policy trade and defence matters, we owe it to the public if we might be the next government to write that stuff down in a contemporary way and you'll see something from us this year which does that and you will have seen from some of the things that I've been saying that an independent foreign policy is substantially the overarching theme of that, but there are some other themes in there as well, we want to see New Zealand get more focused on some priorities in the Pacific in Asia and so on.

GUYON I want to come back to that. Let's talk briefly about defence because in your own words defence is simply the execution of foreign policy. You’ve said that you want to improve the defence relationship with Australia.

MURRAY Yes.

GUYON How?

MURRAY Well you can't of course negotiate those things from Opposition, what you have to do is simply point a direction. Now I accept that the government has moved in the correct way so far with some of the niche expenditure that it has made and it's fair to say that we see the way forward for New Zealand in defence and I'm not the defence spokesman, but we see the way forward is for New Zealand to focus on some capabilities that it can really execute well.

GUYON And you have been the defence spokesman, you know a lot about this area, it's foreign affairs and defence are pretty much tied together in many ways. Hasn’t Labour got it right by axing the strike wing, pumping that money back into the Army and the Navy and focusing on a military that is really geared up for peacekeeping. Have you adopted a bipartisan approach on that too?

MURRAY Well you'll have to wait and see the detail in the paper, but broadly speaking I accept that buying niche capabilities is the right thing to do and but we take issue with the approach in a very important way here.

GUYON Well let's just get one specific, one screamingly obvious one, the axing of the combat wing, the Skyhawks and the Air Macs would National bring that back.

MURRAY I'm not in a position to say.

GUYON Well hang on they were axed in May 2001, you’ve had six years to think about this.

MURRAY You see we just don’t think that you should make important defence decisions that way, I don’t envisage a strike wing coming back, but though I see the way forward is not for me to make a policy on the hoof but to have a considered process in government which involves a white paper process so that we can determine those things.

GUYON Okay can we talk more generally about expenditure. Would National spend more money on defence?

MURRAY Well it would be silly to have a white paper process and say but the bottom line is we can't spend any more money, you have to allow that as a possible outcome but it would equally be irresponsible of me to sit here and say we don’t know what we're gonna buy but we're gonna spend more money. I think that spending more money on defence is one of the outcomes you have to have, leave yourself open to if you go into a white paper process, yes.

GUYON Would you match Australia's expenditure?

MURRAY I don’t think there's any remote possibility.

GUYON Proportionally.

MURRAY I don’t think there's any remote possibility that we're gonna see New Zealand heading up over 2% of its GDP on defence expenditure.

GUYON What would you like to get close to, you’ve said in your own words that defence spending is on the light side, they're your words?

MURRAY And in the last couple of years we have, we've dipped down below 0.9% of GDP on one or two occasions, I think it's probably moving up closer to 1% now, and those figures are not gonna be particularly meaningful to the public. What I'd say is New Zealanders have never shirked their responsibilities around the world, as long as you put them in a position where they can understand them I think if we have a good white paper process, when we look at our long term strategic goals I think New Zealand will sign up to spending an appropriate amount of money if the case is put to them.

GUYON Okay let's talk about another major relationship, that’s the United States, you’ve said that one of the key differences in Labour and National's foreign policy is that you want a better more mutually respectful relationship with the United States, how are you going to achieve that?

MURRAY Well again those are not things you can negotiate from Opposition, but I think again here there's an issue of what the diplomats would call tonality, and that’s all about other people see your underlying position as being, whether you're there to be part of the solution or part of the problem and scoring cheap political points off the President of the United States is not a smart thing to do if you want to be seen as a genuinely friendly nation.

GUYON That’s what our Prime Minister has done?

MURRAY That’s what our Prime Minister has done, and my view is that in the context of independent foreign policy where we're gonna make some decisions that are at odds with Australia or the United States from time to time and we're gonna respect them and ask them to respect us, then we have to be quite careful about how we go about our business, and some of the things that key ministers in this government have done have been unhelpful in that respect.

GUYON But isn't it better for the US to actually know where New Zealand stands, I mean Labour said it wasn’t gonna support the war in Iraq and didn’t go, you're telling me you supported the war but you wouldn’t send troops, isn't that pretty confusing for them?

MURRAY We're not saying we supported the war, we say we supported…

GUYON You did on March 18th …

MURRAY I'm telling you my reading of events which was that we supported the right of the coalition of the willing to take some action, that was the technical position at the time as is understand it. What I'm saying going forward is that we will in the context of an independent foreign policy disagree with our good friends, with Australia, with the United States. How we deal with those disagreements is fundamentally important.

GUYON So it's actually just about tone and nice words rather than actions?

MURRAY No it's about being prepared also if you want me to add to that picture, there are some other important ingredients, I think that our level of defence expenditure is one of the issues that the United States will certainly be looking at in terms of the role we're gonna play, what we can bring to the table in terms of our contribution in the Pacific will be important. I mean we see the US relationship through I guess, through trade eyes first and foremost, they see the relationship through security eyes and I think when we meet at the table we have to understand those things.

GUYON John Key said that Helen Clark's failure to secure a free trade agreement with the United States was "massive foreign policy failure". Do you think that National can achieve that and how would you do that?

MURRAY Yes I do, but again just remember we've got an election to be held here, an election for a President over there, I think it's likely that even if the Democrats are in control that there'll be room for some free trade agreements. Yes I think there is a path forward provided we understand that our genuineness in dealing with the issues on the table will matter to them.

GUYON Is this foreign affairs portfolio one that you want to take into a national government, do you want to be the Foreign Affairs Minister.

MURRAY I'm enjoying doing the job, there's some new ground we're breaking at the moment that I'm finding quite exciting.

GUYON That’s a yes?

MURRAY I didn’t ask for the job, I'm challenged by the job now, but it's John Key's call who he makes as Minister and I'll accept whatever position I get.

GUYON Good place to leave it thanks.

RAWDON We're joined by our panel Andrew Holding and Brian Fallow. Andrew will a bipartisan approach win over the voters?

ANDREW HOLDEN – Deputy Editor, The Press

It's a nice broad fairly bland way of not scaring the horses I suspect.

BRIAN FALLOW – Economic Editor, NZ Herald

Are we allowed to ask questions of Murray straight away?

RAWDON Absolutely, go for it.

BRIAN Just on that point I'm very interested in your emphasis on that, that suggests to me that you'd be quite content for Winston Peters to continue as Foreign Minister under a National led government.

MURRAY Oh look the vagaries of the political system we have here can generate all sorts of outcomes, I don’t worry about that sort of stuff I've got an interesting job to do now and my leader's gonna have to deal with whatever cards he's dealt with after the next election.

BRIAN But has Winston been a good Foreign Minister for New Zealand.

MURRAY Oh look I'm not gonna slag him I'm not gonna praise him, I think that he – I hope over the balance of this term that he decides to become less of an adversarial figure around New Zealand politics than he has been for the start of this term.

BRIAN You seem to be hinting about the possibility at least of increased defence spending there and I wonder how you square that with the tax cutting agenda.

MURRAY Well I don’t cos it's not my job. All I can do is say to you that there is a very clear need for a white paper on defence to chart the way forward, we haven’t had one since about 1997, other countries in fact all countries like New Zealand use that process as a way of engaging not just internally but also with their friends around the world. I think it's the only way forward but you can't go into a process like that and say that there's no more money to be spent you’ve gotta have an open mind about that.

RAWDON Murray you talk about an independent policy you also talk about the importance of relationships, surely there's a contradiction there slightly?

MURRAY No I think that if you put that in the context of bipartisanship it means that you try and find as much common ground as you can with the other major player on the block and work together, we do that pretty comprehensively with trade. With trade issues there's been a very long track record of both major political parties providing support and we continue to do that. I'm looking at simply trying to engage a slightly wider net on foreign policy matters.

RAWDON But surely our responsibility should be primarily to Australia, I mean they make no secret about wanting a National led government to be focusing on a strike force as far as spending goes.

MURRAY No, that’s not my reading of things at all, I think the Australians warmly appreciate the niche capabilities we bring to the table, in the Pacific in particular, on a slightly wider field the role of the SAS is something that have excellent feedback about, not just in Australia but in the States. I think that if you look at the role that we've got in the Pacific in particular over the next couple of decades, some niche capabilities will suggest themselves that the Australians I think will find extremely agreeable.

ANDREW Being independent tells me that you don’t see resurrecting a strong ANZUS relationship is important any more, that in fact that’s now gone.

MURRAY Yeah, I think you’ve gotta be honest about that and say if you're gonna embrace the nuclear legislation then you can't have ANZUS so that means we do not see an alliance based approach to that relationship. Having said that there's still enormous scope for us to effect improvements in the relationship to get some of the underlying tension out of the relationship that’s been there over 20 years now, there's a presidential directive still in force 20 years later that restricts the way in which the New Zealand and US defence forces can share technology for your intelligence, train together, have to get a waver to train together. Now that’s an area where we need to make some progress and my view is that the United States is not going to easily move on that sort of stuff if they can see people on this side of the equation jumping up and saying well we took on the biggest nation on earth and we've just scored a victory they want to know that there's a somewhat more balanced and more serious and positive relationship in place betore they're gonna move.

BRIAN Isn't the reality though that the best attitude you can expect to get out of Washington is you're a great little country and we'll screw you with a heavy heart?

MURRAY No I think we've seen both sides of the equation move on very considerably and that’s been reinforced for me privately but we see people like Christopher Hill Assistant Secretary of State saying it publicly. I think there are very deep concerns about the Pacific particularly in Washington, certainly there are in Australia, they see New Zealand as having a very special responsibility and opportunity to assist in that regard. Look we're sitting in the largest Polynesian city in the world right now, we've got the capability to deliver more in the Pacific than probably any other country.

BRIAN Are you concerned about an increased Chinese influence in the region?

MURRAY I fully understand the rapid increase in Chinese activity and the extent to which concern is growing that countries are forced to turn to China because New Zealand and Australia aren’t stepping up to the plate, and that’s why I believe that that 440 odd million dollars of aid budget we've got this year has got to be reprioritised, we can't afford to spend it across 100 countries as we do, we can't fund programmes in Nicaragua and the Mekong Delta and so on as we do at the moment. There's so much to be done in places like Tonga, places like the Cooks where we saw their Deputy Prime Minister down here talking to ministers and to us this week. There are all sorts of needs crying out, our delivery hasn’t been big enough to match the demand so far.

RAWDON Murray, Brian, Andrew thanks for that. Guyon what have you learnt about foreign policy under a National government?

GUYON Well I think Murray McCully's been very interesting this morning, he pretty much ruled out putting back the jet strike wing, he pretty much ruled in increasing defence spending although we haven’t got obviously any definite numbers on that, but more broadly I just think it's quite fascinating that National's moving towards a more sort of multilateral UN sort of based foreign policy, that’s quite a big big change, you only have to go back a couple of years to hear someone like Simon Power say where our allies go we go, and so I think that’s quite a shift for National.

RAWDON And how will voters respond to that?

GUYON Well I think elections aren’t usually decided over foreign policy and I think politically National is trying to neutralise foreign policy to an extent because they know it's now a vote winner for them, in fact if anything it would be a vote loser and I think it's another area where they're trying to neutralise the politics around it. That might not be a bad thing in terms of relationships with other countries.

RAWDON What about if there is an aggressive stance taken by a nation like China, where does that leave a National led government?

GUYON Well this is where you come to the crux of it and this is what countries like Australia are still wanting to know from us, where do we stand are we an alliance based where the US and Australia and Britain go we go, or do we look to the UN. Now Labour has very much taken the latter and it sounds as though National's moving in that direction too.

RAWDON Guyon thanks very much.

TEAM CULTURE

Has Graham Henry got it right?

RAWDON This weekend the All Blacks are resting up at home with their families ahead of their departure on Wednesday for the World Cup in France. It's 20 years since the inaugural tournament, the only time the All Blacks have won. This year they go into the competition as the number one rated team and red hot favourites, so what's changed. Coach Graham Henry says it's not just about creating the right plays it's also about creating the right culture. I spoke to Graham Henry earlier this week at the teams' Auckland hotel and began by asking him about the challenges he faced when he first took over.

GRAHAM HENRY: You don’t know what the challenges are going to be until you experience working with the team and we found a number of challenges in that first six months and we changed a number of things. We changed the way we coached, which was quite significant, we tried to develop self reliance and self leadership in the players and leadership of the team by the players, so we had dual management if you like, a leadership group of players and the management working together to run the team. So those are the sort of things we learnt about in the first six months that needed to be introduced and we did that.

Rawdon: Cos you always had the players, the players have always been there haven’t they?

Graham: Oh for sure, it's just a matter of making sure that the culture's right and that the players are developed both as people and as rugby players so that they can manage themselves and also play well.

Rawdon: Let's talk about the culture because if I've done my research there was a moment in Ellis Park 2004 Nelson Mandela comes on to the pitch and you see the crowd and you see the way the Springboks were soaking up that crowd and that’s been described as an epiphany of sorts is that fair enough?

Graham: Yeah sure it was a pivotal moment in our development, no we started pretty well despite probably the greatest living human being on the earth at the moment being in South Africa and sparring the South African team we actually started reasonably well, and then we started to have some – some challenges on the track and then we got quiet and withdrawn and they finished up beating us quite comfortably. So I think that was a learning experience for us all, a learning experience for me, a learning experience for the players, and we had to learn from that and try and rectify that situation, and we have done that to some extent.

Rawdon: What did you identify as the crux to this cultural revolution?

Graham: Oh as I said before greater self reliance as individuals, greater self leadership, and leadership of the team both on and off the field by the players, a change in the way we coached the team, we were probably putting too much pressure on them during the week and spent too much time coaching, so we had to reduce the amount of contact time, so that they had a full tank when they played the game. Oh numerous things I could go on and on but those are probably the crux of it.

Rawdon: You talk about leadership a lot instilling leadership across several players within your team, you yourself are being viewed as one of our great leaders now for what you’ve achieved up to this point, is that a fair assessment?

Graham: Oh I think that’s for other people to assess not for me to assess. What we're doing as a group of people, we're working together to try and produce a top rugby team and I'm just one of those people doing that job and you know there's a lot of other top people in management who are making significant contributions and making a difference, like Gilbert Inoka the sports psychologist in the team, Wayne Smith and Steve Hansen the other coaches, Daren Shand the manager, Sir Brian Lahore, I could go on and on. So there's some very strong personalities and people very good at their job within the management team and then you go to the players, Tana was outstanding captain in the finish, Richie's developing that way and they’ve got some very strong players around them who also lead.

Rawdon: What about yourself in a wider perspective, who do you admire as great leaders?

Graham: Oh I haven’t really thought about it quite frankly. I grew up in education and I had a guy named John Graham who was the headmaster of Auckland Grammar School and I worked in the school for nine years and I admired his leadership because he gave people opportunity, gave people responsibility and expected them to take on that responsibility and do well, so I enjoyed his leadership style, so I thought he was pretty important. I've read a lot about what other sports coaches do not in rugby.

Rawdon: Grant Dalton?

Graham: Ah yeah, I appreciate what Grant's doing, he's very straight, there's no grey area in the objectives, he takes personal accountability so he doesn’t fob the responsibility and put it on others and he takes the consequences of if they don’t do the job so I appreciate his angles and where he comes from.

Rawdon: He invited you to address his team did he not?

Graham: Oh we had a discussion, I don’t think it was an address, we had a discussion and we shared ideas really, now when I talked about what we're doing in the All Blacks and they talked to me about what they're doing with their Emirates New Zealand Americas Cup team.

Rawdon: And it was on the lines of building a strong culture and also the sort of shared leadership?

Graham: Yeah, yeah it's about having the right culture off the boat or off the field to produce the performances on the field.

Rawdon: One of the criticisms of the All Blacks as a group of people before has been there's been a high predominance of Pacific Islanders who physically are awesome for the game of rugby but mentally sometimes don’t have the toughness to see it through, what's your view of that considering there is a high proportion or I think there's about 30% of Pacific Islanders going for the All Blacks this time?

Graham: Well I think that’s a general statement, there's a lot of people no matter what culture they come from who find it difficult under pressure to perform.

Rawdon: And that’s something you had to tackle was it?

Graham: Oh I think whether they were European, Maori, Pacific Islander, Fijian, Eskimo, whatever, alright.

Rawdon: Sure, not too many Eskimos in the side though.

Graham: People under pressure find it hard to make the right decisions and we have tried to work on that situation and I don’t think it's a cultural thing.

Rawdon: And that’s about having a number of leaders across the field.

Graham: Exactly.

Rawdon: Who make those decisions when they have to.

Graham: Well they help the captain to lead the side.

Rawdon: You have a multicultural team, how significant is that All Black jersey across the board, does it have the same meaning for everyone in that team?

Graham: Oh for sure. We work very hard at making sure that each culture – each cultural group is represented by the jersey, by the haka, our new haka is representative of the Pacific Islanders, the Maoris, the Europeans. Obviously it has a Maori heritage but all of those guys are represented in that haka. We often have meetings where a guy from whose ancestry might be Tongan or Samoan or Fijian talks about their culture and what it means, and what their extended family mean etc etc, so there's a learning about each other there and an acceptance about each other and tightness in the group.

Rawdon: One of the other big challenges which you took on was discipline within the team as well, how has that worked out now? Looking back over the last three years how has your approach to discipline panned out?

Graham: Oh reasonably well, we always have our challenges, young people don’t always make the right decisions, they often do, nine times out of ten they will make the right decisions but sometimes they make the wrong decisions and that has to be addressed, so our discipline policy really is about young people growing and making the right decisions, showing personal leadership, personal responsibility.

Rawdon: You put a lot of focus on how the team coped on the tour at the end of last year being away from home for so long, but come France I think if things go to plan it's 53 days away isn't it. Is that gonna be tough for some of the younger players to cope with, those with maybe less self discipline?

Graham: Oh for sure, I don’t know if it's about discipline it's about getting homesick and missing the people at home, and these guys don’t experience that length of tour very often, in fact they’ve never – most of them have never experienced that, so it's a major challenge. Like we were away for 30 odd days last year and they handled it well and the unity and enjoyment and the togetherness was excellent, but there's another 20 days on top of that this time, so it's an extended period of time so they have to have a balance. Now they have to enjoy what they're doing, they have to enjoy living in France, the French people, being a tourist some of the time, so they have other interests apart from playing rugby.

Rawdon: Graham you’ve spent a lot of time taking the pressure off them by the looks of it which I imagine would therefore heap the pressure on yourself that much more, how do you deal with it?

Graham: Oh I dunno if I've taking the pressure off them but – well I think as you actually get older you get better at handling pressure, I think that’s part of it. I've got my systems of decreasing that pressure. I do a lot of reading so that’s an escape, I do a lot of exercise, believe it or not, so that’s an escape, I've got a few hobbies which I enjoy so I can escape.

Rawdon: How's your French?

Graham: My French is limited, slowly getting better.

Rawdon: Do you sometimes think about the end goal now it's not that far away, either way, whether you win or lose?

Graham: No, not a lot. I'd be telling fibs if I say I never think about it because occasionally it slips in there.

Rawdon: What do you think about it?

Graham: Oh I think about how we can improve what we're doing all the time, both on and off the field, you know how can we improve next week.

Rawdon: But do you never think about that goal, achieving that goal, bringing that trophy home?

Graham: Oh yeah, as I said I do slip down there occasionally, but the majority of the thinking is about the next day what we can do how we best can do that to produce a performance that we're pleased with you know, and if we play well we're going to win the cup, if we don’t we won't, so it's about making sure that we stay in the now are now focused to be the best we can be every day, and if we do – if we do that we've got a good chance to bring that cup home.

Rawdon: That’s great, thank you very much Graham.

FINAL THOUGHTS – GUEST COMMENTATORS

RDN Now I want to bring you back to the Graham Henry interview. Is he a great leader?

BRIAN Well ask us in a couple of months, but I thought it was interesting that he's obviously focused not just on things like skills and fitness and teamwork and so on, a lot of it seemed to be about character and personality, we heard all the stuff about responsibility and leadership and so on, it's perhaps a broader view of the coach's role than some of his predecessors might have had I don’t know.

ANDREW I wonder whether one of the reasons is he's well aware of the last semi final where Justin Marshall was injured and taken off and the team became rudderless there for a period and the Australians as the Manawatu Standard likes to point out mean spirited overwhelmingly arrogant as we might be the team lost its direction and one of the greatest fears for the All Blacks would have to be if Dan Carter is injured or one of those pivotal positions goes off the park who steps up to take over control of the team and I'm sure he's preparing for that. I was really interested too in the way he puts the emphasis on the cultures within the team and getting the Samoans and the Tongans to stand up and talk about their culture to build that really strong sense to the team, that’s strikes me as being a really powerful way of ensuring that when the team's on the park they really will do everything they possibly can for each other.

RAWDON And that’s I would assume a completely new approach. What about if they don’t win though, I mean Grant Dalton comes back without the Americas Cup but we still hold him in enormously high regard we think that he showed an enormous amount of great leadership and almost pulled off what we weren't expecting. If Graham Henry doesn’t come back with the World Cup would he be held in the same regard?

BRIAN A failure.

ANDREW Well yes I mean at the end of the day he's pinned everything on the World Cup hasn’t he, he pulled all those against All Blacks out of the Super 14 because he basically said the only thing that really matters is winning the World Cup he's banked everything on it, he's banked his own reputation, he said outright if I don’t win the World Cup that’s the end of me I'm gone and I accept that. For all that he seemed incredibly relaxed in that interview, I mean this is not a man who appears to be panicking or under any massive pressure and I would have thought if you're part of that team you'd be pretty comfortable by that.

BRIAN Well I think they must be aware of the weight of aspiration behind them and so on, I spose the trick is not to let that affect your performance but I think it will have a huge effect on sentiment positive or negative in all sorts of other ways.

RAWDON What about economically could it have an effect?

BRIAN It could well I think you know there is the sort of intent, they talk about animal spirits abroad, feel good or feel bad factor, and there are enough other things happening to make people feel bad and some to make us feel good like the dairy payout and so on, and it would be helpful to have a bit of a boost from this quarter as well.

RAWDON So what do you think is going to be directing the news this week economically?

BRIAN Well hopefully we won't see any more finance companies falling, a seventh would be piling up the bodies a bit too fast for comfort I think, but the nervousness that’s around globally and increasingly locally is not gonna go away in a hurry. Down the track there are some really positive things particularly when the Fonterra payout starts flowing through, it's not all doom and gloom by any means and even globally this is the sort of problem that central banks have seen before and they know how to deal to, but they haven’t quite yet that’s the thing.

RAWDON Great, thank you very much guys.

ends

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