Firstly, his diction was fine. We must not try to compare the standard of his diction to an American speaker, but rather an ordinary New Zealand speaker.

Secondly, to those of you who think he should simply change the way he speaks for any given occasion. It appears that he has a mild speech impediment and as we all should know by now; speech impediments are extremely difficult to overcome even with years of speech therapy. It is not a matter of simply "oh this is an important occasion, I'll slow down my speech and pronounce things properly now," he is consciously trying to say the words correctly but his brain/vocal muscles don't follow through. Given his age, it is unlikely that he would ever completely rid himself of the impediment, even with extensive speech therapy.

Lastly, it is unlikely the State Department would use voice recognition software alone, and if they did use the software they would undoubtedly have someone check it before publishing it.

This is simply a case of a genuine error by the transcriber, it would be unwise and imprudent to read too much into it. It seems to be that the transcriber (who probably has little if any knowledge about NZ's foreign/diplomatic policies) was trying to make sense out of something he couldn't understand, was rushing the job or thought he had the correct transcription. I don't buy that the Americans would purposefully change the Prime Minister's words, that would be a real PR/diplomatic disaster.