We’re hearing a lot about the need for Australia to develop a sovereign space capability. An article on The Strategist in March warned that Australia risks New Zealand ‘becoming the more commercially attractive location for establishing a launch-dependent space company.’

Shock and horror that the Kiwis should offer something commercially better than anything available in the current Australian business environment.

The NZ launch experience is running several years ahead of Australia with 17 successful launches of 104 small satellites since November 2018 by Rocket Lab’s launch complex on the North Island’s Mahia Peninsula.

These 17 Electron rocket loads have included satellites for NASA, US government agencies, universities and corporations, as well as several Australian companies and universities.

Rocket Lab’s only failed launches occurred just last week and on 4 July last year. Both incidents appear to have been related to second-stage engines on Electron boosters.

Compare this with Australia’s current successful small satellite launch statistics—zip.

So why does Australia need a sovereign launch capability when there’s already a successful one in New Zealand? The answer is very interesting.

Rocket Lab’s location is suitable for launching into sun-synchronous low-earth orbits, or LEO, which mean a satellite can cover the entire earth’s surface, in daylight, once every 24 hours. However, without the benefit launch sites on the equator receive from the earth’s rotational speed, the Mahia Peninsula is not suitable to launch satellites into geo-stationary orbits high above the earth, or to achieve long-distance space travel.

If Australia committed to having most of its government-owned small satellites launched by Rocket Lab in New Zealand, what could we offer New Zealand in return? An equatorial launch site in the far north of Australia could boost rocket launch velocity in the direction of the earth’s rotation.

The closer a launch site is to the equator, the heavier the payload that can be sent up for the same fuel burn. At the equator, a rocket launch site is travelling through space at 1,670 kilometres per hour, compared with 1,635 km/h at Darwin’s latitude (12^o 27’ South), 1,292 km/h at the Mahia Peninsula (39^o 26’ South) or 1,319 km/h at NASA’s Wallops Island in Virginia (37^o 58’ North).

Apart from Rocket Lab’s very sound experience placing small satellites into LEO, it has now developed its Neutron rocket, an advanced 8-tonne payload launch vehicle tailored to launch large constellations of satellites into LEO, or with lighter payloads for geostationary or interplanetary missions and human spaceflight.

Rocket Lab says Neutron will also launch larger civil, defence and commercial payloads that need a level of schedule control and high-flight cadence not available on large and heavy lift rockets. Neutron will be capable of lifting 98% of all satellites forecast to launch through 2029 and will be able to lower costs by leveraging Electron’s heritage, launch sites and architecture.

If Australia and New Zealand combine capabilities, they could use an Australian launch site near the equator. Both countries will be able to despatch heavy Neutron payloads when required.

Rocket Lab’s LC-1A and new LC-1B will enable it to increase the frequency of launches to around 120 per year. It’s licensed for a launch every 72 hours. Rocket Lab New Zealand can launch satellites of up to 300 kilograms from its two co-located complexes. Multiple satellites can be delivered into orbit in a single launch, with individual satellites released from Rocket Lab’s Proton spacecraft on top of the Electron two-stage rocket.

Rocket Lab was founded in 2007 by New Zealand engineer Peter Beck. In 2013 it became a US corporation called Rocket Lab USA and attracted a lot of working capital.

Rocket Lab USA has set up a launch complex at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, which is expected to serve primarily government customers.

Earlier this year, Royal Australian Air Force chief Air Marshal Mel Hupfeld revealed planning was well underway for a new ‘space command’ within the RAAF.

The RAAF’s head of capability, Air Vice-Marshal Catherine Roberts, now responsible for designing and shaping air and space power for the joint force, becomes the inaugural head of this new command in January 2022.

Two of its key responsibilities will be protecting satellites used by the Australian Defence Force and its allies for operations, and the establishment of an Australian sovereign constellation of small communications satellites through Joint Project 9102.

Roberts will no doubt also be closely involved with development of Defence’s surveillance satellites.

The numerous satellite launches already planned could provide commercial opportunities for Australian companies.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story said Rocket Lab had experienced one launch failure. The article has been updated to include one that occurred on 15 May.

Elections in New Zealand and the United States will challenge progress that has been made in the Pacific by ANZUS countries. It looks like New Zealand’s election will see out the populist NZ First party as a coalition partner and bring to a close party leader Winston Peters’ influence on the country’s foreign affairs. In the US, in the midst of electoral turmoil, Australia and New Zealand have made considerable investments in offsetting the chaos of the White House. What happens after the election will determine whether those investments were worthwhile.

As foreign minister, Peters has played a pivotal role in promoting greater attention and resources for Pacific island countries. In March 2018 he announced New Zealand’s ‘Pacific reset’ in a speech at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. Given that he could have announced the reset in his own capital, the choice of Sydney suggests his intention was likely to pressure Australia into taking action in the Pacific. Then, in November of that year, the Australian government announced its Pacific step-up. Admittedly, the step-up had been foreshadowed in the 2017 foreign policy white paper, but Peters may have forced Canberra’s hand.

In a similar vein, Peters traveled to Washington in December 2018, where he once again called for action, saying, ‘We unashamedly ask for the United States to engage more and we think it is in your vital interests to do so. And time is of the essence.’ The urgency, of course, came from the strategic competition unfolding between Washington and Beijing.

How the next government under Jacinda Ardern addresses the Pacific islands and strategic competition remains to be seen. Peters and the NZ First party are polling badly at just 2%, according to the 8 October NewsHub-Reid poll. Given the nature of New Zealand electoral politics, NZ First needs to hit the 5% mark in polling in order to see success. Peters’ party certainly won’t have anything like its current numbers in parliament. The next Labour-led government in Wellington will need to fill the foreign affairs portfolio, and the question remains whether Labour will lead on its own or in a coalition with the Greens. Either outcome could alter how Wellington engages in the Pacific.

The other unknown concerns the election in the US. For all the bedlam in Donald Trump’s White House, one thing is certain: Pacific island countries have received more attention than at any time in recent memory. Washington’s newfound interest in the region hasn’t come about unaided—both New Zealand and Australia have been very active. In April 2019, the Australian embassy in Washington undertook a campaign to promote its activities in the Pacific to members of the US Congress. Ambassador Joe Hockey wrote to members of Congress that Australia’s intention was ‘to be the partner of choice for our Pacific island country neighbours’. He added that Australia’s ‘new measures are highly complementary to the enduring US security presence in the Pacific’. Australia offered that any member of Congress who wanted a briefing on the Pacific would get one.

Three months later, Democratic Congressman Ed Case announced the formation of a bipartisan Pacific islands caucus, the first of its kind. It has 20 members, a third of whom are also members of the Friends of Australia caucus and two of whom are from the Friends of New Zealand caucus. In July 2020, in an attempt to further cement Washington’s attention to the Pacific, the caucus’s co-chairs and members introduced the Boosting Long-term US Engagement in the Pacific Act, also known as the BLUE Pacific Act. Australia and New Zealand co-hosted, along with the United States Association of Former Members of Congress, a virtual meeting announcing the act. The new Australian ambassador, Arthur Sinodinos, moderated the session, which featured several ambassadors from Pacific island nations.

The November election introduces a high degree of uncertainty to US engagement in the Pacific. A Joe Biden victory will create a new set of legislative demands quite apart from the Pacific, and the impact that will have on the islands will remain unclear for some time. The most pressing legislative issue will be funding for the Compacts of Free Association. A re-elected Trump administration would be been keen to see legislation make its way through Congress. A Biden victory wouldn’t diminish the need for funding, but it could shift the political focus elsewhere. Quite apart from who wins the presidency, a new Congress will be elected.

In the short-term, New Zealand will be distracted as it organises a new government. Washington will be either setting up a new administration or readying to continue the work Trump started. At least for the next few months, look to Australia to be the steadying hand on the ANZUS interest in the Pacific.

An emphatic Labour Party victory in New Zealand in October, followed by a convincing Democratic Party win in the United States in November, would be a symbolic morale boost for the ‘Anglosphere’ centre-left after a period marked by fallouts from Brexit, the 2016 Donald Trump upset and the 2019 Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson triumphs.

Centre-left parties in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US have long followed ideological, policy and campaign developments affecting their counterparts. Increased global connectivity has intensified this reciprocal scrutiny. It has been the same on the centre-right.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, UK Labour figures like Tony Blair looked to the Bob Hawke Labor government for inspiration as it split between its hard-left and social-democratic tendencies during Margaret Thatcher’s decade of dominance. UK Labour’s 1983 manifesto, which pledged unilateral nuclear disarmament (while maintaining support for NATO), was described by one of its MPs as ‘the longest suicide note in history’.

Meanwhile, the Hawke government maintained Australian support for the US alliance, obtained ‘full knowledge and concurrence’ for the Pine Gap facility, and even managed to walk away from a commitment to use Australian facilities to test MX missiles (with a little help from Hawke’s Republican mate George Schultz).

Across the Tasman, the David Lange government’s ‘nuclear-free’ policy, strongly supported by the NZ Labour left, precipitated the US’s suspension of its ANZUS commitments to New Zealand in 1986, but with no major long-term repercussions: New Zealand has remained a member of the Five Eyes intelligence network and continues to participate in joint military exercises with the US and Australia. The Hawke government resisted pressure from the left to adopt a similar nuclear policy.

By the late 1990s, the ALP right was looking to Blair’s ‘third way’ and the Clinton administration’s ‘triangulation’ strategy for lessons on how to peel the ‘Howard battlers’ from the Coalition. That effort was complicated when Blair committed the UK to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, putting him at odds with the ALP. The tension was politely on display when Blair visited Australia in 2006; his old friend Kim Beazley was opposition leader. (One of the big ‘what ifs’ is whether the Trump administration would have reduced intelligence sharing with the UK if Jeremy Corbyn had won last year’s election and what impact that might have had on Australia.)

But what would a Jacinda Ardern, Joe Biden double mean in practical terms for Australia’s national interest and the centre-right Morrison government? As with Richard Nixon’s 1960s period in the political wilderness, Biden’s views on China have presumably evolved as the strategic outlook has changed. In his July 2016 speech in Sydney, Biden remarked:

We’ve made important progress to center our growing relationship with China in enhanced cooperation and responsible competition … I’ve spent a great deal of time with President Xi, a lot of time. I’ve travelled with him five days in China. I’ve probably spent more time with him alone than any world leader.

Four years later, much has changed.

If Biden wins, expect a form of ‘triangulation’ on the global stage. While he would put greater emphasis than Trump has on not offending allies and courting ‘respectable opinion’, there would be more continuity than change. The full-court pushback against China would continue, Five Eyes coordination would keep broadening beyond its traditional remit, and the US military presence in northern Australia would increase, notably the number of US marines.

Covid-19 has further slanted the political balance in favour of the US taking a hard line on trade with China, although a big trade deal is more likely than not during the next term under Biden or Trump. As president, Biden would come under pressure from his party’s left to use tariffs and trade agreements as a means of furthering global action on climate change; Biden’s climate package is the most ambitious ever offered by a US presidential candidate. China would test a Biden administration’s mettle early, possibly with Taiwan’s offshore islands (Matsu and Quemoy were issues in the 1960 presidential election debates). This would again put Australia’s ANZUS obligations under the spotlight.

As for New Zealand, a Biden presidency would give Ardern more domestic political room to increase strategic cooperation with the US. An updated ANZUS is not inconceivable. Ardern’s global standing and domestic political dominance sometimes overshadow the fact that she leads a minority government whose foreign and defence ministers are members of the right-wing New Zealand First Party, which may be headed for electoral oblivion if the polls are to be believed. Post-election, Ardern will be in a stronger position to put her unique stamp on New Zealand strategic policy. Wily New Zealand diplomats would try to leverage the Biden–Ardern ideological partnership while quietly playing good cop to Canberra’s bad cop with Beijing in pursuing New Zealand’s economic and trade interests.

This article is part of ASPI’s 2020 series on women, peace and security.

In 2018, New Zealand Defence Minister Ron Mark encouraged countries in the Asia–Pacific to ‘identify their strengths and champion areas of expertise’. He said New Zealand’s strengths and areas of expertise were ‘humanitarian assistance and disaster relief; women, peace and security; and building capability through training’. So, the WPS agenda has been presented as a key area of government interest and investment, and popular rhetoric suggests that New Zealand is a staunch champion of the WPS agenda. Does the evidence support that claim?

New Zealand was somewhat late to the fray in launching its first WPS national action plan, due in part to a complacent attitude that the promotion of women’s empowerment and gender equality was something New Zealand already did well. When it did produce a plan, in 2015, it focused on providing diplomatic support for WPS initiatives and enabling international deployments of New Zealand women.

Proposed public reporting on WPS achievements hasn’t eventuated, making evaluation of even these narrowly defined objectives tricky. The lack of information is compounded by the subjective question about how much New Zealand would need to be doing to be able to genuinely claim to be a WPS champion. Some improvements have been made, but they could also be viewed as low-hanging fruit.

For example, clearly identification and allocation of resources is vital for successful implementation of WPS action plans, but early commentary on New Zealand’s noted that the government ‘isn’t putting any money where its mouth is’. The New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade contributed a total of NZ$18.2 million over the 2015–16 and 2017–18 reporting years for activities whose main aim was to further gender equality and women’s empowerment, but that is just a small portion of the aid budget—New Zealand’s aid program is budgeted to spend NZ$2.2 billion between 2018–19 to 2020–21.

In the New Zealand Police, responsibility for formulating and implementing WPS initiatives was delegated to one staff member alongside other responsibilities, and the organisation declined several opportunities to engage in WPS activities due to competing budget priorities.

The NZ Army initially employed a special projects officer to oversee WPS implementation (a position that was later changed to a NZ Defence Force role) and a part-time position was added last year to better engage with the new Pacific Defence Gender Network, launched by the defence ministry in cooperation with the government of Samoa. Some minor, and increasing, investments have been made to help promote WPS initiatives, but it’s not clear whether that will be enough to support the claim that New Zealand is a ‘champion’ of the WPS agenda.

The gender balances in the police force and NZDF have improved, though achievements are uneven and depend on interpretation of gains made. The number of women employed in constabulary roles and in senior ranks in the police, for example, has clearly improved in recent years. Starting from a mere 6.5% in 1989, the proportion of women hovered at around 18% in 2015, and then in 2018 female recruits outnumbered male recruits in some intakes.

Importantly, given that the national action plan specifically focused on boosting the number of women deployed offshore, the proportion of women in international policing roles has also improved (from 17.7% in 2016 to 26.2% in 2017). However, it’s difficult to gauge how significant these changes are when so few NZ police are deployed offshore. An increase from one women to two serving in a senior role offshore acts to double the figure, for example. Similar issues arise when considering military deployments.

In the NZDF, women comprised more than 20% of deployed forces in 2015, and the proportion increased over the next three years. But the deployments were small, at around 270 personnel in total. Retaining high numbers of women would be much less likely in larger deployments, and the general need to increase the number of military women remains pressing.

In 2014, just before the national action plan was released, it was reported that the number of women in military uniform had been falling for a number of years. After concerted efforts, the numbers increased a little each year from 2015 to 2018, though there were, and still are, variations between and within services. The army, in particular, has struggled—female representation dropped to 12.8% in 2018, with especially low numbers in the combat corps. Meeting the target of ‘more women deployed’ could in future be constrained by these structural realities.

Evidence for the assertion that New Zealand has championed the WPS agenda is therefore patchy. So, where to from here?

Discussions with police and defence personnel, reinforced by the nature of recent recruiting material, confirm that increasing women’s participation is a priority for both organisations.

Yet that is only one corner of the puzzle. Broader attempts to more deeply ‘regender’ government organisations—which would both support increased participation of women and shift the focus to broader gender issues—would deliver positive results. The Royal New Zealand Navy’s headline-grabbing decision to bring in gender-neutral grooming and appearance guidelines, as well as the awarding of a Rainbow Tick to the NZDF, suggests that some regendering is already underway.

A move away from the ‘othering’ that dominates the framing of the 2015 national action plan would also be beneficial. New Zealand currently has the worst domestic violence statistics in the OECD, and yet the action plan is all about helping others with their gender-based violence issues. Owning our own shortcomings—something Canada does better in its latest plan—would serve to emphasise that gender equality does indeed remain an unrealised goal that we are all still striving for.

A Strategist article last year asked what it is that really makes for an effective national action plan. Miki Jacevic’s piece suggests that increased inclusivity, particularly of civil society, and frequent reporting are important for successful plans. These elements are still lacking in the New Zealand context and are two simple improvements that authorities can make as they look to revise the plan in 2020.

Australia’s new South Pacific policy is set in place, no matter which side wins the election on 18 May.

Labor and the Coalition entered the election with a unity ticket on Papua New Guinea, the Pacific islands and Timor-Leste that ASPI calls the Pacific pivot.

The policy consensus draws on Australian ideas about destiny, duty, denial and desire.

Destiny refers to an obsession with the island arc that helped create the Commonwealth in 1901, and the South Pacific’s special place in Australia’s constitution.

Duty reflects the security guarantee Australia offers the islands, and Canberra’s determination to be the region’s ‘principal security partner’.

Denial describes Australia’s instinct of strategic denial in the South Pacific. The China challenge has reawakened Australia’s fear of external powers gaining a hold in the islands.

Desire is what Australia, and New Zealand, want to do with the South Pacific, the ambitious offer of economic and security ‘integration’ to uphold the region by holding it closer.

Those thoughts are explored in my new ASPI special report: Australia’s Pacific pivot: destiny, duty, denial and desire.

The report looks closely at how Australia’s instinct of strategic denial in the island arc has been roused by the challenge from China. As a companion or counterpoint to the challenge perspective, see Richard Herr’s special report on Chinese influence in the Pacific islands.

Date the pivot from the Coalition government’s 2017 foreign policy white paper, which promised ‘more ambitious engagement’ and offered the new vision ‘to integrate Pacific countries into the Australian and New Zealand economies and our security institutions’. Integration is described as ‘essential to the long-term stability and economic prospects of the Pacific’, a region of ‘fundamental importance to Australia’.

Integration is a confronting idea for the identity and independence of proud island nations. That’s why Prime Minister Scott Morrison has shown political and diplomatic smarts by talking often about Australia as part of the ‘Pacific family’.

The family imagining offers much, not least a lens to widen Australia’s understanding of the pivot’s two dimensions: power and people.

Power is about Australian policy—diplomatic, defence, trade, aid, business, communications and international broadcasting—driven by our strategic denial instinct. The power questions for Australia are about our interests and influence, but also about our values.

The people dimension is about our values meeting the values and needs of the diverse members of the South Pacific family.

Family is the badge for the pivot, complementing New Zealand’s Pacific ‘reset’. It’s an explanation of belonging and responsibility—an imagining that offers more equality than talk of ‘our patch’ or ‘our backyard’.

The South Pacific hasn’t shown much enthusiasm for integration. The anti-Oz line is that integration is colonialism redux—a polite term for dominance—and that Canberra’s focus is all about China, not the islands.

The family discussion gets a warmer response, although, as in any family, the disagreements wound. Australia’s stance on climate change and the ‘Pacific solution’ of sending boat people to Nauru and Manus Island eat away at our standing.

Canberra can’t assume that its good intentions are automatically accepted. The Oz hegemon isn’t always benign—we have form as a selfish bully.

Integration is a good idea that’ll gain ground slowly and that’s subject to how we act more than what we say. Integration asks the South Pacific to compromise a level of sovereignty—to trust and benefit from Australia’s economic and security opportunities and leadership.

Integration rests on a simple, obvious idea: a stronger South Pacific is in Australia’s interests. Stronger island nations are better able to serve their own interests and identities. It’s not contradictory to say that those South Pacific interests and identities will be helped by getting closer to Australia and New Zealand.

Independence is based on strength, not weakness. The integration offer is about helping the islands build their future, not binding their options.

In talking up integration, I’ve been struck by how my strongest line hasn’t been Australia’s good intentions but the example of New Zealand.

New Zealand will be central in setting the ambition and the limits of integration. Wellington must play the special role it claims for itself in the Pacific as the essential Kiwi.

New Zealand knows all the benefits of alliance with Australia, and free movement of goods, services and people. New Zealand has been integrating with Australia for 200 years, yet this embrace of the kangaroo has never hurt Kiwi identity or sovereignty (or changed the way they do their vowels).

New Zealand is proudly itself, while prospering from the kangaroo partnership. The Kiwi integration experience is a positive model for a Pacific community. If the Kiwis can do it, so can the rest of the South Pacific.

Responding to all the economic, social and security needs of the South Pacific, the pivot rests on a renewed political consensus in Canberra—plus the help and example of the essential Kiwi.