It’s one of New Zealand’s great sustaining myths: the spirit of ANZAC, our mates across the ditch, the spirit of Earl’s Court, Antipodeans united against the world.
It is also a myth; it is not reality.
That much was clear from a series of speakers, including a former Australian Prime Minister and two former New Zealand Ministers; one from National, one from Labour at the University of Waikato’s New Zealand Economic Forum.
The former New Zealand Foreign Minister, Murray McCully, who is beginning to resurface in public had a simple warning for the Government; don’t subcontract our foreign policy to Australia.
The former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison also warned that there were substantial differences between the two countries.
He is s uniquely placed to make the judgement.
Before he became Australian Prime Minister from 2018 to 2022, he spent two years in Wellington running the newly created Office of Tourism and Sport, where he reported to the then-newby National Minister, Murray McCully.
He told POLITIK that we have become two different countries for a whole host of reasons.
“I think there are quite significant cultural differences,” he said.
“Australia can be a much more brash place; New Zealand is a lot more reserved just in nature.
“Obviously, there are very different Indigenous cultures, too, and the size of the Indigenous cultures.
“The Maori Polynesian Pacific culture in New Zealand is just by sheer volume much greater than Indigenous cultures in Australia.
“But Australia is, I think, a more multicultural country too, although I think New Zealand has changed a lot in that respect over the last few decades.
“Economically, the economic base is completely different.
“Ours is much more of a resources base, commodities base. New Zealand is very different from that; it is a bit more trade-exposed, and our resources sector provides us with, I think, a much bigger economic ballast.”
But nowhere is the trans-Tasman gap wider than when it comes to foreign affairs and defence.
That gap began to open in 1942 when New Zealand succumbed to British pressure and kept its troops in the Middle East while Australia brought its troops home, ready to fight alongside the Americans, confronting the Japanese army as it drove rapidly south towards Australia.
Going into the post-war period, the ultimate effect was to see Australia develop a closer relationship with the United States while New Zealand remained locked into the British Empire.
We cautiously, if not reluctantly, agreed to become a member of ANZUS, and our contributions to conflicts like Vietnam were nowhere near the scale of Australia’s.
Therefore, it wasn’t surprising that in 1985, when the United States suspended the security guarantee to New Zealand, thus effectively ending our membership of ANZUS, there was little public opposition.
Both main parties embraced the idea of an independent foreign policy, by which they meant a non-aligned foreign policy.
Morrison believes this now marks a significant difference between Australia and New Zealand.
“For many decades across both sides of politics, Australia has been a lot more deeply aligned and committed to the US alliance,” he said.
“But that said, I think New Zealand has benefited a great deal from Australia being deeply embedded in the US alliance.
“This, I think, as partners in the region, affords opportunities for us to achieve more because of those differences.
“At the end of the day, we’re very like-minded.
“We see the world, particularly our region, in a very unique way compared to many of our like-minded partners, be they in Europe or the United States.
“And that is a great advantage for us both.
“And to that point, New Zealand sees things even more differently to us when you get a micro level within the region.
“The Pacific relationship with New Zealand is very different to the Pacific relationship with Australia.
“And where we work together on those things, I think we achieve a great deal. If we’re exactly the same, well, we wouldn’t need each other.”
Morrison’s old boss, Murray McCully, went on to serve as the Key Government’s foreign minister for nine years and, at the same time, leveraged the independent foreign policy into a seat on the Security Council for New Zealand.
He believes that an independent foreign policy is inevitable for New Zealand.
“That decision’s really been made for us,” he told the Waikato Forum.
“We really are on our own in the world and have to make our own decisions.
“We’ve got people who we trade with but can’t form security alliances with.
“We’ve got people who we can form good diplomatic relationships with that don’t want to buy our stuff.
“It’s a complex world. We just have to get on with it and deal with what we’ve got.”
However, the Luxon Government is testing the independent foreign policy as it has not been tested before with what it calls its foreign policy reset.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins are both, by nature, anglophiles, and their frequent talk of sharing values with our friends really means getting closer to Australia, the United States, and even Britain.
This weekend Judith Collins has been at the Munich Security Conference, a NATO-dominated event.
A typical post on her “X” account is: “Excellent meeting with Mark Rutte @SecGenNATO. Shared values and a real commitment from New Zealand to freedom and the rules-based order are very much appreciated in NATO.”
Maybe. But there is a real question about whether New Zealand’s foreign policy reset has seen it take its eyes off the part of our foreign policy that Morrison values, the Pacific.
Peters would respond to that by saying he has been to every Forum member country and travelled frequently within the region.
But it is what has been happening when he has not been there that is the issue.
How come New Zealand was blindsided by the Kiribati President’s snubbing of Peters, and we still don’t seem to know what is in the Cook Islands’ new agreement with China?
McCully, like Morrison, believes the Pacific must be front and centre of our foreign policy.
He says it is our “value proposition” to our partners.
“We have huge Pacific connections in this country,” he said.
“We’ve got a relatively small budget in every sense.
“Where we can really add value to our partners is by doing some heavy lifting within our own region.
“We were uniquely qualified to do it and we’ve got some quite helpful history.”
New Zealand’s foreign policy spotlight tends to fall on the Pacific only when there is a crisis like Fiji’s coups or, now, the increasing pressures that China is imposing on some island states.
China argues that its presence in the region is benign, but the former Labour Government Defence and Intelligence Agencies’ Minister, Andrew Little, says it is more complex than that.
“We need China to continue developing and enjoy the benefits of its science and technology and engineering because it will have solutions for the world,” he said.
“But the reality is China operates at multiple levels in its engagement with the rest of the world,” he said.
“It has a public face, which is always very positive, but it has a far less transparent face, which is somewhat manipulative and exploitative, and that poses security risks.”
To counter the threat that it believes China poses to the region, Australia has proposed the AUKUS joint Australia, US, and UK projects, which would build nuclear submarines capable of firing missiles straight into China.
There is talk of New Zealand joining Pillar Two of the project, which is supposed to be about the technology that would grow up around the project, but no details have been spelt out, and no commitments have been made by New Zealand.
The consideration of New Zealand becoming part of Pillar Two began under Little as Defence Minister.
He doesn’t believe it is imperative that New Zealand join. He says the quality of all New Zealand’s defence relationships matters more.
McCully says the current approach appears to kick the can down the road but warns about the limits to any defence relationship with Australia.
“You could ask the question, what would you get in AUKUS Pillar 2 that you don’t get from Five Eyes? I don’t know. And I think those are questions that will no doubt be discussed by officials, and we’ll get some interesting reporting from ministers,” he said.
“But in the meantime, it is, in its purest terms, a discussion about positioning and labelling and branding. That’s what’s really on the table here.”
McCully agreed with Little that the best policy for New Zealand would be to build up capabilities to look after our own interests.
“Obviously, for reasons of geography and other reasons, it makes sense for us to do that with Australia.
“And I think maximizing interoperability is the way to go.
“But maximizing interoperability with Australia does not mean subcontracting your foreign policy decisions to Australia.
“Australia has quite a different view, and I think you would have heard this from Scott Morrison.
“The default setting for Australia, and it’s from politicians on both sides, is that they see themselves as a middle power or a G20 power, pick one of those two, and they behave accordingly.
“And often, to prove the point, they feel they have to prod the big guys because if you’re scrapping with the big guys, then by definition, you’re probably in almost the big guy’s category.
“New Zealand, I think, because of our size and sort of different settings, has got to be more nuanced in the way it behaves.
“That doesn’t mean that you don’t express your views clearly and strongly to, for example, China, when the difference about what’s happening in the China Sea.
“But I’ve never seen taking a long handle to China in the public arena as a very successful strategy.”
McCully believes that China has succeeded in the Pacific because it has actually done things which New Zealand is also good at.
“We’ve got to be the guys who deliver stuff,” he said.
“There are lots of people out there who talk. They talk about large numbers, announce large programs, particularly in the climate area, and so on. Actually, we should distinguish ourselves as the people who pick up difficult things and deliver outcomes. That should be our point of difference.”
But if the relationship with Australia diverges when it comes to foreign policy, it is still a very close relationship, one where the two countries’ Prime Ministers meet twice a year and seem to regularly delight in exchanging various rugby and league jerseys to mark the occasion.
Our two main political parties also have close relations with their counterparts across the Tasman, but Morrison says that despite the relationship, it is too important to let partisan political differences define it.
That is a fear again now that it is likely that Peter Dutton and the Liberal-Nationals coalition will win the next Australian election.
Dutton is the author of the “tatking the trash out” comment about the deportation of New Zealand “501s” and is said to have developed his view of New Zealanders when he was a Queensland police officer dealing with a number of rapes and murders where the offenders were New Zealanders.
“The relationship still works regardless of who’s sitting on either side of the Tasman because it’s just too important. And leaders understand that even if they have quite big political differences like Jacinda and I did. But personally, we got on fine,” Morrison said.
Although the two were political rivals, Morrison is helping Dutton in the run-up to the election.
He offers a slightly different view of him to the usual hard ex-cop, right-wing image that appears most frequently in the media.
“Peter is a very determined chap. But he actually has quite a soft side to him, which people really don’t often get to see,” he said.
Is he an Aussie Trump?
“There is no Australian Trump. And nor is anyone looking for one. They are looking for an Australian leader. Appropriating US politics to Australia is a foolish thing to do. They are completely different societies driven by different things.”
That may bring some relief but there is every sign that the New Zealand relationship with Australia is about to be thoroughly tested particularly over foreign policy.
That will require a clear-eyed vision from Wellington devoid of any sentimentality about the spirit of ANZAC.
