Tag Archive for: New Zealand

New Zealand’s dangerous strategic apathy in an uncertain age

When New Zealanders vote this September, they should consider closing a self-inflicted wound—decades of disarmament and dangerous strategic apathy.

In 1949, a distinguished New Zealand soldier, Major General Sir Howard Kippenberger, warned:

It may be a good thing to continue doing nothing as at present and trust in the mercy of God to a people too selfish and lazy to help themselves. We can say, truly, that New Zealand cannot alone defend herself…so, perhaps, we had better leave it to others, or deny that there is any danger and get on with our amusements and the rapid erosion of our land. Or we can pull ourselves together and act as a grown up Nation.

Those words should still sting.

To be fair, New Zealanders do hedge against some risks. Living on the Ring of Fire, they’ve made earthquake insurance compulsory, and 95% of residential properties are now covered (compared with 11% in California).

Yet against human-triggered strategic risk, New Zealand stands nearly naked. Setting aside reliance on the ‘rules-based international order’, which couldn’t protect Georgia or Ukraine, there are two ways to defend one’s home soil—directly with organic assets, or indirectly through treaties with strong allies. New Zealand has neither.

In Pollyanna-ish scenarios, such a faith-based theory of national defence has it that no matter what’s happening in the world, everything will be okay. That may be fine for Fiji or Tahiti, but not for New Zealand—which once, with its allies, proudly received Japan’s surrender. Blame this strategic apathy on historical amnesia.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the terrorist attacks at Christchurch mosques as an ‘extraordinary and unprecedented act of violence’ on ‘one of New Zealand’s darkest days’. But blood has been shed in New Zealand before. Several thousand were killed in the mid-19th century wars in which the Maori people lost much of their land. According to one historian, this was ‘among the most disgraceful episodes in British imperial history for [the wars] sprang from stark, naked, unabashed greed’.

A former secretary of New Zealand’s defence ministry, Gerald Hensley, has written that, in February 1942, facing a possible Japanese invasion, New Zealand’s prime minister, Peter Fraser, pleaded with Washington for arms. New Zealand, he pointed out, was virtually unarmed: ‘This, we feel, is not our fault.’ As Hensley observed, though, ‘It is hard to see who else’s it was; it is a mark of independent countries to take care of their own security.’

New Zealand won’t see a Chinese fleet tomorrow, but building defence capability takes time. ‘Defence is every country’s insurance policy’, Hensley noted in 1992, ‘covering thirty years against all risks’.

The 19th-century New Zealand wars were about resource extraction and population expansion, and the next could be similarly driven. China lacks arable land, drinking water and living space. New Zealand could look good for resettlement in three decades, perhaps even ‘100% there for the taking’.

If one accepts historian Hugh White’s thesis that China’s rise and America’s wane means it’s time to question the strength and viability of the US–Australia alliance, then New Zealand should question its security guarantees from Australia—particularly considering the difficulty of defending a continent with scarce resources.

Like self-aware Kiwis, most New Zealanders are resigned to their relative defencelessness. A 2007 poll found that 84% believed New Zealand would be incapable of defending itself if attacked and, of those, 51% were unwilling to rectify that by paying more taxes.

In 2001, Prime Minister Helen Clark famously referred to New Zealand’s ‘incredibly benign’ strategic environment, and in 2008 Defence Minister Phil Goff said no one was ‘remotely interested’ in invading New Zealand.

While troop quality and capability have improved, defence spending has dropped by nearly two-thirds in real terms over four decades—from around 3% of GDP in 1980 to 1.16% in 2018. Defence force personnel numbers fell from 12,400 in 1985 to 9,000 in 2017. The decision to scrap air combat capability in 2001 appears particularly reckless.

New Zealand also lacks an ally strong enough to support its defence. The 1951 ANZUS treaty pledged the parties to ‘consult’ when a threat emerged, but after a dispute over visits by US nuclear-powered warships in 1984, the NZ–US leg was broken. (The treaty remains in force between the US and Australia, and New Zealand and Australia.) The prime minister at the time, David Lange, pledged a ‘more independent’ and ‘self-reliant’ defence posture.

What has instead emerged is a form of what Hugh White calls ‘unarmed neutrality’. White says the current environment poses the greatest strategic challenge to the region since European settlement, yet in his latest book, How to defend Australia, he includes only two vanishingly brief mentions of New Zealand. (And when your closest ally considers your defence contribution an afterthought, that speaks volumes.)

Governments of both major parties have essentially emptied the toolbox with which New Zealand’s defence force could fend off an enemy. But real risks are gathering and big moats no longer stop threats. The Doomsday Clock is closer to Armageddon than ever before. China’s emergence as a global power has unsteadied the balance of international relations.

Coercion doesn’t require bombs. After Canterbury University professor Anne-Marie Brady published her ‘Magic weapons’ paper about the extent of Chinese political influence, she says she has been subject to continual harassment by the Chinese government.

New Zealanders have a deep sense of complacency about their security and feel that they’re very far away from the problems that we are seeing unfold in other parts of the world—that’s just not true anymore … Here is an actual challenge to our sovereignty—and a New Zealand family who have had their safety threatened—and our government is not defending them.

The response from New Zealand’s defence policymakers should be guided by historian Ian MacGibbon’s three primary assumptions: New Zealand could ‘only be threatened physically by a major power’; the country couldn’t ‘be defended with the New Zealand resources available’; and defence was ‘more than a matter merely of physical protection, so dependent was [New Zealand] upon external trade’. This meant that New Zealand ‘depended upon allies sufficiently powerful and motivated’ to meet its ‘strategic requirements’.

New Zealand is too small to go it alone. It’s time to join an alliance—ANZUS 2.0?

The destiny and duty of the Pacific pivot

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.

In a city that’s suffered enough, Christchurch is traumatised afresh

The impression of New Zealand from afar—and while you’re there—is of a beautiful country with friendly people and good food safely tucked away behind Australia and far from the traumas afflicting much of the world.

But in Christchurch, nothing feels safe or far away anymore.

As word of the terrorist attack swept across the city last Friday, hastened by the urgent sirens of ambulances and police cars and breaking news reports, kids phoned frantic parents on their mobile phones to tell them they were OK but scared and ask, ‘What’s happening, Mum?’

Then they saw it for themselves, live-streamed in all its gruesome cruelty. The smart phones—too smart—brought first the messages, received with relief, that ‘I’m OK’ and then the in-your-face horror of it all. Something kids should never see, scared and helpless people shot dead before their eyes.

On 4 September 2010, a massive earthquake struck the city and wrecked much of the central business district.

The quake struck at 4.35 am when few were out and about and the locals saw it as near miraculous that no one in Christchurch died, a lucky city in God’s own country.

There was money aplenty in a rich Canterbury farming region and they set about planning to rebuild an elegant city. Some people left but most stayed.

Then, on 22 February 2011, another severe quake hammered the city, demolishing buildings weakened by the first. This one struck at lunchtime, on a working day when streets were packed.

This time 185 people died and several thousand were injured. Most of the buildings in the CBD were destroyed or rendered so unsafe they had to be demolished later.

More people left, but again most stayed. The rebuild plans were extended. So much of the central city was cleared that resilience, optimism and ambition gathered momentum towards a vision of a new Christchurch rising as the rubble was cleared, of one of the world’s great clean, green, user-friendly cities.

As most of a decade passed and fear and residual trauma gradually faded with the receding aftershocks, temporary memorials gave way to permanent ones and optimism and normality returned.

Earlier on Friday, kids skipped school to stage a ‘strike’ in central Christchurch to demand that more be done to deal with climate change. They were old enough to remember the twin earthquakes but strong enough to deal with the memories.

Their protest done, they headed off with a slightly righteous, cheerfully defiant and festive air for coffee shops and schools and home. Until the warnings came, bus drivers were urged in radio calls to avoid locked-down districts, and the children fled to the safety of the nearest friends’ houses.

To reassure frantic parents—and then to be traumatised afresh by the live-streamed neo-Nazi killing spree.

‘Those poor kids’, said a tearful mother. ‘Christchurch doesn’t deserve this.’

Australian bananas: the view from New Zealand

If Australia weren’t so important to New Zealand, New Zealanders could relish the farce masquerading as politics in Canberra.

Australians used to denigrate New Zealand’s post-1993 proportional voting system. But Helen Clark got nine years in office, John (now Sir John) Key had eight years before handing over to Bill (now Sir William) English for a ninth year, and Jacinda Ardern is solidly supported in her party and by her two coalition partners, with a credible prospect of six years or more.

Now, some joke, to understand Canberra’s whirling turnstile of prime ministers, we must remember that Australia grows bananas—abundantly.

In the early 1980s, Australian deputy prime minister Doug Anthony worried that New Zealand’s dicky economy might make it an unstable neighbour—hence, he told me, the need for the closer economic relationship free trade agreement (CER).

Turn that around. Is Australia now stable enough to be a reliable partner in the region and build CER into a genuine single economic market?

Ardern talked on Friday of ‘close ties in all areas of our relationship, including on trade, economic, defence and security matters’. ‘[W]e cooperate closely in our region and on the international stage.’

She said she was ‘looking forward to working with [Prime Minister Scott] Morrison to advance that’.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters noted that Morrison was involved in New Zealand tourism administration when the ‘high-profile’ ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ campaign slogan was coined.

Morrison headed the NZ Office of Tourism and Sport from 1998 to 2000. The Audit Office criticised a report of his to Tourism Minister Murray McCully on the separate Tourism Board. McCully resigned after the Audit Office criticised his dealings with the board.

Peters depicted Morrison as ‘familiar with the New Zealand political psyche, the composition of New Zealand, how [we] think and work’.

He didn’t mention Morrison’s hard line as immigration minister foreshadowing Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s detention and deportation of convicted prisoners born in New Zealand, some of whom had lived in Australia since they were children and were criminalised there.

Add the inhumane treatment of refugees on Manus Island and Nauru and refusal to take up New Zealand’s offer to resettle some of them.

The Morrison–Dutton party could be called the Illiberals. In July, Justice Minister Andrew Little called Dutton’s policy ‘venal’ and didn’t retract the comment when Dutton hit back. Earlier that month, Peters—as acting prime minister while Ardern was on maternity leave—said Australia had breached the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in detaining a 17-year-old New Zealander.

Still, Ardern on Friday gave Malcolm Turnbull credit for the ‘Pathway to Citizenship, which has allowed many New Zealanders to regularise their status in Australia’—around 600,000 people born in New Zealand live in Australia—and thus claim some services they have paid taxes towards but are denied while not citizens.

And the turmoil does not—at least not yet—undermine cooperation in security and development in the South Pacific. New Zealand has begun a ‘reset’ of its engagement with the island nations, recognising its growing Pacific ethnic minority, the important marine food and other resources in the sparsely populated region, and China’s growing presence, including with large loans.

New Zealand also values the positive aspects of Australia’s engagement in East Asia, including the expected announcement of a free trade deal with Indonesia.

But there are differences. One is between New Zealand’s ‘independent foreign policy’ and Australia’s tight US military alliance and more assertive stance on China’s activities in East and Southeast Asia and influence in Australia’s universities and its politics.

Another difference is on climate change. Morrison is a coal champion. Ardern backs the Paris accord.

And New Zealand businesses find progress frustratingly slow on removing obstacles to the single economic market. Australia is the biggest foreign market for manufactures and a stepping stone to bigger markets.

Insiders say Australia moves on a matter needing joint action such as CER only when it’s high on Canberra’s domestic action list.

And why not? Australia is the bigger sibling in this unequal ‘close relationship’. Bigger siblings are often dismissive—sometimes with justification, as over New Zealand’s paltry defence contribution (now being edged upward).

This dismissal is usually veiled behind platitudes. But sometimes the veil slips. Julie Bishop declared during New Zealand’s 2017 election campaign that she couldn’t work with a Labour government. Interference in another country’s election offends diplomatic propriety—Bishop was foreign minister. Turnbull didn’t correct her.

That’s life. More worrying to Wellington is instability in Canberra, because stable politics there are critical to a stable relationship, and even a switch to Labor wouldn’t assure that, given its travails and Bill Shorten’s unfamiliarity with the Tasman sibling.

For now, to New Zealanders Canberra truth looks stranger than fiction—as Politik editor Richard Harman unintentionally encapsulated in a typo calling the deeply factionalised Liberals ‘fictionalised’.

Innovative Kiwis prepare next satellite launch

This is the 16th in our series ‘Australia in Space’ leading up to ASPI’s Building Australia’s Strategy for Space conference.

As recently as last Thursday, a post on The Strategist claimed, ‘Like Australia, no country in Southeast Asia currently has a launch industry despite strong satellite development.’ I think the author forgot to consider New Zealand, which is home to the world’s only private orbital launch facility—Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 on the Mahia Peninsula.

The site offers the widest range of orbital inclinations of any launch site on the globe. Over the past few months, the company has successfully launched four small satellites in low-earth orbit as part of a demanding test program in the lead-up to full commercial operation. When a 14-day launch window opens from 23 June to 6 July, Rocket Lab plans to send five satellites into orbit, from four different organisations, in one US$5.7million mission. This ‘rideshare’ concept is key to the company’s launch economics.

Rocket Lab’s founder and CEO, New Zealander Peter Beck, says:

Rocket Lab’s responsive space model is crucial to support the exponential growth of the small satellite market.

Small satellites are playing an increasingly important role in providing crucial services that benefit millions of people on earth. Frequent access to orbit is the key to unlocking the potential for these satellites, and Rocket Lab is the only small launch provider currently enabling this access.

It’s his vision, drive, and communications and engineering skills that have brought his organisation to this stage.

Now 41, Beck was born in Invercargill and grew up in an engineering family. While at high school, he pulled an old Mini apart and rebuilt it part by part, souping it up with a turbocharger. A tool-making apprenticeship at 18 gave him access to materials and advanced machinery that he could use after hours, working out, and then constructing, his rocket designs.

Beck set up Rocket Lab in Auckland in June 2006, at around the same time as he met investor Sir Stephen Tindall of venture capital firm K1W1 Ltd. Beck’s track record as a skilled engineer and his ability as a communicator of ideas led to the formation of Rocket Lab USA with additional backing from US companies Bessemer Venture Partners, Data Collective, Kholsa Ventures, Lockheed Martin and Promus Ventures. The New Zealand company is now the US company’s wholly owned subsidiary.

Rocket Lab’s two-stage launch vehicle, Electron, makes use of advanced carbon composite materials for a strong and lightweight flight structure. Through an extensive research program, Rocket Lab has developed carbon composite tanks that are compatible with liquid oxygen, providing impressive weight savings.

The Electron rocket’s first stage is powered by nine 3D-printed Rutherford engines. They’re the first oxygen/kerosene engines to use 3D printing for all primary components, taking 24 hours per engine. Rutherford’s unique high-performance electric propellant pumps reduce mass and replace hardware with software.

Electron’s second stage is powered by a variant of the Rutherford engine, providing improved performance in vacuum conditions.

An optional apogee (farthest point from earth) kick stage, powered by Rocket Lab’s 3D-printed liquid propellant Curie engine, can execute multiple burns to place numerous payloads totalling up to 130 kilograms per launch into different circularised orbits. It opens up significantly more orbital options, particularly for rideshare customers that have traditionally been limited to the primary payload’s designated orbit.

Meanwhile, Alan Gilmour, CEO and founder of Gilmour Space Corporation in Singapore and now Gilmour Space Technology in Queensland, has announced plans to launch a suborbital rocket in the first quarter of 2019. It will have a maximum payload of 130 kilograms up to an altitude of 150 kilometres. The estimated payload price is US$9,000 per kilogram.

The company intends to launch its Eris rocket into low-earth orbit during 2020, with a maximum payload of 400 kilograms and estimated price of US$25,000 to $38,000 per kilogram, depending on contracted payload mass. Upwards of US$10 million for a full payload launch is a low figure that’s previously unheard of in the satellite launch business.

Gilmour says:

With Gilmour Space’s technology and low-cost launch capabilities, small satellite launches could easily be a ‘low-hanging fruit’ for Australia. Our significant progress puts us as one of the front-runners in today’s global small launch market, and we look forward to working with commercial, civil and defence partners to build a stronger and more vibrant domestic space industry in Australia and Singapore.

These two space initiatives, one on either side of the Ditch, confirm possibilities for a vibrant small satellite space industry in Australasia. I expect that ASPI’s space conference will reach the same conclusion.

Australia as a full ASEAN Community partner

Ahead of the ASEAN–Australia summit in Sydney next month, ASPI today publishes my report Australia as an ASEAN Community partner. The report discusses how and why Australia should join the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

We should aim for a form of ASEAN membership/partnership by 2024, the 50th anniversary of Australia becoming the first ASEAN dialogue nation. New Zealand should and would join any Australian effort to join ASEAN.

The ASEAN–Australia summit is the launch point for a discussion of what much closer cooperation could mean for the future of the ASEAN Community.

Alternative routes to membership could be used:

  • Half-in status by 2024, with Australia and New Zealand becoming ASEAN observers. This embraces the existing ASEAN system.

Or, what I’ve come to see as the better course:

  • The creation of a new form of ASEAN membership—embracing Australia and New Zealand as ASEAN Community partners. This avoids the geographical veto (for not being part of Southeast Asia) while acknowledging the value that Australia and New Zealand offer. As ASEAN Community partners, Australia and New Zealand would have full ASEAN rights and obligations.

Australia won’t have to give up deeply held beliefs about democracy and human rights to enter ASEAN. We can heartily embrace the values formally expressed in the ASEAN Community. On the march to community, ASEAN is seeking to remake its regionalism, and proclaimed norms are shifting. An Australia inside the ASEAN Community would help fellow members fulfil the Community’s foundation documents, especially the ‘ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Blueprint 2025’, which commits to an ASEAN that will ‘promote human and social development, respect for fundamental freedoms, gender equality, the promotion and protection of human rights and the promotion of social justice’.

There’s a big gap between the democratic promise of the Community’s aspiration and the current political reality in many ASEAN states. That democratic deficit, though, calls for Australia to get closer and work harder, not to hold back.

As geostrategic and geoeconomic pressures build in Asia, ASEAN, as a middle-power grouping, needs the extra heft offered by Australia and New Zealand.

Australia’s ASEAN membership wouldn’t affect our alliance with the US any more than formal alliances with the US have restricted the ASEAN roles of Thailand or the Philippines. Certainly, the quasi-alliance Singapore has created with America hasn’t altered Singapore’s ASEAN commitment.

Australia’s alliance would be an asset, not a hindrance, just as the US alliance was no barrier to Australia signing ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation to join the East Asia Summit. Nor do alliance and ASEAN ‘insidership’ prevent Australia from building ever-closer partnerships with Japan, South Korea, China and India—ASEAN has the same aspirations.

The Sydney meeting next month will need to launch two huge discussions on the how and why of Australian membership. The ten-member association will take a mountain of convincing. And Australia will have to make changes in how it think about and understands itself. The shift in Australian attitudes would be as significant as those within ASEAN.

The ultimate arguments won’t be about the geography of Southeast Asia; they’ll be about attitudes, understandings and beliefs, and the way Asia is changing.

Australia’s dealings with the ten nations of ASEAN are set by geography, flavoured by history, worked by diplomacy and driven by trade. Throbbing always are the central concerns of power and strategy and defence. The geography and the diplomacy and the power mean that Southeast Asia must be a constant interest of Australia’s, even if the terms of Australia’s obsession change shape over time.

Those interests and obsessions inject many layers into Australia’s interactions with ASEAN as the regional institution. Not least in the continuous shape-shifting is the steady movement of weight, wealth and power in the ASEAN direction.

Joining ASEAN is the logical culmination of decades of Australian regional engagement. ASEAN membership would be an embrace of the region in the service of our deepest interests.

Membership of ASEAN and our alliance with the US and close partnerships across Asia are the endowment of a nation with its own continent, a country as much at home in the Indian Ocean as the Pacific Ocean. Australia must express its vast geography and multiple interests. In the 21st century, Australia must be all-in in Asia.

The all-in line asks for more than transactional competence and business-as-usual. Asia is shifting too fast: ASEAN membership is only one part of much that will confront Australia in our region(s). We will seek change, and be changed in turn.

ASEAN membership seems a long way off, but only if you ignore the distance Australia and ASEAN have travelled in the past 50 years. In the journey of convergence, the hardest miles are done and fading into memory. The greatest changes are things already changed—certainly in the makeup of Australia’s community and the way the nation thinks of itself.

Australia’s Asian future will be shaped by ASEAN’s success or failure. We have fundamental interests in ASEAN. If the ASEAN Community project is a success—in its social, political and strategic dimensions—Australia will want to be deeply involved in that vibrant community. Equally, Australia’s interests would be deeply compromised if ASEAN stalls or fails.

Australia knows the Southeast Asia it wants to live with. Joining ASEAN is the best way to give full expression to our future in Southeast Asia and in Asia.

New Zealand’s political surprise: the rise of Jacinda Ardern

Reformist, not revolutionary: that will be the tone of the three-way Labour-led governing arrangement announced late on 19 August.

Incoming prime minister Jacinda Ardern is 37. For many, she personifies a generational shift, which is also reflected in the makeup of the new parliament: more than a third of MPs are aged 45 or under and a fifth are under 40.

But, unlike the generational shift in 1984 to the baby boomers, who radically reformed New Zealand’s economic, racial and foreign policy and the state sector and fiscal management, Ardern’s government is set to make significant but not radical changes.

Her two governing partners are New Zealand First (a social and economic nationalist party that is evolving towards a more centrist position), which got 7.2% of the vote and will have four ministers in the 20-member cabinet in a formal coalition, and the Green party (6.3% of the vote), which will have three ministers outside the cabinet. The Greens have entered into a confidence-and-supply arrangement that ties them to supporting the government only on matters affecting the portfolios their ministers hold.

Ardern’s rise to the top was breathtaking. She was made deputy leader in March and then leader on 1 August when Labour was averaging 24% in the polls and fearing a wipeout in the 23 September election.

Her first press conference an hour after her elevation to party leader generated what the media called ‘Jacindamania’. The campaign opening attracted a huge crowd, many of whom had to be turned away but stayed for ‘selfies’ when she came out of the hall.

During the campaign she was mobbed by younger people, large numbers of whom enrolled to vote very late, pushing up Labour’s vote from 35.8% on election night to 36.9% in the final count.

But Ardern also has intelligence, strength of character and substance. She appealed to many older people who have long looked for an alternative to the market-led—neoliberal—policies that have dominated for 30 years.

Thus she is an unusual combination of two northern hemisphere phenomena: the Justin Trudeau/Emmanuel Macron fresh-face appeal, and the Bernie Sanders/Jeremy Corbyn promise of a restored version of the social democratic welfare state.

Labour’s support parties also want economic and social policy change.

The Greens made eradicating poverty one of their three policy focuses. New Zealand First leader Winston Peters split from the National party in 1993 to form his party in opposition to National’s neoliberal economics. Announcing his decision to side with Labour this time, he focused on the many people ‘who feel capitalism is not their friend but their foe’ and said, ‘They are not wrong … Capitalism must regain its … human face.’ That pushed him from the ‘modified status quo’ offered by National, which has ruled since 2008, to ‘change’ with Labour. Though National, with 44.4% of the vote, was the biggest party in the parliament, Peters pointed to the 50.4% who voted for the three parties in the new government as demonstrating that ‘people did want change’.

But what change?

Policy detail won’t be made public until early next week, Ardern said, and ministerial portfolios later in the week.

But she did say that her ‘100 days’ commitment of 10 September would be carried out. That includes a fee-free first year for students, a ‘healthy rental homes’ law, a ban on foreigners buying existing residential properties, more assistance for families and a poverty reduction target, a lift in the minimum wage from NZ$15.75 to NZ$16.50 (Peters had promised NZ$20) and pro-worker workplace legislation, a ministerial working party on mental health, and a ‘clean waterways summit’ to combat pollution by intensified farming.

Ardern intends to take early action to set up a tax working group to examine, among other things, taxes on wealth, capital gains and pollution, the outcome of which would be put to the 2020 election. The Greens back substantial change. New Zealand First is wary.

Ardern also committed to much stronger action on climate change: a net-zero carbon emissions goal and an independent climate commission, which has the support of all three parties. At her campaign opening, Ardern called climate change her generation’s ‘nuclear moment’, referring to the 1980s Labour government’s anti-nuclear legislation which got New Zealand kicked out of ANZUS.

Another ‘nuclear moment’ might arise out Labour’s stance on foreign purchases of houses, which it has insisted must be in the revised free trade agreement (TPP-11) but almost certainly can’t be. Will she sign up on 10 November when leaders must agree or not to TPP-11? Her two partners are anti–free trade.

Not signing up would send a negative signal to New Zealand’s current and prospective trade partners at a time when the World Trade Organization’s dispute settlement process is under strain. Ardern might therefore find a formula of words that allows her to sign up and then to join with National to get enabling legislation through.

Apart from that, foreign policy won’t change much. Labour and the Greens will want more emphasis on human rights, a slightly less tight relationship with the United States, and mandates from the United Nations for any military engagement offshore, which would mean no extension of the troop training in Iraq. New Zealand First will push for more military expenditure but that probably won’t get far with Labour, which in March refused to endorse the outgoing government’s planned purchases.

Ardern emphasised that she’ll go to Australia as soon as practicable. She has brushed off Julie Bishop’s statement that she would find it difficult to build trust with a Labour government because of the party’s inquiry about Barnaby Joyce’s New Zealand citizenship. Ardern doesn’t hold grudges and is, she said repeatedly during the campaign, ‘relentlessly positive’. Which worked a treat for her.

Australia’s long dread of France in the South Pacific (part 3)

Image courtesy of Pixabay user thomasstaub.

Australia’s dread of France in the South Pacific in the 20th century has slowly turned into a new desire—that France stay and play and help pay.

As the quintessential status quo power in the South Pacific, Australia today embraces France as a new bastion of the existing, preferred order. The shift in Canberra’s thinking acknowledges how France has adapted its ways and adopted regionalist colours. No longer is France the feared as the outsider prone to blowing up—both bombs and its own interests.

Australia can embrace France as a fellow status quo power in the South Pacific because this is the region where the colonial powers stayed. Unlike Asia and Africa, decolonisation around here didn’t always equate to departure. Only Britain did a full exit—handing off to Australia and New Zealand as it left.

New Zealand set the decolonising-without-departing model by moving first, showing smarts and creativity. Wellington used a different model for each of its four colonies: Samoa became the first island state to get independence in 1962, with free movement to NZ for 20 years; Cook Islands got self government in 1965 (NZ sharing control of defence and foreign affairs); Niue got self government in free association with NZ in 1974 and Tokelau is a dependent territory of NZ.

Less deftly, but with equal determination, the US managed the same trick: America Samoa is an unincorporated territory, and America has compacts of free association with Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau (although it took eight referendums to get Palau’s compact ratified).

Compared to the Kiwis, France has taken nearly 50 years to decipher the decolonising-without-departure memo; perhaps the longest of long games was the only option, given the baggage Paris carried.

France has already scored a major win in the stay-and-play stakes: full membership of the Pacific Islands Forum. Even before New Caledonia votes next year, the South Pacific has rewarded France for its long game. The Forum last year announced the decision to admit New Caledonia and French Polynesia as full members (they’ve had associate membership since 2006). Two French controlled territories have joined the peak Island club that was created as an expression of Pacific independence.

Nic Maclellan  rightly judges this ‘a momentous change’. The Forum which hammered out much of its identity and cohesion in fighting France, now accepts that ‘France seems to be in the Pacific to stay’. Theo Ell calls Forum membership the prize for ‘a marked change in French Pacific strategy, which was previously strongly individualistic and isolationist’. To normalise and reinforce its presence, Paul Soyez writes, France has embraced South Pacific regionalism, giving Noumea and Papeete enough autonomy to join in.

The Forum is the institutional expression of Australia and New Zealand as insiders, both ‘of’ and ‘in’ the South Pacific. For the Islands, the Forum is a mechanism to manage relations with Australia and New Zealand, as well as other big players outside the South Pacific. Equally, Australia and New Zealand use the Forum as a vehicle not just for regional consensus, but as a mechanism to create and police norms. The nature of the club reflects Island polities which are conservative, pro-Western, capitalist and Christian. That suits Australia wonderfully—as it will France.

France—through New Caledonia and French Polynesia—gets two seats at the top table for what will be a protracted argument about the nature of the Forum and the future of the Islands. More than a diplomatic debate, the wrangle goes to issues of power and identity, pitting Oz status quo interests against Fiji’s revisionism.

A key aim of Fiji revisionism is to strip Australia of its rights as an insider, to redefine regionalism so that Australia isn’t part of the South Pacific. In Fiji’s reimagining, Australia and New Zealand would be kicked out of the Forum. In that argument, Australia counts France a welcome reinforcement to the established order.

Proclaiming Australia’s ‘leadership role’ to deal with instability, natural disasters and climate change in the South Pacific, the 2016 Defence White Paper named a set of partners: New Zealand, France, the United States, and Japan. The hierarchy of lists always matters in White Papers and this is high rating for what France can deliver.

The White Paper’s discussion of France offered these three layers of history, international approach and new South Pacific partnership:

  • Australia and France ‘share a longstanding and close defence relationship’;
  • The two nations have a ‘shared commitment to addressing global security challenges such as terrorism and piracy’;
  • And in the neighbourhood: ‘We are strong partners in the Pacific where France maintains important capabilities and we also work closely together to support the security in our respective Southern Ocean territories.’

The White Paper was published in February, 2016, and two months later France won the $50 billion submarine prize; the Oz–French strategic partnership shape-shifted to a new universe. In an ironic reversal of history, the South Pacific can now provide relationship ballast for the inevitable arguments and agonies of the sub build.

The long submarine marriage until 2050 will be marked by passionate, expensive acrimony between two disparate partners. And no divorce is possible in a huge project, as diabolically expensive as it’s technically difficult. In the decades ahead, partnership in the South Pacific may be the natural and easier part of the Oz–French relationship. Change, indeed.

 

Aotearoa—the end of the Key era

Image courtesy of Flickr user International Council for Science.

Change—but no change. John Key’s sudden resignation as Prime Minister has changed the political game in New Zealand but his successor is unlikely to signal a significant shift in foreign and defence policy.

National party MPs will on 12 December confirm Bill English, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, as Key’s successor. He and Key built a close working relationship and a high level of agreement on economic policy. But the change of leader is almost certain to lower the National’s electoral appeal and improve the chances of a combination of Labour and the Greens winning the next general election due by November 2017.

A change of Government would lead to a less open trade policy—both parties opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a more wary attitude to committing troops apart from peace-making and peacekeeping missions, and a stronger assertion of New Zealand’s independent foreign policy.

Key has been a highly popular Prime Minister since 2008. His approval ratings had eased a bit in this (post-2014) three-year term, but they remained high. His combination of smart, optimistic blokeyness has been worth upwards of five percentage points to the party.

The National Party won 45%, 47%, and 47% of the vote in the three elections Key contested as leader. In November the party averaged 48% in opinion polls. Under New Zealand’s highly proportional mixed-member electoral system, Key was able to govern with the support of three small parties, which gave his administration consistency and stability.

There was a real possibility he and the Nationals would have won a fourth term in the election. That prospect is less assured now.

Key’s unforeshadowed resignation stunned his colleagues. He had raised a possible departure only with his immediate family and English back in September. Publicly Key said then he intended to fight the 2017 election. But on 5 December he said that he couldn’t look interviewers in the eye and say he would serve out a whole fourth term.

Two days before the Nationals had a heavy defeat in a by-election in an Auckland electorate vacated by former Labour leader Phil Goff when he became Auckland mayor in October. Key campaigned hard for the Nationals candidate, including on each of the three days leading up to Election Day.

Two ministers (so far) want to be Deputy Prime Minister to English: ninth-ranked Transport and Energy Minister, Simon Bridges, and fourth-ranked Climate Change, Social Housing and Associate Finance and Tourism Minister Paula Bennett.

English yesterday nominated Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce as his successor as Finance Minister. But some MPs were reported to want regeneration, a factor in Bridges’ bid to be deputy. English was leader from 2001–03 and took the party down to a disastrous 21%, a 100-year low for a major party. He lacks charisma.

Key relied heavily on Foreign Minister Murray McCully and has broadly maintained the three-decades long ‘independent foreign policy’—edging nearer the United States, including sending troops to train Iraqi soldiers. Balanced against that is New Zealand’s growing trade dependency on China and Beijing’s growing influence with South Pacific island countries. China and New Zealand have a joint aid project in the Cook Islands and there’s some defence cooperation.

English has shown little interest in foreign policy beyond trade. Whether he’ll keep McCully is unclear. And if the National Party wins a fourth term next year, it’s most unlikely to get enough votes to govern without including in its coalition Winston Peters, who heads the economic-nationalist New Zealand First party. Peters didn’t block the 2008 free trade deal with China while Foreign Minister in coalition with Labour but he has been increasingly critical of recent trade initiatives, including the TPP, high net immigration and foreign investment.

John Key wasn’t an executive prime minister. He devolved responsibility to ministers to whom he gave wide latitude and backed them—particularly English’s fiscal consolidation (confirmed on 8 December in a positive budget update projecting large surpluses through the next five years) and innovative ‘social investment’ reworking of social assistance, which has attracted the interest of the New South Wales and Australian federal governments. He backed performers and achievers in his cabinet and skilfully edged out ministers and MPs to make way for new blood.

In pursuing New Zealand’s foreign policy interests he established effective personal working relationships with a wide range of political leaders from Barack Obama to David Cameron—as well as successive Australian Prime Ministers.

New Zealand–Australia defence differences: what’s the big deal?

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Mark Thomson’s account of Australia–New Zealand defence differences prompts an impolite question: quite what is the point of these trans-Tasman comparisons?

The intellectual answer is that we want an accurate account of the world around us. Australia’s world (at least sometimes) includes New Zealand, whose world (almost always) includes Australia. It’s important to see how we compare, and then to compare our comparisons.

But there should be a policy angle too. Understanding where Australian and New Zealand security policies differ and converge may clarify the future of the trans-Tasman alliance.

Mark seems genuinely taken aback by the differences he has discovered. ‘Given the shared history and common heritage of the two countries’, he argues, ‘it’s not immediately clear why such substantial differences have arisen.’

But there are important dissimilarities in our histories. And as the late Denis McLean (a former New Zealand Secretary of Defence) observed in his fabulously entitled Prickly Pair, these differences are reflected in our separate and rival nationalisms.

Policy-makers on both sides of the Tasman need to be aware of these differences and still find ways to work together. To wit the refreshing insistence in the 2016 Australian Defence White Paper:

‘We recognise that New Zealand will make its own judgements on its national interests, and that New Zealand’s military capability choices may not always reflect Australia’s. Despite this, we will continue to coordinate our efforts with New Zealand in the South Pacific and in supporting our shared interests in a secure region and a rules-based global order.’

But this leads to a third possible reason for comparison making. If the policy gaps between Australia and New Zealand are bigger than they should be, comparisons may pinpoint the areas requiring change to bring us closer.

This almost suggests that collaboration demands equivalence. But Mark implies that New Zealand and Australia really should see the world more similarly than they apparently do:

‘…as maritime trading nations in the same part of the world, interests should be strongly aligned; both countries would be severely affected if trade was disrupted, and the security of each is ultimately contingent on strategic stability in Asia. What’s more, New Zealand can’t be secure if Australia isn’t.’

And now the really interesting question arises. If ways were found to bridge the gaps between Australia and New Zealand, who would do the adjusting? The consensus appears to be that the change should come from New Zealand. As I have argued on Incline, the Turnbull government’s White Paper welcomes New Zealand back to the upper strategic echelons. This point is conveyed in references to New Zealand and Australia as ANZUS allies, which, as Mark notes, didn’t make John Key’s day. Australia’s elevation of New Zealand’s profile is partly due to our cooperation in Iraq, but I expect also because of New Zealand’s accelerating partnership with the United States and willingness to speak out Asia’s maritime tensions including in the South China Sea.

I’ve not found a parallel logic in New Zealand’s briefer and less prescriptive White Paper (whose arrival occasioned my earlier exchange in these pages with Peter Jennings). The Key government doesn’t say very much about what it expects from Australia except perhaps that it will remain sitting about where it is. ‘Through its size, location and strategic reach, Australia contributes significantly to New Zealand’s security’, the New Zealand White Paper announces. And it’s important for New Zealand to try and keep up: ‘it is critical that the Defence Force maintains its ability to operate effectively with its Australian counterpart’. Seemingly Australia does what it does and New Zealand adapts.

You might say that this is how it works between larger and smaller members of an alliance, especially where the latter attaches more importance to the relationship. But this leads to an interesting thought experiment. What if New Zealand was asked about the changes it would like to see Australia make?

I think there might be two main requests. First, when Australia is focused on Middle East operations and maintaining a capability edge in the Indo–Pacific (a regional conception not shared by New Zealand) it should recall the South Pacific’s importance. New Zealand’s White Paper expects its defence force to be involved in a major Pacific operations over the next ten years. They would very likely be conducted with Australia. And Wellington may wonder if Canberra has thought carefully about the suitability of the ADF’s capability trends for Pacific operations. Some of the new stuff looks rather big for local conditions.

The second query involves Australia’s approach to the major regional powers in the Asia–Pacific. Wellington knows Canberra’s concerns about China’s approach to maritime disputes in East Asia. As recent Ministerial comments suggest, Wellington is concerned too. But Mark’s observation that ‘Australia has adopted a cautious position on the Middle Kingdom’s growing assertiveness’, might raise eyebrows in New Zealand. While sharing the Australian White Paper’s view that the rules based system is under challenge, including in Asia, Wellington might welcome its number one ally being more reluctant to portray China as an outlier from that system, and less hasty to set up a contest where only American leadership in Asia can make the difference.

But New Zealand would add a proviso. Whatever you do, Australia, don’t get too close to our approach. Otherwise New Zealand’s independent identity will be submerged by a sea of sameness. That risk may encourage Wellington to keep trans-Tasman differences looking a little bigger than they really are.