Venu Menon
Wellington, May 2,2024
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters’ Annual Lecture 2024 in Parliament on Wednesday evening was clearly aimed at quelling the embers fanned by former Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark around AUKUS, the security alliance between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.
Clark joined other critics of the military pact in a discussion held in Parliament last month which warned against New Zealand’s future participation in Pillar 2 of AUKUS at the invitation of the US.
But Peters traced the chronology of events back to September-October 2021 when the Labour Government initiated talks on Pillar 2.
The current Coalition Government was “continuing a process already begun by our predecessor Labour Government,” he argued.
Recent history bore that out. Then Defence Minister Andrew Little had declared that New Zealand was keen to join the partnership to tap into the advanced technology resources offered by Pillar 2.
Little followed up by holding talks with Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles in Wellington.
That ministerial meeting had come shortly after Kurt Campbell, the US Indo-Pacific coordinator, touched down in Wellington and invited New Zealand to participate in Pillar 2 of the AULUS agreement which would allow it to access cyber technology.
However, Peters suggested in his address to Parliament yesterday that New Zealand’s participation in Pillar 2 was far from foregone, and was conditional upon meeting criteria.
Peters’ tone and tenor appeared to indicate he viewed such participation favourably.
While the government was considering its options, Peters sought to emphasise that “it would be utterly irresponsible for any government of any stripe to not consider whether collaborating with like-minded partners on advances in technology is in our national interest.”
As his speech progressed, Peters appeared less hesitant in his advocacy of New Zealand’s participation in Pillar 2 of AUKUS.
The foreign minister appeared keen to align with the United States and the joint statement following his meeting with its Secretary of State Antony Blinken in April. That statement broadly hailed arrangements such as AUKUS, Quad, and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity as being vital to securing peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region.
But Peters skirted the issue raised by Clark in her critique of AUKUS, which was its underlying goal of containing China, New Zealand’s premier trading partner.
Clark preferred a policy of managing relations with China and the US separately, and saw no reason for New Zealand to antagonise China and run into the arms of the US.
Additionally, AUKUS will foreseeably drive New Zealand to rebalance bilateral relationships within its neighbourhood. South Pacific nations, including the Solomon Islands and the Cook Islands, have voiced concern that AUKUS undermined the Treaty of Rarotonga, which bound signatories to keep nuclear weapons and radioactive contamination out of the South Pacific.
Its fair to say the AUKUS submarine deal has opened up fault lines in the domestic discourse around New Zealand’s foreign policy, triggered by Campbell’s visit to Wellington a year ago which held out the promise of access to cyber technology.
Accessing that technology is Foreign Minister Peters’ avowed compulsion for leaning towards AUKUS, despite prevailing scepticism.
Venu Menon is an Indian Newslink reporter based in Wellington
