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Kiwi businessman turned Trump advisor Chris Liddell about why he should get top job at OECD

November 15, 2020

Chris Liddell says international organisations need a “re-think” to be influential.

New Zealand-born Chris Liddell has had a number of high profile jobs over the years - from senior positions at Microsoft and General Motors, to senior advisor to US President Donald Trump.

Now, Liddell has his eyes on becoming the head of the OECD. 

In an exclusive interview with TVNZ1’s Q+A, Liddell said tackling the world’s biggest issues required good governance and good management. 

“I think there's a real crisis of confidence in the public in institutions generally,” he said.

As head of the OECD, he said he could be part of an “institutional reinvention” - like he had been as Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy co-ordination. 

A reinvention was needed because “most” large international organisations have “drifted in their relevance” in the past 20 years after doing “amazing things” post-World War II, Liddell said. 

“How many international organisations are there in the world? It's 38,000. Now, admittedly, a lot of them are small, but a lot of them aren't small. 

“All of them tend to cover each other's ground to a large extent - they're all saying essentially the same thing.”

He called “most” international organisations “aspiration echo chambers” and “talkfests without a lot of action. 

“I talk about good policy as being the combination of aspiration and action. So, aspiration without action is just hollow words, no aspiration and lots of action is just incrementalism and randomness. You need aspiration and you need action.”

It was the combination of aspiration and action in good policy that would make the OECD one of the most influential international organisations in the next decade, Liddell said.

He said the OECD needed to focus on a few small issues the world was facing, and get countries talking about common ground and shared challenges, instead of running 300 different committees. 

“Running the organisation well is incredibly important, and that's about setting priorities. It's just good governance - good management is what I do.”

Trump announced in September he intended to nominate Liddell, a dual US and New Zealand citizen, for Secretary General of the OECD. 

Responding to criticism he may not be suitable for the role given the Trump administration’s undermining of international organisations like the WHO and the UN, Liddell said Trump only wanted the organisations to “justify themselves, and I 100 per cent support him on this.

“The president's not against international organisations. I'm certainly not against them. He's against ones which have lost their focus and lost their way,” he said.

“International organisations for New Zealand are important because it's a forum where a small country can get a disproportionate amount of influence. 

“But, just going along and doing the same old, same old is not the right answer for New Zealand as well.”

Kiwi-born Liddell labelled the policy “terrible” and says he would have opposed it had there been a vote.

Liddell added: “Just having international organisations for the sake of it so you can have a discussion forum is not a particularly good use of New Zealand's resources or time.”

While New Zealand hasn’t publicly backed Liddell’s appointment to the OECD, Liddell attributes much of his success to his upbringing in the country. Born in 1958 in Matamata, Liddell spent much of his childhood and education in Auckland.  

He wasn’t born rich. His father Laurence - a World War II veteran and teacher - died when Liddell was a teenager from a heart attack, after years of heavy smoking. After his debts were settled, the family was left with $5. 

On the day of his father’s death, his mother Eileen took to the streets in Auckland to find a job, ending up at Smith & Caughey’s. 

Campaigning on his Kiwi values for the OECD job, Liddell said tackling inequality was a focus.

“OECD countries need to win the 'industries of the future' race and why it's important that China is not part of the OECD. 

“So every country in the OECD should have an incredibly strong innovation platform that leads to them winning in some way in the critical industries like artificial intelligence, 5G, synthetic biology, quantum computing, internet of things, all of those core, sort of technology concepts.”

He said part of “winning” would require retraining people for jobs of the future. 

“So reinventing community colleges, reinventing vocational training, bringing vocational training back into high schools as well, has got to be a critical part of it.”

As for tackling climate change, with the Trump administration pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, Liddell said it was mostly aspiration that lacked action.

"Paris accord has some benefits, but it has some real weaknesses. It's voluntary.

"And you actually have to ensconce it in domestic policy. And I see very few countries that are doing that well."

He pointed to New Zealand's Zero Carbon Act.

"I think the Zero Carbon Act was a really good piece of legislation, but it doesn't actually have any teeth.

"It's an aspiration piece of legislation."

Liddell said his role in the Trump administration may make it “difficult” for New Zealand to back him for the OECD.

But, he said appointing him would help New Zealand have a “disproportionate impact” internationally. 

Watch the full episode of Sunday on TVNZ OnDemand here.

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