The greatest sadness of the India Free Trade Deal, for me to this point, is that the rhetoric has not paid due respect to where free trade basically began.

New Zealand.

We are the pioneers. Well, the modern pioneers.

The concept goes back to the mid 1800's where Britain and Europe had various deals.

The GATT agreements of the 1940's made significant progress but the deal with Australia in the 80's put it well and truly on our radar and, along with Roger Douglas, Mike Moore made a name, if not fame, with the desire to do cross border business free from the impediment of tariffs.

For a while free trade deals had their time in the sun. They got, I thought, a bit watered down with block deals. The CPTPP is your classic example and even our EU deal is widely accepted as being inferior to proper one-on-one deals like China or now India, because when you get 27 nations together there is bound to be a bunch of protectionists in there.

India is also worth respecting because it's India and it's been a prize for many, many years. It’s the last truly large country and, not just that, but a truly large country actually going places.

If this country has an international calling card, it's trade. We box above our weight, we do business on quality, we buy and sell on a fair price and not a jacked-up protected price.

Within all deals you will find critics or clauses that aren't perfect. It's free trade, not perfect trade, and even a free trade deal technically can, and does, host tariffs.

But the intent, and indeed the outworking of them all, is that the business between two countries is better, freer and bigger than it was before signing.

NZ First are on the wrong side of this and the irony cannot be lost that its leader is a foreign minister who spends his time globally looking to engage and encourage engagement between countries.

Nothing encourages engagement more than doing business.

Labour said it's not the deal they would have done. Isn't it? What is the deal they did when they were in power? That’s right, there wasn’t one.

Successive Governments have failed to cross the line.

This, without a shadow of a doubt, in 20 years will be like China; big, bold, successful and constantly upgraded. We will all see it eventually.

But in the ensuing years since we were free trade evangelists, we've become increasingly myopic, if not racist.

Free trade is what we are good at. We should celebrate what we are good at more.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mike's Minute: The free trade deal should be celebrated