Tag Archive for: New Zealand

Australia and New Zealand can make Solomon Islands a ‘Pacific family’ offer China can’t match

The announcement by the Solomon Islands government that it intends to ‘broaden its security and development cooperation with more countries’ has provoked a rash of commentary from Australian and New Zealand journalists, academics, think-tankers and politicians. Amid the calls to ‘amass an amphibious invasion force’ or offer the Solomons an Australian naval base, is there potential for a ‘Pacific family’ solution?

The commentary erupted on 24 March after a leaked draft security agreement between Solomon Islands and China was circulated online. Controversial elements of the document include the following two provisions:

Solomon Islands may, according to its own needs, request China to send … armed police, military personnel and other law enforcement and armed forces to Solomon Islands to assist in maintaining social order …

China may, according to its own needs and with the consent of Solomon Islands, make ship visits to, carry out logistical replenishments in, and have stopover and transition in Solomon Islands, and the relevant forces of China can be used to protect the safety of Chinese personnel and major projects in Solomon Islands.

The agreement also features a confidentiality clause that says: ‘Without the consent of the other party, neither party shall disclose the cooperation information to a third party.’

While the deal has now been ‘initialed’ by Chinese and Solomon Islands officials, it is still yet to be formally signed.

Reflecting the possibility of secretive negotiations for a Chinese naval base in Solomon Islands, reactions from commentators covered the spectrum from ‘wake-up call’ to Australia’s own ‘Cuban missile crisis’.

Notwithstanding different positions along the alert–alarm spectrum, there’s broad agreement among commentators that Australia’s foreign policy approaches have proved inadequate, regardless of the funds spent on programs.

Meanwhile, a statement on Solomon Islands issued jointly by Australia’s foreign minister and minister for international development and the Pacific gave little indication of alarm, but within 417 words made five references to Australia’s ‘Pacific family’, with whom Australia stands ‘shoulder-to-shoulder … through good times and bad’.

The statement affirmed that Australia respects ‘the right of every Pacific country to make sovereign decisions’; referred to $22 million Australia has provided to the Solomons for budget support and record regional development assistance; and pledged that Australia would ‘be transparent and … continue supporting peace, economic prosperity, stability and democratic values across our region’.

A higher level of concern was articulated in an ABC article that quoted Solomon Islands opposition leader Matthew Wale saying he had warned Australian officials in late 2021 that ‘China would likely try to establish a military presence in Solomon Islands … but the Australian government did nothing about it’. The article also quoted Australian international affairs expert Clinton Fernandes warning that the same factors could well play out in Papua New Guinea.

Perhaps the big question is why the government of Manasseh Sogavare, on record for wanting to cooperate with China ‘to build a world that is fair and just’, was negotiating a security agreement with Beijing without first seeking the endorsement of the people of Solomon Islands? An APMI Partners survey carried out in the Solomons in December found that 91% of respondents preferred their nation ‘to be diplomatically aligned more towards … liberal democracies’.

Insight into this question may be provided by a case study by Indo-Pacific researcher Cleo Paskal titled ‘How China buys foreign politicians’. Paskal presents what appears to be evidence of August 2021 payments originating from China to ‘39 of the [Solomons] Parliament’s 50 MPs’. According to Pascal, all of these MPs were ‘supporters to one degree or another, of the Prime Minister’. Alluding to Article 61 of the Solomons constitution, Paskal notes that 39 votes would be sufficient ‘with a small buffer’ to pass an alteration and push through Sogavare’s plan to delay the 2023 election until 2024. ‘And who knows what else he and/or Beijing would like to “adjust”?’ she asks.

We get now to the heart of the problem. As Australia and New Zealand emphasise transparency, sovereignty and democratic values and spend big on multimillion-dollar development projects, the geopolitical landscape may be rearranged by a series of budget bribes to members of Pacific parliaments. For, as Fernandes suggests, there’s no reason to think this vulnerability will be restricted to the Solomons.

Many Pacific islanders have strong links with Australia and New Zealand through education and family dating back to pre-independence times. If the APMI survey data is anywhere near accurate, Solomon Islanders remain strongly drawn to the liberal democratic model. Should, therefore, the leading democracies of the region respond to the strategic competition from China by seeking to make the much-vaunted ‘Pacific family’ more of a reality?

In other words, what policy options might be offered to Solomons government MPs such that alliance with the leading liberal democracies of the region becomes a permanent policy setting? What could be so attractive to the entire Solomons electorate that going against it even for money politics would be unthinkable?

The answer may be something Australians and New Zealanders enjoy most days of their lives—namely, access to a developed job market, education and healthcare. Establishing a path for greater integration of the Solomons and other Pacific island states into a ‘Pacific family’ led by Australia and New Zealand, in return for a common security policy, could settle for good the partner-of-choice question for these states. At the same time, increased opportunities for Pacific workers could provide badly needed labour and help stimulate a regional industrial revival.

Steps towards greater integration of Pacific states would represent a substantial change for Australian and New Zealand foreign policy. However, the audacious geopolitical manoeuvre by China calls for an equally innovative response from the region’s leading liberal democracies.

Taming the truckers

Truculent truckers have driven several governments to distraction in recent weeks. In Canada, they blocked bridges to the United States and laid siege to the capital, Ottawa. In New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, truckers and other demonstrators inspired by the Canadian protesters blocked the square in front of the country’s parliament, as well as several city streets. This new wave of ‘freedom convoy’ protests—fuelled initially by opposition to coronavirus restrictions—has since spread to France, Australia and the US.

Governments and law-enforcement agencies have responded with a range of tactics, but ending the protests is proving difficult. In Ottawa, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at first described the truckers as a fringe minority. But one survey reported that a third of Canadians supported the protesters, even as they were creating havoc for Ottawa residents, and for factories on both sides of the US–Canada border.

The Ottawa police tried a ‘surge and contain’ strategy, arresting a few people, issuing tickets and traffic notices, and seizing fuel being brought to the truckers. This approach, the city’s police chief said, significantly reduced the number of trucks and protesters. But it has not been successful enough. On 6 February, the mayor of Ottawa declared a state of emergency, and police subsequently used a court injunction to start clearing the Ambassador Bridge between Ontario and the US. But the protests have continued, and on 15 February the police chief resigned.

In Wellington, as in Ottawa, the protesters were initially permitted to have their say. But after a week of growing disorder, the authorities adopted various measures in an effort to disperse them. The speaker of the House of Representatives turned on water sprinklers on the lawn where protesters were assembled, and then played Barry Manilow and ‘Macarena’ on a 15-minute loop. But many of the protesters remained.

The French authorities took a more robust approach, banning the convoi de la liberté in Paris. On 11 February, the police deployed more than 7,000 officers to tollbooths and other key sites around the city, along with bulldozers and water cannon to break up potential blockades. By the following day, 337 people had been fined and several dozen arrested. But a cat-and-mouse game between protesters and police continues.

These protests have three features that make them particularly difficult to manage.

First, myriad grievances are uniting protesters. Clearly, repeated government-imposed Covid-19 restrictions have led to widespread exhaustion and exasperation. This was evident in Europe in late 2021, when the introduction of new lockdowns and restrictions because of the spread of the Omicron variant triggered immediate large-scale demonstrations in Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Croatia and Italy. But the trucker-inspired protests have snowballed quickly to include groups with a multitude of complaints and demands.

The protests in Canada were sparked by a new government mandate requiring unvaccinated truckers to quarantine after returning from the US. Within days, the truckers were joined by an assortment of political groups and were egged on by some opposition parties. Similarly, in New Zealand, what started as a protest against vaccine mandates rapidly expanded to include truckers, the fundamentalist Christian leader Brian Tamaki’s Freedoms and Rights Coalition, and an online conspiracy-theory channel, with banners highlighting a range of issues, including Covid-19, censorship and indigenous rights.

A second feature of the protests is the inspiration and support they receive from abroad. Paradoxically, nationalist anti-globalisers are encouraging movements in other countries. Already in 2021, right-wing US groups were fuelling anti-vaccine protests in Australia. And US politicians, including former president Donald Trump, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia show little restraint in urging on protesters elsewhere.

Funding for the protests is global, too. The crowdfunding platform GoFundMe transferred an initial C$1 million (US$787,000) to the Canadian protesters before it stopped payments and refunded donations following police reports of violence. GiveSendGo, a US Christian crowdfunding site, has reportedly raised more than US$8 million for the protesters, and insists that it will distribute the money despite a Canadian court order prohibiting it from doing so.

Trudeau has raised concerns about US-based callers flooding emergency phone lines in Ottawa, and about the presence of US citizens in the blockades. In New Zealand, where protesters are flying Canadian and Trump flags opposite the parliament, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the anti-vaccine-mandate demonstrations as an unprecedented ‘imported’ phenomenon.

A final complicating factor is that the protests’ lack of clear leadership or organisation leaves governments and police with no negotiating partners. The Teamsters Union, which represents 15,000 long-haul truck drivers in Canada, denounced the Ottawa blockade. And amid chaotic scenes in Wellington, Tamaki’s coalition reportedly left the protests when they saw white supremacists joining the ranks, but later returned.

Despite these obstacles, some conflict-management lessons are worth applying. For starters, civic leaders would do well to avoid defining the issues at stake in a maximalist way. Mark Carney, a former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, was arguably guilty of that when he wrote in a recent heartfelt commentary, ‘The goals of the leadership of the so-called freedom convoy were clear from the start: to remove from power the government that Canadians elected less than six months ago.’

The authorities should instead focus on the protesters’ narrower common goals, such as those concerning specific aspects of Covid-19 mandates. With that in mind, they should seek out the protesters who are championing those issues and pursue a dialogue with them.

Finally, amid calls to use the military, governments need to think both tactically and strategically about how to uphold the rule of law. Troops should not be used. Instead, officials should consult the playbook used by the United Kingdom to address violent protests in 2011: courts were kept open 24 hours a day so that the police could enforce every infraction in real time. Tactically, opportunistic protesters were dissuaded. Strategically, public support for the rule of law was strengthened.

Australia and New Zealand should help their island neighbours get into space

The benefits of space are boundless, but access to the domain is unequal. Wealthy countries can afford space programs and enjoy the advantages of investment in space technology, while low-income nations struggle to establish the ground infrastructure required to access those advantages.

Most Pacific island nations lack such wealth, and the governments of Australia and New Zealand need to do more to help them build long-term space capabilities.

Factors preventing South Pacific states from participating include lack of the expertise, resources and money needed to establish ground facilities to access space services or to build small satellites. The accelerating development of space capabilities has bolstered some smaller states’ engagement in the space sector, but it hasn’t greatly benefited those in the southwest Pacific.

There are approximately 3,372 satellites orbiting our planet but, with the exception of Australia and New Zealand, not one has been launched or operated by a Pacific island state.

Arguably, the Pacific islands’ main interest in space technology is to monitor extreme weather events and climate variations. Global warming caused by climate change is generating fluctuating weather patterns, rising sea levels and extreme weather events that are already severely affecting Australia’s neighbours. Pacific islands states are among the most vulnerable to climate change and face loss of land, infrastructure and exclusive economic zones. Low-lying nations fear they could be inundated as sea levels continue to rise.

Numerous space initiatives are underway to monitor climate instability in the region, such as the partnership between the UK Space Agency and CSIRO that aims to provide satellite data to Pacific island states to assist them with decision-making; the UN’s Asia–Pacific plan of action on space applications for sustainable development; and the UK government’s Common Sensing project.

But there are no projects devoted to building the autonomous space capabilities of any Pacific island nation. This constrains their ability to develop skills and expertise that would enable them to move from being the recipients of space technologies to participating in the rapidly growing space economy.

The OECD estimates that annual global commercial revenue from the space industry is around US$280–300 billion and the sector is predicted to be worth US$1.1 trillion in 2040.

For Australia, which has a small and relatively young space sector compared with the United States, Britain and France, the economic contribution of the space industry is still significant. In 2018–19, the sector accounted for 0.25% of GDP, generating around $4.8 billion and employing more than 10,000 people.

Considering our proximity to the Pacific island states, and our strategic interest in their security and economic stability, Australia and New Zealand are well situated to help build space capabilities in the region by offering education programs and helping to develop launch facilities.

The island nations lack the specific educational qualifications needed to establish large-scale space capabilities. In contrast, Australia has six tertiary degrees in space-related fields and in New Zealand there are two higher education courses. Institutions such as the International Space University periodically administer courses and training in Australia for those in the southern hemisphere. Through scholarships and transnational education programs, space-specific courses can build the expertise of Pacific island students and policymakers on campus and online.

Tertiary education is just one way to expand this knowledge. Professional development placements with the Australian Space Agency and New Zealand Space Agency would create pathways for Pacific representatives to develop space-oriented expertise. Cybersecurity, engineering, legal, science and policy degrees and experience are essential to forming space policy and creating space-based technologies. Island states’ education institutions are already skilling individuals in these areas, and Australia and New Zealand can help with on-the-job training.

Although small island nations can clearly benefit from access to space, they need to set the parameters of how they will apply these capabilities within their borders. Australia’s engagement with the Pacific islands has been viewed by some as being driven by one-sided national-security concerns with key objectives decided by policymakers in Canberra.

Australia’s offer of assistance should be about supporting these states to realise their regional and national priorities, not just preventing major-power rivals such as China from advancing their influence in the region.

For Australia and New Zealand, helping Pacific islands to develop and maintain launch sites could further foster regional cooperation. Kiribati and Nauru are geographically optimal locations to deploy satellites into orbit because they’re very close to the equator. Having a communal launch site would further promote Pacific regionalism by securing multilateral agreements and encouraging joint space operations. If nations don’t want to launch from within their territories, Australia and New Zealand could offer to launch satellites for them.

Australia and New Zealand have the knowledge, skills and industries to help develop our island neighbours’ long-term autonomy and capacity in space. Time is finite, however, and collaboration is needed now, not later.

Australia and New Zealand should coordinate space launch capabilities

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 (12o 27’ South), 1,292 km/h at the Mahia Peninsula (39o 26’ South) or 1,319 km/h at NASA’s Wallops Island in Virginia (37o 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.

New Zealand’s re-elected Labour government shows it has less appetite for geopolitics

The big political questions of 2020 for New Zealand were could Jacinda Ardern earn a second three-year term in Wellington and could Donald Trump become a two-term president in Washington?

While definitive answers have arrived in both cases, New Zealand’s geopolitical poser has kept growing: how to deal with the effects of China’s rise, including in the South Pacific, New Zealand’s primary area of strategic interest.

And then there’s the issue that came to dominate all of our lives in 2020. For a while at least, the Covid-19 pandemic has become an independent variable. Elections became verdicts on how well incumbents dealt with the virus. Having led New Zealand into an internationally enviable position in containing the spread of Covid-19, Ardern’s already strong position became unassailable.

But the coalition government led by New Zealand’s Labour Party has changed. With its populist, anti-immigrant stance made redundant by the virus, New Zealand First is gone, having lost all of its seats in parliament. This meant goodbye to Winston Peters, the venerable foreign minister in a cabinet of younger colleagues.

As an experienced Asia hand with an eye for shifting geopolitical currents, Peters was sceptical about China’s increasing regional role, especially in the South Pacific. In a series of speeches, he went out of his way to attract America’s interest in New Zealand’s close neighbourhood.

Peters’s New Zealand First colleague Ron Mark took advantage of growing concerns about Beijing’s strategy, including in the South China Sea, to argue for urgent replacements for ageing military equipment. The result was almost unprecedented in the recent history of New Zealand defence capability decision-making. As defence minister, Mark secured replacements for the ageing P-3 Orion maritime surveillance aircraft—the P-8 Poseidons, which will have significant antisubmarine-warfare capacities.

Before leaving office, he did the same for the overworked C-130H Hercules transport aircraft, which will be succeeded by C-130Js. Both decisions reinforce New Zealand’s interoperability with traditional partners, including Australia and the United States.

The Greens, the other party holding ministerial portfolios in the first Ardern government, didn’t stand in the way of these new defence commitments. They now are Labour’s only partner in government, with two ministerial portfolios. And once the virus no longer dominates the scene, progressive foreign policy causes, including climate change, human rights and development issues in the South Pacific, may attract an increased share of the second Ardern government’s attention.

Geopolitical ruminations will have less bandwidth: New Zealand officials may find less cabinet enthusiasm for this sort of thinking, and may question whether a National Party government some time down the line would be that way inclined.

With the government having run up a large debt trying to keep kiwis in jobs and New Zealand companies afloat during the strict Covid-19 lockdown, it’s difficult to see defence and foreign affairs having a prime call on funding.

The pools of money that Peters and Mark extracted for their portfolios may get smaller now that they’re gone. Their lesser-known successors in these roles, Nanaia Mahuta and Peeni Henare, are not among Labour’s most senior politicians, whose main focus will be domestic challenges.

Yet the external policy demands facing New Zealand haven’t vanished. A transnational pandemic ought to be custom-made to show international machinery at its finest. But regional cooperation, at least of an inclusive and integrative sort, has not shone.

Where have the ASEAN Regional Forum and the East Asia Summit been when they have been needed? How much has APEC, which New Zealand chairs in 2021, made a difference?

New Zealand has been seeking out what might be called coalitions of the trusted—fellow polities and economies among whom supply chains can be salvaged and travel slowly bought back to life.  Opening up has been a slow process even among closest and most trusted partners, as the on-again, off-again idea of a travel bubble between New Zealand and Australia has demonstrated.

Wellington’s advantages of having a greater degree of autonomy from Washington in comparison to loyal ally Australia were magnified in the Trump era. Which brings us back to two elections and the China question.

President Joe Biden’s arrival in office is cause for many major sighs of relief from the second Ardern government. The world’s most important democracy is now in more responsible hands.

Biden’s White House will have a more positive outlook on some of the things that matter to New Zealand—multilateral diplomacy, climate change cooperation that recognises the problem as a clear and present danger, and promotion of a rules-based order at home as well as offshore.

Although Biden has to cope with the realities of US protectionist sentiments and is unlikely to bring the US into the trans-Pacific trade pact, his administration will be more inclined to see trade agreements as things that can work for more than one party. That’s crucial for New Zealand and many of its partners in Asia.

American policy will seem more reasonable and articulate. That alone will change America’s role in the region.

On China, Biden and the Democrats share many of the Republicans’ concerns, which are in fact concerns of the Washington policy establishment.

The US will be less prone to impose tariffs on its allies and partners, but it will expect more from them in joining the pressure on China. Those expectations will also be clear and consistent. That means more certainty, but it also means more geopolitical competition to which New Zealand and many in ASEAN are allergic.

While the Ardern government had earlier declined a 5G telecommunications upgrade bid from a local company which included Huawei, it’s unlikely that New Zealand will want to do without the economic benefits of a strong commercial relationship with China. That’s even more so when it is trying to reboot its economy from the Covid era, which has hit tourism and international student revenues. New Zealand’s signing of an upgraded free-trade agreement with China this week is evidence of that view.

Soon, though, the Biden administration will be asking New Zealand and others what more they can do for the team in the South Pacific, and Southeast Asia too. Working out what to do with these expectations will take adroit diplomacy from the Ardern government. But it will be far better to have the challenge of navigating Asia’s shifting currents, which continue to move in China’s favour, without the awfulness of Covid-19.

New Zealand and US elections mean Australia is looking after ANZUS Pacific interests

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.

Pilot project shows the way for coordinated police procurement across jurisdictions

To most people, police are police, and it seems a no-brainer for them to save time, money and effort by collaborating and cooperating across jurisdictions. Police organisations all operate in the same way, don’t they? While it would be nice to think so, the nature of federation in Australia means that each police organisation has its own contractual arrangements, legislation and procurement processes, which can present challenges to coordination.

In her chapter on policing in ASPI’s After Covid-19: Australia and the world rebuild, Leanne Close identified the impediments to common procurement across Australian and New Zealand policing agencies, noting that they had not had much success.

While cross-border coordination in this area is indeed challenging and exacerbated by jurisdictional differences, there have been some noteworthy successes. The recent collaborative procurement project for ammunition facilitated by the Australia New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency (ANZPAA) is a good example of what can be achieved.

The Australian and New Zealand policing communities have long recognised the benefits of working collaboratively and cooperatively. Sharing and adapting innovative solutions between states, territories and New Zealand is now common practice, and forms an integral part of police work.

ANZPAA was established in 2007 to facilitate information-sharing and promote collaboration and cooperation across policing in Australia and New Zealand. The agency’s current work is focused on enhancing practice by providing well-researched advice, identifying resource efficiencies and addressing risk through cost-effective and smarter outcomes, as detailed in the recently released ANZPAA strategy 2020–25.

Supporting collaborative procurement has been part of ANZPAA’s remit almost since its establishment. In 2013, police commissioners identified ammunition purchases as one of several priority areas for potential collaboration. Australian and New Zealand police have historically bought their ammunition from the United States, and in the past, there have been problems with supply.

In the mid-2000s, the introduction of tighter gun-control regulations in the US in response to a number of shootings sparked fears that manufacturers and suppliers wouldn’t be able to provide ammunition to the domestic market. This fed into people’s fears about a potential rise in crime and led to panic buying and stockpiling of ammunition by local law enforcement agencies and the military.

Ammunition was being bought faster than it could be produced, which had a flow-on effect in the world market. Australian and New Zealand police found themselves competing for the same diminishing supply of ammunition.

In response, the police forces in both countries worked together to develop common specifications for operational, training and tactical ammunition so that they could combine their procurement, boost their purchasing power and encourage offshore suppliers to guarantee future policing needs. That process revealed the need for a coordinated effort to balance reducing costs to police with adherence to government policies designed for local contexts.

The end result was a pilot collaborative procurement project. The project enabled the participating organisations to secure better prices through volume discounts and to attract new sources of supply both domestically and internationally.

The insights generated during this project should serve as a foundation for future cross-jurisdictional procurement.

Collaborative procurement may not be feasible in all areas due to differing government contractual arrangements and legislative contexts. But value can still be achieved by collaborating on common specifications for materiel, to align products across policing.

The pilot project has demonstrated that police can, and do, work together across jurisdictions and borders to overcome some of the more complex challenges inherent in a federated system. It also proves that wholesale, systemic change is not always required to increase cooperation between states, territories and countries.

While there’s no doubt that greater legislative and policy alignment between jurisdictions would be beneficial, police organisations have shown that engagement and collaboration can produce tangible and valuable results.

Ardern and Biden victories would be a shot in the arm for the centre-left

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.

South Pacific thought bubbles: travel and TV

The thought bubble of a travel bubble for Australia and New Zealand is transforming from bubble into action.

The official title is ‘a trans-Tasman Covid-safe travel zone’ but it’s gotta be the ‘travel bubble’.

Bubbles float and are fun (think balloons and champagne). For politicos and wonks, thought bubbles are flights of imagination which catch the breeze. If they don’t fly, they pop. But good bubbles become policy.

The Oz–NZ working group on the bubble is to report this week. Australia and New Zealand are on track to open their borders to each other this month.

Traditional Kangaroo–Kiwi cousinly congress can resume. Then the cousins can turn to helping the rest of the South Pacific family, as foreshadowed by prime ministers Jacinda Ardern and Scott Morrison in launching work on the zone on 5 May:

Our relationship is one of family—and our unique travel arrangement means we have a head-start for when it is time to get trans-Tasman travel flowing again.

Once we have established effective travel arrangements across the Tasman, we will also explore opportunities to expand the concept to members of our broader Pacific family, enabling travel between Australia, New Zealand and Pacific island countries. We will work with interested Pacific countries on parameters and arrangements to manage the risks.

The travel zone touches the three themes Morrison put to the extraordinary G20 leaders’ summit in March: health response, economic response and ‘supporting the Pacific and Timor-Leste’.

The first two points, you’d have expected from any Oz PM. Having the islands as the third major point was distinctly Morrison: ‘I explained to G20 leaders that our Pacific island family must be a focus of international support. There has never been a more important time for Australia’s Pacific step-up as we all face these massive challenges.’

From Papua New Guinea to the Cook Islands, the Pacific family is eager to join to create a South Pacific bubble. Fiji is at the head of the queue and Australia promises to act ‘very quickly’ to include it. Tourism makes up about 40% of Fiji’s GDP and 65% of its tourists arrive from Australia and New Zealand.

Bringing the islands inside the bubble can restart the flow of seasonal workers heading to Australia and New Zealand. Expanding the travel zone will speed the journey along what the islands call the Pacific Humanitarian Pathway on COVID-19.

Advantages of geography and community mean Oceania can reopen borders and economies, as ASPI’s Michael Shoebridge argues: ‘Australia and New Zealand have the capacity to expand our Covid-safe protective bubble to the smaller Pacific states. We have a “Covid management dividend” available in the now excess capacity in our healthcare systems, and the South Pacific is where we should invest it.’

The region can aim for a clean bubble, linking countries that have controlled infections and share how they test, trace and isolate. The basis of trust and cooperation already exists—as does the habit of looking to Australia and New Zealand for money and system-muscle in confronting crisis.

Even so, as The Economist notes, the public health requirements for creating a travel bubble are ‘vexing’; a trade analogy is that creating a regional travel zone resembles ‘an extreme version of non-tariff negotiations’.

The trade parallel brings to mind the torturous and tortuous eight-year trek to create the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations Plus. The Oz–Kiwi refusal to offer much on labour mobility in the PACER negotiations meant Fiji and Papua New Guinea refused to sign.

As the travel bubble is all about mobility, it blows aside troublesome PACER ghosts. And rather than the tortuous timetable of a trade pact, the bubble will be built at pandemic pace.

Lots of other thought bubbles froth in the suds of the Kangaroo step-up and Kiwi reset. A Morrison bubble hit the policy start line last week: spending $17.1 million over three years to give commercial TV shows to the islands.

Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Fiji will be the first to see programs via the PacificAus TV initiative, to be joined soon by Vanuatu, Kiribati, Tuvalu and Nauru.

While sporting rights are still being negotiated, the islands will get the venerable soap opera Neighbours and the cooking combat of MasterChef Australia. A natural, joyful choice is the singing program The Voice, disproving my joke line that Australia is the one member of the Pacific family that can’t sing.

No doubt the islands will be intrigued by Border Security: Australia’s Front Line on immigration, customs and quarantine checks at our international airports (‘Welcome to Australia—now the search of your luggage …’).

A well-intentioned TV bubble is not the best we could do, as shown by regional responses. Fiji felt ‘lukewarm’ and one Vanuatu reaction was that it was a ‘silly’ idea, while PNG would like some of the cash to make local content.

Australia’s Neighbours-driven effort contrasts in philosophy and approach with New Zealand’s new Pasifika TV service to the region. Pasifika seeks to fill the hole left by Australia’s disgraceful trashing of its media voice in the islands.

Our shuffle away from the news and journalism contest in the Asia–Pacific is lousy policy and appalling judgement, hugely damaging to Australian foreign policy. An 80-year tradition of Oz broadcasting to the South Pacific is tattered and threadbare. Pressures on South Pacific journalism haven’t gone away, but Australia has gone absent.

Spending $17.1 million to supply Australian commercial TV to the South Pacific is a facile and clumsy initiative that doesn’t amount to strategy. The positive point is that it’s a sign Canberra understands Australia needs to get back into the media game in its region. A strange first step is at least a step.

For a bigger, better thought bubble on Oz broadcasting in the South Pacific, turn to the Australia Asia Pacific Media Initiative (of which I’m a member).

The short version of AAPMI’s response to Neighbours diplomacy is that Australia has to talk ‘with’ not ‘to’ our region: ‘Watching rich white people renovate their homes will not “deepen the connection” with the Pacific or overcome perceptions that Australia can be paternalistic. Nor will providing Border Security in a region in which visa access is a sore point.’

Is New Zealand really a WPS champion?

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.