For more on this issue, see; New Zealand PM Luxon Labelled as Weak and Cowardly After Delaying Decision on Palestine.

*******

The New Zealand Cabinet will today consider whether to formally recognise Palestine as a state – and Palestinian rights advocacy group Palestinian Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) urges the Government to listen to the views of a vast majority of New Zealanders.

The PSNA anticipates Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, will get instructions from Cabinet on Monday to increase pressure on Israel.

The United Nations General Assembly High Level Leaders Debate starts in New York next Tuesday.

PSNA Co-Chair, John Minto says the government has to have listened to the voice of the people who marched for sanctions against Israel, in Auckland (on Saturday September 13).

“With only limited time to organize, and disruption caused by having to change from the route over the Harbour Bridge at the last moment, 25,000 turned out to object to the government’s passive, and effectively pro-Israel, policies,” John Minto said.

“It’s a turn-out that’s been building, now rapidly, in our protests around the country over the past two years.

“New Zealanders are nearly two to one in favour of sanctions against Israel. Support for accountabilities will have increased significantly since then as Israel’s depravity and cruelty has shown no bounds.”

Minto says foreign minister Peters will be attending potentially one of the most important debates in United Nations history next week.

“The General Assembly has already begun, and on Friday, New Zealand voted along with 141 other countries, for a state of Palestine to be created through Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” John Minto said. “There were only ten votes against, predictably the US and Israel, but a concerning five Pasifika states voted against Palestine as well.”

According to Minto Israel has already made it clear that it has no intention to permit a Palestinian state to emerge, “nor compromise its apartheid system, by allowing equal democratic rights to Palestinians who live under its control and inside its present borders.”

Minto said in announcing its position on Palestine, the government will be sensitive to its reputation in Arab countries.

“Israel has just bombed Qatar, to kill off the prospect of a Hamas agreement on hostage releases.  Qatar is a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which is led by Saudi Arabia.

“Peters’ cabinet colleague, Todd McClay is in Saudi Arabia this week to talk trade.  McClay will not be wanting to explain to the Saudis, face to face, why Peters was in New York at the same time telling the world about Israel’s so called right to defend itself.”

Australia, Canada, France, United Kingdom and other nations have already demanded a ceasefire to hostilities in Palestine’s occupied territories and for Israel to cease the apparent genocide being committed in Gaza.

Minto said: “So far, the UN emphasis has been on two-state outcomes, and how to get rid of Hamas. But the world debate is moving strongly to sanctions.

“Now is the time to move past idle rhetoric, and deliver sanctions, which are the only persuasion Israel will concede to,” John Minto said.

Today, In this episode of A View from Afar political scientist, and former Pentagon analyst, Dr Paul Buchanan, and Selwyn Manning will analyse the question:

What does the Geopolitical balancing that is taking place in the West and South-West Pacific mean for the region and the globe?

Paul and Selwyn will consider this question from several angles, and provide a context to the headlines that suggest both global powers, the USA and the Peoples Republic of China, are on a collision-course toward conflict.

Paul will take us through the US-PNG and Japan-NZ bilateral security/military agreements as a balancing response to the PRC-Solomons security agreement.

In addition, Paul will consider the question: Does the PRC have legitimate interests in the Pacific and, as a great power, should those interests be understood and respected?

Selwyn will consider whether China’s ascendancy as a global power threatens the United States’ position as the ‘preeminent defender’ of the Global Order?

And Selwyn will raise for debate, highlighting what the two global powers’ messaging was at the Shangri-La security dialogue that took place over last weekend.

Paul will then analyse what this all means for the Asia-Pacific region and the world.

INTERACTION WHILE LIVE: Paul and Selwyn encourage their live audience to interact while they are live with questions and comments.

They recommended the audience does so via EveningReport’s YouTube channel, as Facebook has undergone significant changes. Here’s the link: Youtube (remember to subscribe to the channel).

For the on-demand audience, you can also keep the conversation going on this debate by clicking on one of the social media channels below:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here, also YouTube podcasts and the Podcast hosts below.

RECOGNITION:

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

Thousands of students at the University of Papua New Guinea staged a protest at the Waigani campus Forum Square today against the US-PNG Defence Cooperation Agreement that is scheduled for signing this afternoon.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is already in the country to sign the defence pact and also the Ship Rider Agreement with PNG.

The students claimed that the agreements between PNG and the United States concerned national security and their content must be made known for public scrutiny and transparency before signing takes place.

However, Prime Minister James Marape had earlier insisted that the agreements to be signed were transparent.

Marape added that not all agreements signed should be presented to Parliament earlier.

He said the country’s State Solicitor, who represents PNG’s legal checks and balances, had been involved “every step of the way” and had given clearance over the laws of this country.

Marape said that as soon as it is stable for transparency the country would be privy to those agreements and they would be tabled in Parliament.

‘Almost there for signing’
“I just wish to assure everyone, that Parliament will be privy to what we are about to sign and at the moment our Foreign Affairs team has been leading the negotiations. We are at the stage where we are almost there for signing,” he said.

“I want to give assurance to our country, it is nothing to be sceptical about,” said Marape.

Marape further elaborated that similar agreements and cooperation had been reached with other countries and that PNG could reach out to other bilateral partners with similar agreements as stipulated in the Constitution.

Also, the country’s foreign policy was: “Friends to all and enemies to none”.

The US and PNG already had a Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA.

A SOFA is an agreement between a host country and a foreign nation stationing military forces in that country.

SOFAs are often included, along with other types of military agreements, as part of a comprehensive security arrangement.

Corporations allowed
Marape briefly stated that the SOFA agreement did allow US defence corporations and others to be involved in PNG.

PNG was just elevating this specific one with the USA.

Deputy Prime Minister John Rosso also clarified that once the agreement was agreed by the National Executive Council (NEC) and signed off by the Prime Minister and Defence Minister it would be brought before Parliament and debated before it became law.

On behalf of the government, Finance Minister Rainbo Paita adressed the protesting students at the UPNG Forum Square and received the petition presented by the Student Representative Council president Luther Kising.

Other tertiary institution’s student bodies, such as the University of Goroka and the University of Technology at Lae, have also protested against the defence cooperation agreement.

Meanwhile, there was a high presence of police reinforcements at the entrance to UPNG preventing the protest from escalating further.

Stella Martin and Rose Amos are NBC reporters. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A federal Newspoll, conducted May 11-13 from a sample of 1,516, is the first poll taken since the May 9 budget. It gave Labor a 55-45 lead, a one-point gain for the Coalition since the previous Newspoll, three weeks ago. Primary votes were 38% Labor (steady), 34% Coalition (up one), 11% Greens (steady), 7% One Nation (steady) and 10% for all Others (down one).

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had ratings of 57% satisfied (up four) and 38% dissatisfied (up one), for a net approval of +19, up three points. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s net approval improved four points to -15. Albanese slightly increased his better PM lead over Dutton from 54-28 to 56-29.

Newspoll has asked three questions after every budget since 1988: whether the budget was good or bad for the economy, good or bad for you personally and whether the opposition would have delivered a better budget.

By 33-28, voters thought this budget was good for the economy, but this net +5 rating is mediocre by historical standards. By 36-20, voters thought the budget bad for them personally. By 49-35, they thought the Coalition would not have delivered a better budget. Both the personal impact and opposition rating are in line with historical standards.

On the budget’s effect on inflation, 39% expected a negative impact, just 13% a positive impact and 33% said it would have no impact. Newspoll figures and analysis of the historical record are from The Poll Bludger.

Labor retains a large lead over the Coalition on voting intentions, and Albanese’s ratings have improved. Although the budget doesn’t score well compared with all budgets, Labor budgets have rated worse overall than Coalition budgets. Analyst Kevin Bonham said this budget rated better than the average Labor budget.

Pre-budget Morgan poll: 54.5-45.5 to Labor

In last week’s edition of the weekly federal Morgan poll, conducted May 1-7, Labor led by 54.5-45.5, a one-point gain for Labor since the previous week. Primary votes were 35.5% Labor, 35.5% Coalition, 12.5% Greens and 16.5% for all Others.

Left to control NSW upper house after National becomes president

The New South Wales upper house has 42 members, with 21 up for election every four years, so members serve eight-year terms. All 21 are elected by statewide proportional representation with optional preferences.

Left-wing parties won the 21 upper house seats elected at the March 25 election by an 11-10 margin, but the right won in 2019 by 11-10, leaving the upper house tied at 21-21.

Read more:
Labor gains in Newspoll but Voice support slumps in other polls; NSW final results and Queensland polls

The president of the NSW upper house can only vote to break a tie. In last Tuesday’s first parliamentary session since the election, National Ben Franklin nominated for and was elected upper house president.

By taking a vote away from the right, the left holds a 21-20 majority on the floor of the upper house. The 21 left members comprise 15 Labor, four Greens, one Legalise Cannabis and one Animal Justice. If they can reach agreement, they can pass legislation without any support from the right.

NSW final two party result: 54.3-45.7 to Labor

The NSW electoral commission has released a Labor vs Coalition two party result for all seats at the March 25 election. In initial counts, many seats were left out as one of the major parties did not make the final two candidate count.

Labor won the statewide two party vote by a 54.3-45.7 margin over the Coalition, a 6.3% swing to Labor since the 2019 election. Despite the commanding vote margin, Labor only won 45 of the 93 seats, and will govern in minority, two seats short of a majority.

Read more:
Labor two seats short of a majority in final NSW lower house results, plus a polling critique

Labor’s two party share is 0.4% higher than that estimated by the ABC before the release of this final data. That makes Newspoll easily the most accurate pollster on two party votes with Labor at 54.5% two party, with Morgan the next best at 53.5%. The other two pollsters were worse, with Freshwater at 53% and Resolve 52.5%.

Bonham has much more on the final NSW results and the pre-election polls.

Tasmanian Liberal government falls into minority

Tasmania has the last Liberal government left in any Australian jurisdiction. On Friday, two Liberal MPs quit to sit as independents, partially over opposition to the proposed $715 million AFL stadium in Hobart.

As a result, the Liberals have been reduced from 13 to 11 seats in the 25-member Tasmanian lower house, and are two short of the 13 needed for a majority. Labor has eight seats, the Greens two and there are two independents.

Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Albanese’s ratings improve in a post-budget Newspoll; left to control NSW upper house – https://theconversation.com/albaneses-ratings-improve-in-a-post-budget-newspoll-left-to-control-nsw-upper-house-205186

In this the first episode of A View from Afar for 2023 political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan and host Selwyn Manning examine the pros and cons of New Zealand, and other APAC nations, joining the AUKUS security defence pact.

Specifically, Paul and Selwyn examine the following questions:

* What is AUKUS’s purpose?

* What are the risks to New Zealand’s national and public interest?

* What does AUKUS ‘success’ look like? What could its failure look like?

Paul presents the reasons why he believes New Zealand will not join AUKUS, and Selwyn delivers his assessment of why New Zealand must not join the Anglophile security pact.

ALSO, Paul and Selwyn will headline:

* The latest on the US Pentagon leaks. What really is happening here?

* The Global Geopolitical Theatre and how stable is Russian Federation’s president, Vladimir Putin’s regime?

INTERACTION: Paul and Selwyn invite and encourage you to interact with your questions and comments.

They recommend you do so via EveningReport’s YouTube channel, or via Facebook. Here’s the link: Youtube (remember to subscribe to the channel).

You can also keep the conversation going on this debate by clicking on one of the social media channels below:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

You can see this episode as video-on-demand, and engage with earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

RECOGNITION:

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

LIVE@MIDDAY NZ Time – 8pm US EDT – In this the first episode of A View from Afar for 2023 political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan and host Selwyn Manning will examine the pros and cons of New Zealand, and other APAC nations, joining the AUKUS security defence pact.

Specifically, Paul and Selwyn will examine the following questions:

* What is AUKUS’s purpose?

* What are the risks to New Zealand’s national and public interest?

* What does AUKUS ‘success’ look like? What could its failure look like?

ALSO, Paul and Selwyn will headline:

* The latest on the US Pentagon leaks. What really is happening here?

* The Global Geopolitical Theatre and how stable is Russian Federation’s president, Vladimir Putin’s regime?

INTERACTION WHILE LIVE: Paul and Selwyn invite and encourage you to interact while they are live with questions and comments.

They recommend you do so via EveningReport’s YouTube channel, as Facebook is undergoing significant changes. Here’s the link: Youtube (remember to subscribe to the channel).

You can also keep the conversation going on this debate by clicking on one of the social media channels below:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

RECOGNITION:

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

This weekend’s visit to Australia by New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins speaks volumes about major changes underway in New Zealand foreign policy.

Hipkins is flying to Brisbane – Australia’s third-biggest city and home to around 100,000 New Zealand citizens – to meet with his counterpart, Anthony Albanese.

The trip’s significance comes in part from its timing. Hipkins is visiting just before Anzac Day on 25 April. On this day each year, Australia and New Zealand both remember the role played and losses suffered by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (or Anzac for short) in World War I, and by their forces in other conflicts.

In advance of the New Zealand PM’s travel, a new partnership called ‘Plan Anzac’ has been unveiled which promises ‘sustained cooperation’ between the Australian and New Zealand militaries. The arrangement covers a wide range of areas that include ‘strategic engagement, capability, training, readiness and common personnel issues’.

Hipkins’ visit is also expected to serve as an occasion for Australia to unveil a more generous pathway to citizenship for the near million-strong population of New Zealanders living in Australia – an attempt at putting to bed disquiet from New Zealanders who feel Australia has not upheld traditional Anzac ‘mateship’.

There is no better time of year for Canberra and Wellington to send signals of unity.

And the bonhomie comes as New Zealand increasingly follows in Australia’s foreign policy footsteps.

The most recent example of the alignment came in the acceptance by both Albanese and Hipkins of an invitation to the NATO leaders’ summit in Lithuania this July.

The joint RSVP was almost certainly coordinated between Canberra and Wellington.

After NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg publicly invited the pair to attend the meeting a fortnight ago, Hipkins initially remained non-committal, telling reporters he hadn’t decided on whether he would attend and pointedly noting his busy schedule during New Zealand’s election year.

Media reports surfaced soon afterwards that claimed Albanese would be a no-show in Vilnius.

The reporting was not initially denied.

Albanese already has a packed international calendar this year. The Australian PM perhaps thought that his guest attendance at the G7 in Hiroshima and hosting of a Quad (Australia, India, Japan and the United States) leaders’ summit in Sydney next month would be more than enough to satisfy US and European leaders.

If Albanese himself was planning on skipping NATO, this also explained why Hipkins showed a marked lack of enthusiasm.

But criticism by political rivals and commentators – and perhaps some pressure behind the scenes – appeared to change Albanese’s mind and by Monday this week, the Australian leader was saying he ‘would be very pleased to accept’ the NATO invitation.

Yesterday, Hipkins announced that he would also be heading to Vilnius.

In other words, Australia led – and New Zealand followed.

The countries are also becoming closer in other ways.

Most notably, New Zealand defence minister Andrew Little signalled last month that Wellington was interested in joining a second ‘pillar’ of the AUKUS arrangements that focuses on cybertechnology.

A week later, Little held talks in Wellington with his Australian counterpart, Richard Marles.

Little was typically circumspect about the substance of the talks and played down the AUKUS element.

However, Marles noted ‘alignment’ between Australia and New Zealand, adding ‘it’s really important that we are working as closely together as possible’.

The pair’s meeting came not long after a visit to New Zealand by Kurt Campbell, the White House’s Indo-Pacific coordinator – illustrating how pressures and interests from further afield are also at play, a factor reinforced by the NATO invitation.

Then there is the small matter of TikTok.

Both Australia and New Zealand have issued bans over the past month – and surprisingly, this time New Zealand appeared to be the leader, not the follower.

In March, New Zealand’s Parliamentary Service effectively banned use of the smartphone app, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, by MPs and staffers who accessed Parliament’s network.

The move followed a directive (issued in November 2022, although only publicly revealed months later) by New Zealand’s Defence Force ordering its personnel to delete TikTok from their devices.

For its part, Australia waited until earlier this month to make its decision– but it then issued a far more sweeping ban that prohibited the use of TikTok on devices used by employees at all Australian federal government departments and agencies.

It was also reported that more than half of Australia’s federal government agencies had already banned TikTok.

This suggested Australia was the leader after all.

If alignment is a keyword in the 2023 version of the Australia-New Zealand relationship, another is ‘interoperability’.

Little spoke of the need for a ‘seamless sort of interoperability’ with Australia after taking on the defence portfolio earlier this year – and the word is also used repeatedly to justify the new ‘Plan Anzac’ military partnership.

Expect to hear more about the need for New Zealand to harmonise its capabilities with those of Australia – especially when the results of New Zealand’s Defence Policy Review are soon announced.

The outcome of the Defence Policy Review is also likely to serve as a justification for New Zealand to announce greater military spending.

It remains to be seen how China will react to New Zealand’s increasing willingness to fall in line with Australia – and with NATO.

Trade repercussions seem unlikely, although cannot be ruled out if New Zealand becomes deeply intertwined with Aukus.

China and Australia are currently in a healing phase over trade, after Beijing effectively offered to settle a dispute with Canberra over the tariffs China imposed in 2020 on Australia’s barley exports.

In the short term, any displeasure from China at New Zealand’s decision to take a more Australia-friendly path is more likely to come in the form of ‘playing hard to get’.

A notable omission from Hipkins’ travel announcements this week was any confirmation of a trip to China.

In her final months in office, Jacinda Ardern indicated she was seeking to visit China early in 2023 – a plan that Hipkins initially reaffirmed, but later walked back.

In the announcement of Chris Hipkins’ travel plans this week, the Prime Minister’s office did add that the Government was ‘continuing to pursue a trade focused trip to China later in the year’.

But for Hipkins to visit China, he will need an invitation.

And that invitation may have just become that much harder to obtain.

After all, Chris Hipkins is choosing Brisbane over Beijing.

At least for now.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical analyst and writes on current New Zealand foreign policy and related geopolitical issues. He has lived in Germany and the Middle East and is a learner of Arabic and Russian. He is currently working on a PhD on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

Political Roundup: NZ needs to distance itself from Australia’s anti-China nuclear submarines

The New Zealand Government has been silent about Australia’s decision to commit up to $400bn acquiring nuclear submarines, even though this is a significant threat to peace and stability in the Asia Pacific. The deal was struck by the Albanese Labor Government as part of its Aukus pact with the US and UK to combat China.

The debate over the incredibly expensive and provocative nuclear-powered attack submarine fleet is raging in Australia, where former prime minister Paul Keating has labelled it the country’s worst decision in over a hundred years, especially because of the huge risks it poses to Australia and peace in the region.

Here in New Zealand, reaction and debate has been rather muted, despite the fact that the issue has huge consequences for this country and will inevitably lead to some very tough choices for the Government here.

Former NZ PMs join the debate to condemn Aukus

Debate on what Aukus means for New Zealand is finally getting underway this week, with some interesting contributions yesterday from two former prime ministers.

First, former National prime minister Jim Bolger participated in a forum about New Zealand’s foreign policy in Wellington in which he is reported by the Herald’s Audrey Young to have criticised the Australian submarine buy up as “beyond comprehension” because of the cost and the damage to peace in the Pacific region.

Bolger said that New Zealand certainly doesn’t want any such submarines, and challenged proponents of the Aukus deal to defend it: “If you can find any Australian official who can explain why they need nuclear-powered submarines, come and tell me. I’d like to know.” And Young reported Bolger asking rhetorically, “How mad are we getting?” She says that “He spoke with despair about the near-daily threats of nuclear war which had the potential to destroy the planet.”

Following this, former Labour prime minister Helen Clark also came out strongly against the increasing militarisation of the Pacific by New Zealand’s allies. She tweeted yesterday that “New Zealand interests do not lie in being associated with Aukus”, and that such an “Association would be damaging to independent foreign policy.”

Clark has also lent her weight to those in the Pacific who are arguing that the Australian deal has been done behind the backs of the Pacific countries, which is bad for the stability of the region. There is a sense that Australia has betrayed its neighbours in unilaterally starting a new defence alliance that will inevitably lead to an arms race in the Asia Pacific.

Opposition from National and commentators

The National Party is much more critical of the Aukus deal than Labour. National’s foreign affairs spokesperson Gerry Brownlee has been strongly critical, saying the deal is bad for New Zealand’s security.

Asked by a journalist if the submarine pact will make New Zealand safer, Brownlee, who was a Minister of Defence in the last National Government, replied: “No, I don’t think it does”. He also criticised the way that Western countries are currently painting China as “the enemy”, saying “I’m not sure that’s the right sort of thinking” and “What I don’t like is the concept that we just seem to be dividing the world”.

Brownlee has also criticised Australia’s decision because it will create problems working with New Zealand, especially because of the nuclear elements of the new submarines. Such submarines will be barred from New Zealand waters.

National’s criticisms of the Australian submarine policy won’t go down well with many other politicians. Already New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has condemned the notion that Aukus will make New Zealand less safe, saying yesterday “That is an astonishing statement to make”, and he called for more military spending here.

Although the Green Party have been conspicuously silent on the huge new military development, former Green MP Gareth Hughes wrote this week on the submarine deal saying that nuclear war was now “terrifyingly possible in the next few years”, and New Zealand is likely to be dragged into any conflict between Australia and China because this country is signed up to a treaty that imposes an obligation to do so if Australia is attacked.

Hughes is astonished that New Zealand isn’t debating what is going on, and troubled by the fact that the current Government is pushing us more into alignment with Washington: “New Zealanders need to talk more about the risks, our decision-makers need to explain why New Zealand is aligning more closely with the United States military and as a sovereign country we have to ask are we acting independently or as a cog in a machine?”

Leftwing commentator Josie Pagani has also come out today against the Aukus deal: “The agreement is unnecessarily provocative to China, possibly foolhardy in its nuclear proliferation. It is not clear what Australia achieves by positioning nuclear submarines in the South China Sea, a long way from home.”

Also today, former United Future party leader Peter Dunne has penned a column calling for more debate on what Aukus will mean for New Zealand and the Asia Pacific. He argues that the way Aukus has been developed gives “the clear impression that Aukus is more a vehicle to reassert US influence in the region than a genuine multilateral security pact.” Dunne says that Prime Minister Chris Hipkins can’t continue to paint the issue as one that doesn’t involve New Zealand or require a reaction.

Questions over New Zealand’s independent foreign policy

Political scientist Nicholas Khoo, of the University of Otago, argues this week that the New Zealand government has been deliberately opaque in its reaction to the Aukus developments, saying Labour is “hedging” on the issue with its response of “ambiguity”. He points out that when the Aukus deal was first announced the then prime minister Jacinda Ardern was careful to welcome it and express her pleasure about the investment, and only citing New Zealand’s ban on nuclear vessels as a problem for the deal.

But he says that as the submarine alliance develops there it will make such equivocal stances less possible for New Zealand, and New Zealand’s independent foreign policy will become harder to maintain. In particular, there will be pressure on New Zealand to respond positively to the development.

The Labour Government has already purchased new sub-hunting P8-Poseidon aircraft. These will be expected to work closely with the Australian submarine fleet to hunt Chinese subs. And in doing so, New Zealand will not only be painting a military target on its back in working with Australia, but it will be alienating itself from our biggest trade partner, China.

The tightrope act of staying onside with both Washington and Beijing will get more difficult. Of course, this week the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nanaia Manuta, has travelled to Beijing. It’s partly a symbol of New Zealand’s increasingly strained relations with China that such a trip hasn’t occurred for four years. But she will be trying to mend fences.

At the same time, however, the United States Government sent their “Indo-Pacific czar” Kurt Campbell to Wellington, who spoke out publicly about being in “deep discussion” with the Government about increasing NZ-US defence arrangements, including how New Zealand could become involved in Aukus. In terms of this, he said: “We will be announcing soon that we want to launch a bilateral engagement between the United States and New Zealand on technology”.

After talking to the New Zealand Government, Campbell also claimed “We agreed that we would launch the critical components of Aukus, and then take steps to look at other partners” like New Zealand.

Security choices for New Zealand

Aukus developments will eventually require New Zealand to make some choices. As Peter Dunne argues today, New Zealand is likely to be pushed off its high-wire tightrope act between Washington and Beijing: “as the Aukus debate intensifies, New Zealand’s careful, fence-straddling diplomacy of the past two decades will be tested as never before. We cannot afford both our current level of relationship with China and involvement with Aukus. As Aukus develops, China is likely to force us to make clear where we stand.”

At the moment, New Zealand really has three options in terms of Aukus: 1) Attempt to join the broad programme in a supportive and auxiliary way, 2) Keep a distance, and diplomatically stay silent on the developments, or 3) Stand up against the militarisation of the Asia Pacific by condemning the development.

Campbell’s visit to New Zealand clearly shows that the first option is possible. This would amount to New Zealand going along with the new “might is right” doctrine that is building up. But, more likely, New Zealand will continue to try to keep onside with Western allies without fully joining in or opposing the increasing militarisation. But this is unlikely to be sustainable.

The third option of greater independence and neutrality is also possible. The Māori Party has recently put forward a new defence policy that would position New Zealand as neutral – a  “Switzerland of the Pacific”. This is an idea that needs more debate.

Some academics are arguing that New Zealand might actually be advantaged by being sidelined and right out of any US-UK-Australia security alliance. For instance, Prof Robert Patman of the University of Otago has argued this week that New Zealand stood to benefit by staying outside of Aukus completely and could “diversify its trade more easily with south-east Asian nations that did not like the tie-up.”

Clearly, a new cold war is quickly developing – and one that could soon be a hot war. This comes exactly 20 years after countries like the US, UK and Australia illegally invaded Iraq, leading to disaster. New Zealand would do well to avoid the same drumbeats to war that we are hearing at the moment.

Further reading on AUKUS, Foreign Affairs

1News: New Zealand better off outside AUKUS – Helen Clark
AAP: New Zealand opposition concerned by AUKUS
Peter Dunne (Newsroom): China will test NZ’s fence-straddling diplomacy as never before
Audrey Young (Herald): Former Prime Minister Jim Bolger denounces Aukus nuclear submarines for Australia (paywalled)
Koroi Hawkins and Caleb Fotheringham (RNZ): Pacific needs to sit up and pay close attention to AUKUS – Dame Meg Taylor
Josie Pagani (Stuff): The fist-pumping of Aukus doesn’t help counter the fist-pumping in Moscow
Thomas Manch (Stuff): Government considering new spying crimes to prosecute foreign agents
Thomas Manch (Stuff): A New Zealand embassy in Kyiv? Former defence minister Ron Mark thinks so
RNZ: MFAT confirms former NZ soldier Kane Te Tai’s death in Ukraine
Jan Kohout (RNZ): Emerging Pacific leaders in NZ for Dawn Raids-initiated scholarship

Other items of interest and importance today

CHILD POVERTY
Michael Neilson, Julia Gabel and Chris Knox (Herald): Cost of living: Child poverty levels hardly improving, still 120,000 in material hardship
RNZ: Child poverty reduction stalls ahead of cost-of-living crisis
Laura Frykberg (1News): Child poverty rates unchanged from previous year – Stats NZ
Bridie Witton (Stuff): Government’s child poverty reduction plan stalls
Michael Neilson (Herald): Child poverty: Campaigners say expanding in-work Family Tax Credit to beneficiaries would have ‘immediate difference’
Bridie Witton (Stuff): Children’s advocates say politicians must focus on child poverty – or stats will get worse
Jamie Ensor and Leighton Heikell (Newshub): Government says no change in child poverty rates ‘encouraging’ considering pressures, but other parties not impressed
Ripu Bhatia (Stuff): Poverty statistics paint ‘rosy picture’ of reality for Māori, academic says
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Chippy’s ‘Let them eat pie’: Bread and Butter but none for hungry children

COST OF LIVING, ECONOMY
Rob Stock (Stuff): New data on household incomes highlights the gap between the richest and poorest
Gareth Vaughan (Interest): Bill Rosenberg on how to measure household inflation better than the CPI does
Brianna Mcilraith (Stuff): All the changes coming to your wallet to help ease cost of living pressure on April 1
Jenée Tibshraeny (Herald): RBNZ: We need to accept we’re poorer
Dan Brunskill (Interest): New Zealanders need to accept the pandemic made them poorer, the RBNZ says
RNZ: Firms, workers need to lower inflation expectations – RBNZ chief economist
Liz McDonald (Stuff): National promises a return to basic economics to tackle cost of living crisis
Emma Hatton (Newsroom): More ‘how’ less ‘what’ for social services
Liam Dann (Herald): Truckometer: Traffic data shows economic growth in low gear (paywalled)
RNZ: Easing heavy traffic points to flat first quarter for economy
Alka Prasad (Herald): Warehouse profits slump, CEO warns ‘peak misery’ still to come on cost-of-living crisis (paywalled)

LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Heather du Plessis-Allan (Newstalk ZB): Auckland Council booting Local Government NZ is a warning to Kieran McAnulty
Tim Murphy (Newsroom): Auckland pulls a Brexit – on the mayor’s casting vote
Finn Blackwell (RNZ): Auckland Council votes to leave Local Government New Zealand
Todd Niall (Stuff): ‘800 members getting pissed and dancing’: Wayne Brown pulls Auckland Council out of Local Government NZ
Bernard Orsman (Herald): Auckland Council quits Local Government NZ: Mayor Wayne Brown says drinking behaviour as reason for move
Toby Manhire (Spinoff): Wellington mayor decries ‘Auxit’ as Wayne Brown leads Auckland out of local government group
Todd Niall (Stuff): Road cones and bus trials: Fact-checking Auckland mayor Wayne Brown’s big ideas
Corazon Miller (1News): Auckland Council delays debate on $1b rail blowout amid govt talks
RNZ: Chlöe Swarbrick urges super-city MPs to meet over ‘slash-and-burn’ Auckland Council budget
Todd Nial (Stuff): Former chief science advisor to PM wants fix for Auckland’s at-risk Southern Initiative
Erin Johnson (Stuff): Auckland’s flood recovery operation to cost $1m a month
Matthew Scott (Newsroom): Flood-affected Aucklanders breathe a sigh of rates relief
Erin Gourley (Stuff): The slogan that embarrassed a Wellington councillor
Nicholas Boyack (Stuff): Desperately seeking savings, Lower Hutt council plans to close aviary
Emily Ireland (Local Democracy Reporting): South Wairarapa water fails new standards
Rachael Comer (Stuff): Seven senior staff members signed resignation letter to Timaru District

EDUCATION
Luke Malpass (Stuff): Christopher Luxon’s big day back at school makes it really feel like election year
Matthew Hooton (Herald): National’s Christopher Luxon delivers a lesson for Labour with education policy (paywalled)
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): National finally finds an issue in Education – How will they screw it up?
Mark Quinlivan (Newshub): Transport Minister Michael Wood takes savage ‘right-wing hack’ jab at academic over education policy
Russell Palmer (RNZ): Union and Labour criticise National’s new curriculum policy
1News: National’s curriculum rewrite pledge won’t fix issues – NZEI
Amelia Wade (Newshub): National promises to ‘teach the basics brilliantly’, but how has the sector graded its latest policy?
Adam Pearse and Claire Trevett (Herald): National’s education shake-up: Hour a day of reading, writing, maths – Education Minister issues challenge
Russell Palmer (RNZ): National Party leader Christopher Luxon announces education policy
Luke Malpass (Stuff): National Party school policy focuses on daily hourly sessions for maths, reading and writing
John Gerritsen (RNZ): Maniapoto training centre double-claimed government funding for hundreds of students

HEALTH
Ripu Bhatia (Stuff): New Zealand’s ethnic health inequities ‘avoidable, unfair and unjust’, academic says
Robin Martin (RNZ): New dioxin research deserves response, says New Plymouth mayor
Rachel Thomas (Stuff): Doctors make plea to stop advertising of prescription medicines directly to NZers
Jean Edwards (RNZ): Surgery delays leave Christchurch woman on liquid diet for a year – ‘My life is on hold’
Rowan Quinn (RNZ): Only 19 nurses outside of NZ granted fast tracked nurses visa by end of February
Concerns grow at plummeting rates of child immunisation
Lynne Chepulis (Stuff): Pharmac prioritised Māori and Pacific patients for access to new diabetes drugs – did it get it right?
Jacob Johnson (1News): Concerns grow at plummeting rates of child immunisation
Jamie Morton (Herald): Govt injects $70m into research on RNA tech used in Covid-19 vaccine
Toria Tokalau (Stuff): Health providers reach 96% of Pasifika community since Covid-19
Sophie Harris (Stuff): Lack of parking forces woman to cancel Starship appointments for terminally-ill son
Muriwai Hei (Whakaata Māori): Te Aranga Health Clinic bought to offer whanāu cheaper medical care
Dylan Cleaver (Spinoff): Inside the years-long fight to have a former All Black’s CTE recognised by ACC

POSIE PARKER
Thomas Cranmer: Free speech or transphobia? Kellie-Jay Keen’s visit to New Zealand sparks tensions
Rachel Smalley (Today FM): No one has the right to stop women from speaking
Katie Scotcher (RNZ): Rainbow groups take Immigration Minister to court over Posie Parker decision
Tom Hunt (Stuff): Human rights groups seek interim order to stop Posie Parker coming to NZ
Damien Venuto (Herald): Posie Parker: Did Immigration NZ get her decision right? – The Front Page
1News: Posie Parker’s entry to NZ encourages hatred – activist
Kate Hawkesby (Newstalk ZB): Posie Parker should never have been given all this attention in the first place
Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): Not liking what someone says isn’t a reason to ban them
Lloyd Burr (Today FM): Desperate trolls scrape the bottom of the barrel
Tova O’Brien (Today FM): Posie Parker is coming. Take a stand. We all have to.
Dita De Boni (NBR): Posie Parker: Can business be part of the pushback? (paywalled)
Rachel Smalley (NBR): Do corporates have a role in the ‘Posie Parker’ conversation? (paywalled)

PARLIAMENT, CO-GOVERNANCE
Chris Trotter (Daily Blog): All of Us, All of Us
Waatea News: Co-governance proven success in right places says PM
Chelsea Daniels (Herald): Anti-co-governance group finding it difficult to book venues
Brent Edwards (NBR): The three Rs, Posie Parker, the police, climate change
Joseph Los’e (Herald): Te Pāti Māori push for Aotearoa name change gains momentum but lacks political support
Michael Fallow (Stuff): Prestigious Ardern portrait an arresting sight in National heartland

HOUSING
Laura Smith (Local Democracy Reporting): Rotorua emergency housing motels: Government-commissioned report finds residents had positive experience
Kelvin McDonald (Whakaata Māori): ‘They don’t have to buy the land’: Ngāti Potiki’s leasehold plan for whānau home ownership in Pāpāmoa
Andrew McRae (RNZ): Hapuu challenges council plan for housing on possible paa site

EMPLOYMENT
Dita De Boni (NBR): Vexed employee-contractor issue thrown on policy bonfire (paywalled)
Rebecca Rendle (NBR): Policy bonfire leaves burning questions for gig economy (paywalled)
Catherine Hubbard (Stuff): It took this young woman seven years to find a job
Peter Griffin (Listener/Herald): Good luck getting Kiwi employees to give up on remote work (paywalled)

BUSINESS
Matt Raskovic (Stuff): Banks are making a killing because they don’t have skin in the game
Jonathan Milne (Newsroom): Warring building supplies firms tie up critical NZ land with 999-year covenants
Rebecca Stevenson (Interest): Carter Holt Harvey axes land covenants including some set for 999 years
RNZ: Amazon group’s web services signs cooperation deal with New Zealand government

CYCLONE GABRIELLE
Niva Chittock (RNZ): No health officials present at community meeting over contamination at Awatoto industrial zone
Gareth Vaughan (Interest): Cyclone Gabrielle insurance claims top 40k, worth about $890m, ICNZ says
RNZ: Cyclone Gabrielle: Insurance claims hit $890 million
Marcus Musson (Stuff): Pinning blame for slash solely on forestry sector a modern-day witch-hunt

CLIMATE CHANGE, RMA, ENVIRONMENT
Dan Brunskill (Interest): Government review of the Emissions Trading Scheme will look for ways to incentivise more reductions and less carbon offsets
Ian Llewellyn (BusinessDesk): Mixed feelings on Emissions Trading Scheme review (paywalled)
Ian Llewellyn (BusinessDesk): Fear of ETS failure spurs review (paywalled)
No Right Turn: Climate Change: More Labour sabotage
Richard Harman (Politik): Select Committee told slow down; you’re moving too fast (paywalled)
Brent Edwards (NBR): RMA reform uncertain: Chris Bishop (paywalled)
Lianne Dalziel (Newsroom): New Orleans’ lesson on fallible flood defences: Let’s not ‘build back better’
David Williams (Newsroom): How the Rakaia turned into a pipe for irrigators

TRANSPORT
Tom Hunt (Dominion Post): Let’s Get Wellington Moving consultant costs climb past $130 million
Jonathan Mitchell (NBR): Nats say Govt’s EV charging strategy ‘rushed’ and ‘uncosted’ (paywalled)

OTHER
Thomas Manch (Stuff): New Police Minister Ginny Andersen wants to take political ‘heat’ out of law and order
Greg Hurrell (BusinessDesk): Sir Peter Gluckman: Science reforms a ‘missed opportunity’ (paywalled)
Lynley Ward (Herald): Not guilty plea: Former broadcaster-turned-conspiracy campaigner Liz Gunn defends airport charges

Political Roundup: New Zealand resets relationships with Australia and India

The first clues to New Zealand’s foreign policy after Jacinda Ardern are beginning to emerge.

Chris Hipkins, the new Prime Minister, decided to retain Nanaia Mahuta as his foreign minister – and both Hipkins and Mahuta took to the skies last week.

While Hipkins headed to Australia – the customary first destination for an incoming New Zealand Prime Minister – Mahuta flew to India on a surprise trip announced just a day prior to her departure.

In very different contexts, the pair managed to smooth over differences and pave the way for deeper partnerships – which may well involve greater military cooperation.

Mahuta is likely to play a bigger role in New Zealand’s foreign policy in the months to come, not least because Hipkins’ pledge to focus on ‘bread and butter’ economic issues is likely to keep him at home more often, especially as the October 14 election date draws closer.

The dynamic between Hipkins and Mahuta will be fascinating to watch.

Hipkins demoted Mahuta in his Cabinet rankings – from 8th to 16th – and reassigned her other ministerial portfolio of Local Government, under which Mahuta had been determined to roll out the controversial ‘Three Waters’ infrastructure reforms.

In announcing his Cabinet reshuffle, Hipkins made clear that he expected Mahuta to be ‘out and about travelling more’.

This was a reference to Mahuta’s relatively light travel schedule since becoming foreign minister in November 2020. Mahuta’s last major trip before India was to Papua New Guinea in early September 2022.

While the foreign minister paid tribute to outgoing Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on social media, she made no similar move to congratulate Chris Hipkins on his new role.

There was another curiosity as well.

In Waitangi with the Prime Minister and her Labour Party colleagues for events to commemorate New Zealand’s national day on February 6th, the foreign minister suddenly cancelled a scheduled address to foreign diplomats without explanation.

She then suddenly announced a trip to India and left New Zealand on Waitangi Day itself.

The following day, February 7, Chris Hipkins flew to Canberra for a more predictable, one-day trip to meet his Australian counterpart, Anthony Albanese.

The two leaders were at pains to project warmth and friendship – despite being at odds over whether they had previously met each other (Albanese recalled a past encounter in Wellington, but Hipkins had already told media that he had never met Albanese).

In the Australian capital, Hipkins was keen to stress continuity – ‘our foreign policy position hasn’t changed just because there’s a change of prime minister’ – while Albanese sought to stress closeness by saying ‘we are family’.

Albanese’s repeated use of the word ‘family’ to describe the relationship with New Zealand echoed the superficially warm, yet intentionally exclusionary ‘Pacific family’ phrasing that was frequently deployed by Australia to try and ward off China’s moves in the region last year.

Still, an underlying tension had been neutralised in advance of Hipkins’ visit to Canberra, after the Australian government pledged to apply more discretion when deciding whether to deport ‘501s’, or New Zealand citizens who had served prison sentences of 12 months or more in Australia.

The issue had been a source of tension in the bilateral relationship, with Ardern calling it ‘corrosive’ to the relationship in 2019 and publicly telling Australia’s then Prime Minister Scott Morrison in 2020 ‘do not deport your people and your problems’ – a reference to the fact that many deportees had grown up in Australia.

The recent shift by Albanese’s government is largely a case of style over substance – Australia has not changed Section 501 of its Migration Act and has made no specific commitments on the numbers of deportees.

But it was a shift in tone and that was all that was needed to take the 501 issue off the agenda.

As geostrategic competition in the Indo-Pacific builds, Australia has bigger fish to fry.

Canberra would like to see Wellington move more closely into its orbit when it comes to countering Beijing.

When asked about the potential for New Zealand to become involved in the new Aukus security pact, Chris Hipkins deployed the usual red herring of pointing to New Zealand’s nuclear-free policy – which would seemingly rule out a partnership built on nuclear-powered submarines.

But the architects of Aukus have long suggested the partnership could be expanded into other areas, and Anthony Albanese reinforced this notion in his press conference with Chris Hipkins.

Albanese said Aukus was ‘about a whole range of issues, including the interoperability of our forces and also co-operation on technology and other issues’.

High-ranking officials, such as Jacinda Ardern’s defence minister and New Zealand’s High Commissioner to Australia, have previously signalled an interest in becoming involved in non-nuclear submarine components of Aukus.

With the 501 issue dealt with and an easier pathway to citizenship for New Zealanders living in Australia to be announced by April, Australia might be tempted to take advantage of the goodwill generated – and the fresh leadership in Wellington – to push for New Zealand’s involvement in a more peripheral component of Aukus.

Over 10,000 km away from Canberra, in New Delhi, New Zealand’s foreign minister faced a challenge that was both different and similar to the one faced by Chris Hipkins.

Nanaia Mahuta’s visit to India was a reciprocal call after an unusually long, five-day visit to New Zealand in October by India’s external affairs minister, Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

During his visit, Jaishankar had publicly signalled his displeasure with New Zealand over its treatment of Indian visa-holders during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a sense, there were parallels with New Zealand’s resentment over the ‘501’ deportees from Australia.

It had nothing to do with the bigger geopolitical picture, but there was a sense of grievance.

New Zealand had clearly heard Jaishankar’s criticism and responded by announcing 1,800 new ‘post-study’ work visas in December. While this was not a full solution, the news was welcomed by Indian nationals who had returned home during the pandemic and subsequently found themselves locked out of New Zealand.

With the issue now at least partially dealt with, there was no repeat of the public rebuke issued by Jaishankar on his visit to Auckland and Wellington in 2022.

Instead, the Indian external affairs ministry’s account of Jaishankar’s meeting with Mahuta noted discussions of bilateral cooperation on ‘economic, political, defence, education, and science & technology’ issues.

The mention of ‘defence’ is arguably the most significant – and potentially a sign of things to come.

In an interview with India’s Hindustan Times, Mahuta described India as a ‘counterbalance to the superpower contest’ and pointed to ‘many benefits beyond trade’, while she told the ABP Live outlet ‘we need to figure out who we can trust, who we can rely on in this time of need and India is such a significant contributor to ensuring greater peace and stability in the region’.

Military ties have played a key role in Australia’s deepening of its own bilateral relationship with India.

Australia signed defence cooperation agreements with India in 2006, 2009 and 2014, which paved the way for the wider ‘Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’ signed in 2020.

Since 2015, Australia has conducted regular bilateral naval exercises with India called AUSINDEX. It followed this up last year with the first joint land-based activity, Austra-Hind, and by involving India in the multilateral Indo-Pacific Endeavour exercises.

In parallel, Australia has stepped up its commitment to the ‘Quadrilateral Security Dialogue’ (or Quad) grouping that also includes India, Japan and the United States.

The increased military engagement probably helped to facilitate the signing of Australia’s limited free trade agreement with India that came into force in December 2022.

New Zealand is envious of Australia’s trade deal with India, which according to some estimates is now the world’s most populous country.

Around the world, trade and security are only likely to become more interlinked as geopolitical tensions build.

Australia and India would probably both like to expand their military ties with New Zealand.

However, it needs to be remembered that Australia and India are forging stronger bilateral relations in large part because of their common desire to counter China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific.

And Chris Hipkins last week described Beijing as ‘an incredibly important partner for New Zealand – a very important trading partner and a partner in other areas as well’.

With a third of New Zealand’s exports going to China every year, Hipkins will have his country’s beef and butter issues on his mind.

New Zealand may have a new Prime Minister.

But the challenges remain much the same.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical analyst and writes on current New Zealand foreign policy and related geopolitical issues. He has lived in Germany and the Middle East and is a learner of Arabic and Russian. He is currently working on a PhD on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

Items of interest and importance today

PARLIAMENT, DEMOCRACY
Andrea Vance (Stuff): Why ‘have your say’ exercises are meaningless
Luke Malpass (Stuff): Chris Hipkins’ challenges and the case for a snap election
Thomas Manch (Stuff): Labour leads, Māori Party the kingmaker in latest poll
Gareth Hughes (Stuff): Time for the Greens to ditch a key election strategy
Luke Malpass (Stuff): Chris Hipkins puts stamp on Government – but is it really a policy purge?
Heather du Plessis-Allan (Herald): After Chris Hipkins’ policy bonfire, voters need to hear plans (paywalled)
Fran O’Sullivan (Herald): After the bonfire, Chris Hipkins must face the real heat (paywalled)
Luke Malpass (Stuff): Luxon yet to catch a break after Hipkins’ rise
Claire Trevett (Herald): The clever politics in PM Chris Hipkins’ Loaves and Butter announcement – how will Chris Luxon counter? (paywalled)
Herald: Christopher Luxon v Chris Hipkins: Which Chris won the week? (paywalled)
Herald Editorial: Chippy clears out his toolbelt (paywalled)
Peter Wilson (RNZ): Has Chris Hipkins done enough?
Claire Trevett (Herald): Grant Robertson – the full story on why he did not want to be Prime Minister (paywalled)
Claire Trevett (Herald): PM Chris Hipkins faces cuisine challenges, the likely successor to Jacinda Ardern in Mt Albert turns 40 (paywalled)
Sophie Neville (Woman’s Day): Carmel Sepuloni: ‘I don’t want to be the sookie bubba deputy PM’
Fran O’Sullivan (Herald): Chris Hipkins braves bad weather to attend Asia-Pacific business conference (paywalled)
Marc Wilson (Herald): Red flag: Does hair colour matter when it comes to leadership? (paywalled)

HATE SPEECH LAWS
Chris Trotter (Interest): Can words hurt us?
Grant Duncan: Is free speech under threat?
Alan Ringwood (Herald): Religious beliefs must be open to scrutiny and, sometimes, to ridicule (paywalled)
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): How Wellington woke activists ensured hate speech laws were kicked off political agenda

PARLIAMENT PROTEST AND CONSPIRACIES
1News: Q+A: Where are the Parliament protesters one year on?
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): One year on, a small group gathers to remember the Parliament occupation
RNZ: Parliament protest: Plan to commemorate occupation one year on
Nevil Gibson (NBR): The Covid conspiracies that fuel extremism

CO-GOVERNANCE, TREATY, PARTNERSHIP
Jane Patterson (RNZ): Co-governance debate heats up at Rātana, Waitangi
Thomas Cranmer: Tūhoe: co-governance is not our word
Tina Ngata (E-Tangata): Performative gestures and permissiveness are derailing Tiriti justice
Will Trafford (Whakaata Māori): ‘Racist’ rally going ahead, after organiser’s legal threats
Aroha Gilling (E-Tangata): Partnership means pulling up your socks

COST OF LIVING, EMPLOYMENT
Janet Wilson (Stuff): Food insecurity growing in two-parent working families
Gianina Schwanecke (Stuff): Cost of living crisis ‘traumatic’ for some students in Aotearoa, principal says
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Government considered energy payment and encouraging cycling instead of fuel tax cut
Andrew Gunn (Stuff): How is anyone supposed to live on less than $22.70 an hour?
RNZ: Retailers claim minimum wage increases make it harder to maintain relativities for staff
Mark Quinlivan (Newshub): National’s Erica Stanford slams Government for not making ‘tough political decisions’ on minimum wage
Rebecca Stevenson (BusinessDesk): Business wants minimum wage explanation (paywalled)
Rob Stock (Stuff): Cost of house insurance has increased 17% in one year, says Quashed

ECONOMY, BUSINESS
David Hargreaves (Interest): What happens when the Official Cash Rate gets to the ‘top’?
RNZ: Manufacturing sector expands in January after three months of contraction – index
RNZ: Retail sales using cards up 2.6% as appetite for big ticket buys remains

AUCKLAND, FLOODING, CLIMATE CHANGE
Alison Mau (Stuff): Don’t let a good thing die – why the Citizens Advice Bureau must be saved
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Why is a secular Government agency talking to me about a weather God?
Tracy Watkins (Stuff): After the storm, then what?
Matthew Scott (Newsroom): Budget cuts ‘not-fit-for-purpose’ in climate crisis
Asaad Shamseldin (Newsroom): Stormwater thinking outside the box
Lana Hart (Stuff): Will this summer of slosh get us moving on climate change?
Brent Edwards (NBR): Minister James Shaw: Climate adaption’s funding challenge (paywalled)

LOCAL GOVERNMENT, THREE WATERS
Lauren Crimp (RNZ): ‘We wear full accountability’ – Council knew about falling street lamps
Lauren Crimp (RNZ): Faulty street lamps fall to the ground: ‘You’d be killed stone dead’
Tom Hunt (Stuff): It’s raining lamps: 15kg street lights fall in Wellington with deadly force
Julia Talbot-Jones and Thomas Benison (The Conversation): It’s near impossible to get good data on water use in New Zealand. This raises questions about public accountability
George Thomson (Chris Lynch Media): Council urges Government to re-think approach to Three Waters Reform
Kiri Gillespie (Rotorua Daily Post): Rotorua mayor Tania Tapsell pushes back on submissions saga amid a legal threat
Maia Hart (Local Democracy Reporting): Online voting, civics education key to turnout turnaround
Lois Williams (Newsroom): West Coast councils baulk at fluoride cost
Jake Kenny (Stuff): Cake decorator who helped defraud Westland taxpayers of $459,000 could be deported
Emily Moorhouse (Open Justice Reporting): Auckland cake decorator sentenced for role in in corrupt council contract
RNZ: Feedback sought over wildlife refuge and wetland in Christchurch’s red zone

HOUSING
MIriam Bell (Stuff): New website revealing how many properties landlords own is under investigation
Geraden Cann (Stuff): New website allows renters to find out how many properties their landlord owns
Kate Newton (Stuff): For sale: new, warm and dry homes. The catch? They’re in a flood plain, and the flood is coming sooner than you think
Olivia Wannan (Stuff): A law could allow flood-hit homeowners to seek safer ground, if the Government would fund it
Miriam Bell (Stuff): Property investors will not be making a comeback anytime soon

HEALTH
RNZ: Epidemiologist Michael Baker to head new public health communication project
Maryanna Garcia (Bay of Plenty Times): Covid-19 coronavirus: General Practice funding cut as majority of cases treated as mild infection
RNZ: The Detail: Youth vaping: New regulations too little too late?
Brianna Mcilraith (Stuff): Supermarket selling beer cheaper than water are being investigated by police
RNZ: Suicide prevention charity sees 62 percent increase in peer support demand

MEDIA, BROADCASTING
Damien Grant (Stuff): Mister Organ: A voyeuristic tour of damaged human detritus for our amusement
Herald: ‘Iconic show’: Ten 7 Aotearoa, formerly Police Ten 7, is coming to an end after two decades
RNZ: TVNZ to cancel controversial crime show Ten 7

A View from Afar – In this podcast, political scientist Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning examine in detail what to expect from the NATO leaders’ summit, which includes addresses from the prime ministers of Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Why is NATO including addresses of NATO partners in this year’s leaders’ summit?

What will the hawks bring to the summit, and what will those of a more moderate and dove persuasion bring to the NATO debate and course ahead?

You can comment on this debate by clicking on one of these social media channels and interacting in the social media’s comment area. Here are the links:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

A View from Afar – In this podcast, political scientist Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning will analyse how the Pacific region has become the epicentre of foreign policy assertions from the region’s and the world’s powers.

This month has seen the United States President Joe Biden forward commit to increasing the USA’s presence in the Pacific. The announcement was pitched during a Whitehouse meeting in Washington DC with New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

Meanwhile, at the same time, the People’s Republic of China’s foreign minister Wang Yi was on a whistle-stop series of meetings with Pacific regional leaders, seeking mutual agreements on investment, infrastructure development, and security.

And back in China, the PRC took exception to this element of the US-NZ joint statement where Biden and Ardern jointly stated: “… we note with concern the security agreement between the People’s Republic of China and the Solomon Islands. In particular, the United States and New Zealand share a concern that the establishment of a persistent military presence in the Pacific by a state that does not share our values or security interests would fundamentally alter the strategic balance of the region and pose national-security concerns to both our countries.”

That position compelled China’s spokesperson for its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhao Lijian, to state: “We noted the relevant contents of the joint statement, which distorts and smears China’s normal cooperation with Pacific Island countries, deliberately hypes up the South China Sea issue, makes irresponsible remarks on and grossly interferes in China’s internal affairs including issues related to Taiwan, Xinjiang and Hong Kong. China is firmly opposed to this.”

New Zealand is now positioned squarely on the fault-line between two opposing global powers.

Now add into the foreign policy mix the election of a new Labor Government in Australia where Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was quickly sworn in alongside his cabinet and then whisked off to a QUAD security pact leaders’ summit, and, most recently has met with his Indonesian counterpart, President Joko Widodo, to discuss securing a more cooperative relationship between the two regional powers.

In this episode of A View from Afar Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning will deep-dive into these events to determine what this all means and where the shifting sands of Pacific foreign policy is heading.

One this is for sure, the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ summit this year will be important and interesting.

Join Paul and Selwyn for this LIVE recording of this podcast while they consider these big issues, and remember any comments you make while live can be included in this programme.

You can comment on this debate by clicking on one of these social media channels and interacting in the social media’s comment area. Here are the links:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s decision to embark on a diplomatic offensive to outflank China in the Pacific within days of being sworn in has yielded what appears to have been an early success.

Whether Wong’s intervention gave Pacific leaders pause about a wide-ranging economic and security pact with China or they would have baulked anyway, the fact is Australian diplomacy can claim a dividend.

In the process, the country appears to have a new foreign minister who will engage in more creative and activist foreign policy then her predecessor.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s extensive tour of the Pacific has been aimed at extending Beijing’s influence in the region at a moment when regional leaders had grown restive about Australia’s commitment to its immediate neighbourhood.

The Morrison government’s equivocation on climate has not sat well with leaders of the Pacific’s micro-states.

Wong’s mission appears to have succeeded on three important fronts:

1. it has reassured Pacific neighbours that a new Labor government will do more than pay lip service to their concerns about climate and other issues
2. Wong has made it clear Canberra will not be reticent in contesting Beijing’s influence in the region
3. her mission has enabled her to assert her own authority early over the foreign policy and security reach of her portfolio.

This latter aspect will be important in how and in what form Australia responds to Chinese overtures aimed at achieving a re-set in relations.

Labor governments have long managed the relationship well
In one respect, the new Labor government has history on its side.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Canberra and Beijing.

All these years later, another Labor government has the opportunity to re-set Australia’s relations with the dominant regional player at a moment when the Indo-Pacific is undergoing profound change.

Few would reasonably argue against the proposition that a “re-set” is overdue after years of drift and ill-will under the Morrison government.

The question for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his national security team is how to proceed in a way that conforms with Australia’s national interest, is faithful to its values, and enables Canberra’s voice to be inserted in regional councils.

Wong has, for some time, been sketching out a more creative foreign policy approach — evident in her Pacific initiative — that will seek to expand Australia’s regional relationships and, where appropriate, take the lead in alignment with the country’s national interest.

In this sense, the joint communique on December 21 1972, signalling the establishment of diplomatic relations between Australia and the People’s Republic of China, makes interesting reading.

Unlike Richard Nixon’s Shanghai communique of 1972, which fudged the Taiwan issue, the Whitlam government document is explicit.

The Australian government recognises the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China, acknowledges the position of the Chinese Government that Taiwan is a province of the People’s Republic of China, and has decided to remove its official representation from Taiwan before 25 January, 1973.

Albanese and his security policy team can be sure this document will not be gathering dust in a Chinese Foreign Ministry archive.

China’s attachment to anniversaries is one of the more notable features of its diplomacy. These occasions may be used for political purposes, but history weighs heavily on Beijing’s foreign policy calculations.

Albanese government should jump on the promise of a thaw
When Prime Minister Li Keqiang promptly sent a congratulatory message to Albanese on the latter’s success in the recent election, Labor’s historic shift towards Beijing back in 1972 will not have been overlooked.

The wording of Li’s message was pointed. It said, in part, that China was:

ready to work with the Australian side to review the past, face the future, uphold principles of mutual respect, mutual benefit.

Beijing talks a lot about “mutual respect” and “mutual benefit”. These are phrases that are, more often that not, designed to deflect criticism of China’s human rights abuses and other bad behaviour.

But taken together with overtures for a “re-set” by the new Chinese ambassador in Canberra, Xiao Qian, Beijing has clearly decided it is in China’s interests to turn the page on a sour period between the countries.

Asked at his press conference after the conclusion of Quad talks in Tokyo about his response to the conciliatory message from Li, Albanese simply said:

I welcome that. And we will respond appropriately in time when I return to Australia.

In other responses to questions about troubled relations with China, the new prime minister has said it is up to Beijing to start removing sanctions on Australian exports.

These Albanese responses are prudent. There is no point in rushing to acknowledge such overtures. However, he would be making a mistake if he seeks to prolong what has the makings of a thaw.

He might remind himself that virtually all of Australia’s western allies, including America, have working relations with Beijing that enable officials to engage in a constructive dialogue, despite differences.

Australia’s first ambassador to China, Stephen Fitzgerald, has some wise counsel for the new government in Canberra about how to better manage relations with Beijing.

Australia under a Labor government must now return to diplomacy, talking with the PRC, for which it is ready and putting away the megaphone of gratuitous criticism, insult and condemnation which were the hallmarks of Morrison’s China policy. If we do this, there will be many issues on which we can have constructive engagement.

One of these issues can — and should — be the continued detention in China of two Australian citizens, the journalist Cheng Lei and the democratic activist Yang Hengjun. Progress towards their release should be a condition of improved relations, along with removal of punitive tariffs on imports of such items as wine and barley.

Finally, Albanese’s security policy team should pay particular attention to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s landmark foreign policy speech delivered to the Asia Society in Washington on May 26.

In that speech, Blinken laid down guidelines for the conduct of relations with Beijing in a world whose foundations are shifting. His words bear repeating as a template for Canberra’s own interactions with Beijing.

We are not looking for conflict or a new Cold War […] We don’t seek to block China from its role as a major power […] But we will defend [the international order] and make it possible for all countries – including the United States and China – to coexist and co-operate.

Blinken’s attempts to define a workable China policy should be regarded in the same vein as another important statement delivered 17 years ago by then Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick in New York. In that speech, Zoellick said:

We now need to encourage China to become a responsible stakeholder in the international system.

Blinken’s and Zoellick’s interventions, two decades apart, are important guardrails for a constructive relationship with China.

Dr Tony Walker is a vice-chancellor’s fellow, La Trobe University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A View from Afar – In this podcast, political scientist Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning bring you a programme in three parts.

First, they provide a brief roundup of Russia’s Victory Day on May 9th and what to make of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin’s speech.

PLUS, they evaluate a raft of election results that have occurred around the world including in: Philippines / HongKong / Sinn Fein’s win in Northern Ireland, and Macron’s re-election as president of France.

And then Paul and Selwyn analyse the Solomon Islands China security deal, and consider why this issue continues to raise concerns amongst Australia, New Zealand and the USA, question whether such concerns are hypocritical, and what real impact China’s strategy will have on the Quad and AUKUS security blocs.

Join Paul and Selwyn for this LIVE recording of this podcast while they consider these big issues, and remember any comments you make while live can be included in this programme.

You can comment on this debate by clicking on one of these social media channels and interacting in the social media’s comment area. Here are the links:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
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The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

If the coming election goes to Australia’s Labor party, Penny Wong is very likely to become Foreign Minister. So when she speaks, people across the region prick up their ears.

Without the least disrespect to her recent forebears, she could be one of the most acute, incisive and insightful FMs in recent history.

Whether she’ll be any more effective than them is another matter.

Australia has a long tradition of placing prominent front-benchers into the role, and then pointedly ignoring their efforts, their advice and their warnings. It’s as if government leaders find their greatest rival and send them trotting off around the globe, more to keep them from making mischief at home than to achieve anything noteworthy while they’re gone.

In Australia, it seems, foreign policy is domestic policy done outdoors.

If she achieves nothing more, Wong would be well served to look closely at the people supporting her, and to spend considerable effort re-organising and in fact re-inventing DFAT.

Its disconnection from other departments, especially Defence and PMO, has created an internal culture that spends more time feeding on itself than actually helping produce a persuasive or coherent foreign policy.

Ensuring foreign policy’s primacy at the cabinet table is a big ask, but it will be for naught if the department can’t deliver. There are significant structural matters to be dealt with.

‘Worst failure of foreign policy in the Pacific’: Labor launches scathing attack on government over Solomon Islands-China pact https://t.co/efbU2tM6Iu

— ABC News (@abcnews) April 19, 2022

Rolling development and aid into the department was a significant regression that hampered both sides. Volumes can be written about the need to distinguish development assistance from foreign policy, and many of them could be focused on the Pacific islands region.

The two are mostly complementary (mostly), but they must also be discrete from one another.

It’s far more complicated than this, but suffice it to say that development aid prioritises the recipient’s needs, while foreign relations generally prioritise national concerns. The moment you invert either side of that equation, you lose.

Exempli gratia: Solomon Islands.

It’s well known that Australia spent billions shoring up Solomon Islands’ security and administrative capacity. Surely after all that aid, they can expect the government to stay onside in geopolitical matters?

Applying the admittedly simplistic filter from the para above, the answer is an obvious no.

Aid is not a substitute for actual foreign relations, and foreign relations is definitely not just aid.

So is Penny Wong correct when she calls the CN/SI defence agreement a massive strategic setback? Sure.

Is she right to call Pacific Affairs Minister Zed Seselja “a junior woodchuck”, sent in a last minute attempt to dissuade Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare from signing the agreement?

The idea of a minister responsible for the complex, wildly diverse patchwork of nations spanning such a vast space has value. But in terms of resources and policy heft, Seselja rides at the back of the posse on a mule.

There are good reasons to devote an entire office to Pacific affairs. There are also blindingly good reasons to keep the Foreign Minister as the primary point of contact on matters of foreign policy.

That means the role—and yes, the existence—of the Pacific Affairs ministry needs a ground-up reconsideration. Notionally, it fulfills a critical role. But how?

It’s fair to say that Wong is more insightful than those who describe Solomon Islands as a fly-speck in the Pacific, or a Little Cuba (whatever the F that means). But in the past, Labor’s shown little insight into the actual value and purpose of foreign policy.

For the better part of four decades, neither Australian party was fussed at all about the fact that there had been few if any official visits between leaders. Prime Ministers regularly blew off Pacific Islands Forum meetings.

In Vanuatu’s case, the first ever prime ministerial visit to Canberra was in 2018. Why aren’t such meetings annual events?

Australia is rightly proud of its pre-eminence in development assistance in the Pacific islands. But that never was, and never will be, a substitute for diplomatic engagement. And you can’t have that without a functioning diplomatic corps whose presence is felt equally in Canberra and in foreign capitals.

But even that’s not enough. Penny Wong has yet to show in concrete terms how she plans to address what could accurately be called the greatest strategic foreign policy failure since WWII: Leaving Australia alone to guard the shop.

In 2003, George W. Bush was rightly vilified for characterising Australia’s role in the region as America’s Sheriff.

But the Americans weren’t the only ones who walked away, leaving Australia alone to engage with the region. The UK and the EU (minus France in their patch) rolled back their diplomatic presence substantially.

Even New Zealand agreed to restrict its engagement in large areas in deference to its neighbour. The most enduring presence was provided by organisations without any meaningful foreign policy role: UN development agencies and multilateral financial institutions.

Since the beginning of the War on Terror, there has been a consistent and often deliberate draw-down on the capital provided by democratic institutions, multilateral foreign policy, and indeed any collective course-setting among nations.

Post Cold-War democratic momentum has been squandered on an increasingly transactional approach to engagement that’s begun to look alarmingly like the spheres of influence that appeal so much to Putin and Xi.

This hasn’t happened in the Pacific islands alone. The UN has become an appendix in the global body politic, one cut away from complete irrelevance. ASEAN and APEC are struggling just as hard to find relevance, let alone purpose, as the Pacific Islands Forum or the Melanesian Spearhead Group.

Australia has “led” in the Pacific islands region by being the largest aid donor, blithely assuming that all the other kids in the region want to be like it. But that “leadership” masks a massive gap in actual influence in shaping the agenda in a region that’s larger and more diverse than any other in the world.

Want to know more? I have a whole chapter in my last book about it: https://t.co/RjggiClW5Z

— Joanne Wallis (@JoanneEWallis) March 30, 2022

The data’s there if people want it. This isn’t a particularly contentious… er, contention, if you’re among the far-too-small group of people who actually live in and care about the future of the region.

In a regional dynamic defined and dominated by transactional bilateralism, China holds all the aces. The only hope anyone has of slowing its growth in the region is through meaningful multilateralism that treats Pacific island countries as actual nations with national pride and individual priorities. Instead of silencing them, their voices should be amplified and defended, not by Australia alone, but by every other democratic nation with the means and the will to do so.

If we can’t respect the equal standing of nations, we can’t protect their integrity.

Scott Morrison may indeed be one of the worst exemplars of this blithe disregard for actual foreign policy engagement. He’s certainly won few friends with his world-class foot-dragging on climate change. America’s suddenly renewed interest in the region is an indication that they’ve woken up to the Bush administration’s mistakes.

It’s also clear they don’t trust Australia to play Sheriff any more. Kurt Campbell’s upcoming visit to the region is just the latest in a series of increasingly high profile tours of the region.

So yes, Penny Wong is justified in saying that China’s advances in the Pacific derive at least in part from Australia’s lack of a coherent and effective foreign policy.

But foreign policy is not made at home. It’s not Australia’s interests alone that matter. And subjugating Pacific nations in compacts of free association isn’t a substitute for actual policy making.

Pacific island nations will not defend Australia’s national interests unless they share those interests. The only way that Australia—and the world—can be assured they do is by actively listening, and by incorporating Pacific voices into the fabric of a renewed and revitalised global family.

Dan McGarry was previously media director at Vanuatu Daily Post/Buzz FM96. The Village Explainer is his semi-regular newsletter containing analysis and insight focusing on under-reported aspects of Pacific societies, politics and economics. His articles are republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A View from Afar – LIVE @ MIDDAY Thursday September 30: In this podcast, Paul G. Buchanan and Selwyn Manning will analyse the AUKUS Alliance and will deep-dive into:

• How the AUKUS Alliance has triggered a geopolitical realignment.
• Why has this Anglophone AUKUS alliance formed? And what’s the fallout?
• What does China do now?
• How will Australia assert itself as the Southern Hemisphere’s military great power?
• How does the AUKUS Alliance impact on the applied foreign policies of regional independent nations like New Zealand and indeed the ASEAN economies?
• Where to from here for France and Europe, China and South East Asian nations, and New Zealand?

Join Paul and Selwyn for this LIVE recording of this podcast and remember any comments you make while live can be included in this programme.

You can comment on this debate by clicking on one of these social media channels and interacting in the social media’s comment area. Here are the links:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.