Sam Sachdeva
Wellington, October 23, 2024
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is already preparing to make another bid for extra Foreign Affairs funding in next year’s Budget, potentially setting himself on a collision course with his coalition partners.
Peters is due to receive a report from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade by the end of this month, outlining what “trade-offs” it will make to meet the Government’s foreign policy priorities.
Reprioritising Resources
Although the Ministry has framed that work primarily in terms of reprioritising existing resources, the report is in fact a more fundamental examination of whether the current diplomatic and international development budgets are sufficient when compared with similar countries – potentially laying the groundwork for another significant bid to Finance Minister Nicola Willis as the process for next year’s Budget begins.
“In three terms as Foreign Minister, I have made that case out, and we have been more successful than most,” Peters told Newsroom, arguing it was a mistake to regard Foreign Affairs as “not a matter of domestic politics.”
New Zealand was carrying out its diplomatic work with less than half the offshore footprint of like-minded and similarly sized nations such as Singapore and Ireland and could improve its already above-par performance with extra resources.
“If I am a business person coming into, for example, the Philippines, where can I gain enough help to help me close the deal, so to speak? Where do I go to, how do I do it? We have got to put more grunt into that.”
The Foreign Affairs Ministry was already spared the sizable cuts made by most other government agencies in the coalition’s first Budget this year, reducing its spending by less than 1%, rather than the 6.5% to 7.5% targets imposed on others and securing $60 million in new funding for diplomatic infrastructure in the Pacific.
That treatment came against the advice of Treasury officials, who said there was “not a clear rationale” for exempting the Ministry from the savings process given the baseline increases it had received in recent years.
Fine Minister’s warning
Willis has already warned Ministers that money will be tight in next year’s Budget, with an operating allowance of just $2.4 billion compared with $3.2 billion this year.
“With a small number of exceptions, government departments should expect to receive no additional funding in the Budget,” Willis told Parliament in August, adding that significant savings would need to be found with “a very high bar for new initiatives.”
Asked whether he was confident that his coalition partners would accept the case for greater investment in future Budgets given the fiscal environment, Peters replied: “Sometimes conversion, as any missionary will tell you, takes some time, but we are working on it.”
It was not just Foreign Affairs where further government investment was needed, he said, noting historical underspending on Defence.
“People, when you talk to them, look over your shoulder in many, many ways … who is behind you and what is behind you, and if it is just talk, that is a very difficult conversation position,” he said.
The Cabinet is due to consider a new defence capability plan before the end of the year, outlining future investments for the New Zealand Defence Force, and Peters said that he had been working “in a supportive role, immensely” with Defence Minister Judith Collins on the plan.
“I would be as happy as she is, and you can work out what that means,” Peters said somewhat cryptically of the work so far.
The sinking of the Navy’s hydrographic vessel HMNZS Manawanui was “a disastrous accident,” and the government was committed to cleaning up the environmental effects as swiftly as possible before turning its mind to the capability implications.
Indian interference?
Separately, Peters defended his response to the diplomatic stoush between the Canadian and Indian governments over the alleged involvement of Indian government agents in the murder of a Sikh separatist and other criminal activity in Canada.
In a statement on X (formerly Twitter), the Minister did not mention India by name, saying that New Zealand had been briefed by Canada on violence and threats of violence “against members of its South Asian community.”
Peters told Newsroom that his statement had “used the phraseology they [Canada] used to describe the problem they had,” and there had been no conscious decision to omit a reference to India. The public statement released by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police does refer to “members of the South Asian community,” but also makes specific reference to India on multiple occasions.
The Foreign Minister courted controversy earlier this year when he was quoted by Indian media as questioning a lack of evidence in the murder case, but later said his remarks had been misrepresented.
Asked by Newsroom whether he was concerned about separate allegations of Foreign Interference in Australia and the United States by Indian state agents, and whether such activities could be occurring in New Zealand, Peters said: “That issue has not ever arisen here, to the best of my knowledge.”
Sam Sachdeva is the National Affairs Editor at Newsroom Wellington. The above article and pictures, which appeared on the Newsroom website, have been reproduced under a Special Agreement.
