Analysis: The Prime Minister is answering calls from Southeast Asian leaders to step up, as the region grapples with increasing strategic competition.
On Tuesday, Christopher Luxon swaps his 100-day domestic policy bonanza for a round of diplomatic speed dating, as Asean leaders gather across the ditch.
The 48-hour flying visit to Melbourne will be Luxon’s first opportunity to engage in diplomacy with Asian leaders, and it couldn’t come at a better time.
Newsroom understands that behind closed doors, Asean leaders have been asking New Zealand to play a bigger – more proportionate – role in the region.
The Prime Minister’s trip got off to a bad start, with a maintenance fault on the Defence Force Boeing 757 forcing Luxon onto a commercial flight to Melbourne.
His Air NZ flight is scheduled to land in Melbourne about 10.45am, meaning he will miss his first two bilateral engagements – with the Philippines and Laos. Officials are trying to reschedule the meetings.
Luxon was critical of the ageing Defence Force fleet while in Opposition, saying if elected he would take only commercial flights. Since becoming Prime Minister, he has used the Air Force plane, which allows him to set his own schedule and travel with a delegation.
On Monday, Luxon said the Government was “stepping up” its focus on the region, to reflect the impact it has on New Zealand’s strategic and economic interests.
It’s something that’s been signalled by the Prime Minister and his foreign minister, Winston Peters, but this trip will allow him to walk the walk – or at least shake the hand.
David Capie, the director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University, said the bloc would welcome New Zealand’s promise to lift its engagement in the region, following what was seen as a period of drift.
This was a rare opportunity so soon into Luxon’s prime ministership to meet a range of leaders in one place, Capie said.
Luxon was invited to the Asean-Australia Special Summit by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during a previous meeting. The fellow Asean dialogue member is marking its 50th year of relations with Asean, and offered Luxon a seat at the side-table.
Logistically, it was difficult for a small country such as New Zealand to line up these types of meetings, so Albanese had been “generous” in helping Luxon start the all-important relationship building any new prime minister had to undertake, Capie said.
‘Lying at the heart of the Indo-Pacific, Southeast Asia and the architecture convened by Asean is at the frontline of geostrategic competition’
Mfat briefing
Albanese has been deliberate in his mission to deepen ties with Southeast Asian partners, and as New Zealand prepares to celebrate its own 50 years of engagement with Asean next year, the Government will be following Australia’s lead.
Capie said Luxon should be able to get a sense of how the leaders were seeing the big trends in the region, and flesh out his picture of how the strategic competition was playing out.
In December, the Foreign Ministry brought a briefing paper to the Government that stressed New Zealand’s engagement with the growing region had fallen off the pace.
The paper emphasised the importance of Southeast Asia, and laid out a comprehensive travel plan for the Prime Minister, foreign minister and trade minister during the Government’s first term.
“Lying at the heart of the Indo-Pacific, Southeast Asia and the architecture convened by Asean is at the frontline of geostrategic competition,” it said.
Decades of stability in the region were under pressure, it said, referencing rising tensions in the South China Sea and Taiwan Straits.
“The risk of miscalculation is real in seas that carry over half of New Zealand’s trade, as is the case in the nearby Taiwan Straits. Conflict over these areas would have catastrophic impacts.”
New Zealand’s commitment to lifting defence capability would be seen positively by the bloc, but especially by Singapore and Malaysia as members of the Five Power Defence Arrangements.
Though Southeast Asia is home to much of New Zealand’s risk, it also holds opportunity.
The Government’s focus in recent years has been on China, and now India. However, the Asean group represents one of New Zealand’s biggest trading partners.
Collectively, it’s New Zealand’s third largest export market, worth $9.65 billion in 2022, up 28 percent from pre-Covid levels.
It’s also a young and growing economy, and member countries are included in a range of New Zealand’s trade agreements, including the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.
As New Zealand diversifies its trade, it will be looking to secure and improve multilateral and bilateral trading relationships with the Asean countries. Among the 10, six stand out as top priorities for this Government: Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
These initial bilateral meetings will give Luxon a good base to build on when he sees the heads of state at summits and bilateral visits later in the year.
It will also allow him to communicate his key message: New Zealand is open for business.
In Melbourne, Luxon will want countries and businesses to know his Government is actively courting foreign investment, while also trying to understand the barriers they face.
After a jam-packed schedule of bilateral meetings, Luxon will attend a business breakfast and visit a Fonterra manufacturing plant.
Fonterra global markets chief executive Judith Swales told Newsroom the relationship between New Zealand and Australia was critical for the overall Fonterra business.
Over the coming months, Fonterra will merge its Australian and New Zealand businesses to create Fonterra Oceania.
“This will see the integration of two fundamentally strong businesses to create an even stronger trans-Tasman business,” Swales said.
Though the final days of the Government’s busy 100-day schedule may seem a strange time for the Prime Minister to jet off overseas, Luxon couldn’t bypass this kind of opportunity.
Catching the airforce plane will allow him to squeeze as much as possible out of the 48 hours before he touches down back in Wellington, when he’ll have two full days to tick off his last few promises to voters.
And a circuit breaker trip away from a few days of negative domestic media can’t hurt either.
