Former New Zealand political rivals alarmed at sudden foreign policy changes
Jul 23, 2024
The New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon unilaterally announced new directions for New Zealand’s foreign policy in an interview during a visit to the United States to attend a NATO meeting.
He spoke to the Financial Times which is behind a paywall. Luxon then went on holiday in Hawaii with his family, producing at least a suspicion that he has tried to avoid elaborating or explaining.
The bombshell interview threw together two unlikely allies, the former Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark and the former leader of the National Party (and Governor of the Reserve Bank for 14 years) Dr Don Brash.
Clark and Brash went head to head in the combative and close 2005 election campaign which produced a Labour government. After leaving Parliament, Clark has been active internationally serving two four-year terms as the first female head of the United Nations Development Fund. She continues to be very busy and well informed in international affairs.
After retiring from politics, Brash has served as an adjunct professor of Banking in the Business School at the Auckland School of Technology and an adjunct professor in the School of Economics and Finance at La Trobe University in Melbourne. He also started a right wing lobby group in New Zealand, Hobson’s Pledge.
Clearly it took a serious matter to bring these two old rivals together but such was the effect of Luxon’s interview during his visit to Washington DC in early July.
Contrary to New Zealand’s carefully finessed diplomatic relationship with China, Luxon declared New Zealand would begin to single out China and “increasingly disclose cases of Chinese espionage”.
He also said New Zealand was now “very open” to participating in AUKUS Pillar Two, a defence partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, and he talked about the New Zealand Defence Force being a “force multiplier for Australia and the US and other partners”.
These comments have alarmed Helen Clark and Don Brash who on July 16, 2024 produced a joint statement which was widely published and discussed on blogs, social media and news sites.
Clark and Brash argue that Luxon’s statements represent a radical change in New Zealand’s foreign policy, which could have major implications for trade, defence deployments and public spending.
In their statement titled “Prime Minister is jeopardising both New Zealand’s independent foreign policy and its economic security” they said:
“Just one month after the New Zealand Government hosted the Chinese Premier in New Zealand, and with no hint of a major change in New Zealand foreign policy in the National Party’s election campaign last year, the Prime Minister’s comments to the Financial Times strongly suggest that he has abandoned New Zealand’s independent foreign policy.
These statements orient New Zealand towards being a full-fledged military ally of the United States, with the implication that New Zealand will increasingly be dragged into US-China competition, including militarily in the South China Sea. While the rhetoric from both sides is heightened, it must be noted that the US is demanding that China accept the presence of US naval forces in its vicinity in a way which the US itself would not for a moment accept if the boot were on the other foot.
Does China spy on New Zealand? Almost certainly, just as the US, the UK, and countless others, including New Zealand, spy on other countries. Is China the only country spying on New Zealand, and is it only governments that engage in spying? Almost certainly not. The obsessive focus on spying by China suggests an agenda going beyond alerting and equipping New Zealanders to better manage all relevant risks.
China not only poses no military threat to New Zealand, but it is also by a very substantial margin our biggest export market – more than twice as important as an export market for New Zealand as the US is.
New Zealand has a huge stake in maintaining a cordial relationship with China. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to maintain such a relationship if the Government continues to align its positioning with that of the United States.
New Zealand has for decades sought engagement with China and its inclusion in the international system. A policy of isolating China serves no one’s interests, and has major implications for New Zealand’s economic security.
A better approach would be to follow the example of Singapore (which is) friendly to both China and the US, but definitely not in a treaty relationship with either. The course which the New Zealand Government is now taking, with no electoral mandate for a radical change to foreign policy, carries huge risks to our country”.
In 2008 while Helen Clark was Prime Minister New Zealand became the first OECD country to sign a Free Trade Agreement with China. The FTA has since produced enormous benefits for both countries.
In an interview with Radio New Zealand she said her main concerns were “The reference to boosting defence spending when everything else is being cut, the being ‘very open’ to joining AUKUS Pillar 2 – we haven’t heard the ‘very open’ phrase before, and then, of course, the naming and shaming of China, which now seems to be the approach that New Zealand will increasingly take towards the major trade partner.”
“The issue of the status of the visiting forces agreement to enable New Zealand to deploy to the Philippines immediately sends signals that there might be (New Zealand) naval assets in the South China Sea”.
Clark said Luxon’s comments without democratic consultation or mandate amounted to a ‘hard reset’ that risked putting New Zealand’s independent foreign policy stance ‘on the bonfire’.
So far New Zealand has avoided much of the grooming evident in Australia and elsewhere that attempts to generate fear and hatred of China. New Zealanders mostly remain uninterested in siding with the US against China or of joining AUKUS. On the other hand there is strong support for the decades old consensus across both major parties for an independent foreign policy marked by strong endorsement of the nuclear free policy and civil relationships with all countries including China.
Max Hayton is a New Zealand journalist who worked as a political correspondent in the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Wellington in his younger days. He then traveled to London to specialise in foreign television news. In 1989 he became Foreign Editor at the start-up private channel TV3 New Zealand. After some years he became the Foreign Editor at Television New Zealand where he worked until he retired.
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