the establishment of a Voluntary Consultative Mechanism (later, a Voluntary Consultative Process) as a Pareto optimal way to address the apparent intersection between trade measures contained in Multilateral Environmental Agreements and the WTO Agreements. It was during this time that Vitalis also produced his analysis of the relationship between trade, innovation and competition in the New Zealand context - a paper subsequently published by the OECD. Vitalis was appointed New Zealand's Chief Negotiator for the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (FTA) (AANZFTA; 2008–10). He was also appointed simultaneously to lead the Malaysia-New Zealand FTA (MNZFTA; 2009–10) negotiations which at that time had been stalled for over eighteen months. Vitalis successfully led the New Zealand teams which concluded both the AANZFTA and revived the moribund MNZFTA process such that less than six months later the MNZFTA was also concluded and came into force on 1 August 2009. The signing of the agreement with Malaysia took place in Kuala Lumpur and was overseen by the Malaysian and New Zealand Prime Ministers and a sixty-member New Zealand business delegation. At the time of the conclusion of the AANZFTA and MNZFTA, ASEAN was New Zealand's third most important trading partner after Australia and China and Malaysia was New Zealand's eighth most important trading partner. The ground-breaking AANZFTA was the first agreement negotiated jointly by Australia and New Zealand. It is characterised by a range of WTO-plus commitments made by ASEAN in areas as diverse as goods, services and intellectual property rights. The agreement is also characterised by the innovative use of an 'economic cooperation' chapter explicitly designed to help ASEAN members effectively implement the agreement. In particular, with its 'built-in' agenda, the AANZFTA is a 'living agreement'. The deadline for the elimination of tariffs in the AANZFTA mirrors that of the China-New Zealand FTA, i.e. twelve years and is a significant improvement on the existing Thailand-New Zealand Closer Economic Partnership which eliminated tariffs on New Zealand products within twenty years. The Malaysia-New Zealand FTA contains a number of significantly AANZFTA-Plus provisions, not least the elimination of a 15% tariff on kiwifruit and a range of new services commitments ensuring that New Zealand education, engineering and environmental service providers have a 'first mover' advantage over their competitors ( and). Vitalis' leadership in successfully concluding the AANZFTA was specifically acknowledged by the then New Zealand Minister of Trade, Hon Tim Groser and during the New Zealand