A View from Afar: In this week’s podcast Selwyn Manning and Paul Buchanan debate: How this week, New Zealand’s minister of foreign affairs, Nanaia Mahuta, delivered a significant speech detailing how this Labour-led Government defines its foreign policy.
BACKGROUND: In short, Mahuta anchored New Zealand within the Asia Pacific region as an independent Pacific Island state, with independence being the foundation of how it will engage with the outside world, and with multilateralism being the thread that knits this foreign policy together.
If we look back over the three years since 2017 when Jacinda Ardern first became Prime Minister, to 2020 when her Labour Party had a landslide election victory, we can see the incremental steps (albeit small) that transported this Government along this journey.
If we can define this trajectory, can we predict where will it lead? To true independence away from the hegemonic grip of global powers? Toward a true honest-broker-state that engages via multilateral relationships and bodies to play its part in global affairs?
Or is New Zealand Government setting itself up to fail in a role too serious to contemplate misfiring?
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NZ has not joined in the nonsense about genocide in China in spite of the push from Australia openly and of course the US/UK pressure more behind the scenes.
Hong Kong was another issue not vigorously criticised by the NZ govt although we did not remain neutral in comments aimed at interfering with China’s internal matter. So the govt did not makes a complete fool of NZ.
But the big one was we did not join with Australia in backing a US demand for an inquiry into the covid19 outbreak in Wuhan instead of leaving it to the WHO. We did not get aboard the politicisation of the pandemic and received scathing criticism from Australian mouthpieces accordingly. Australia suffered the consequences of their foolishness as a US lapdog.
Some small signs of tentative NZ independence noted and commented on within China.
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