Luxon fiddles while China fires – let’s count the ways NZ is ill prepared for Chinese live firing in Tasman Sea
Luxon knows nothing and cant do anything as China live fires in the Tasman Sea…
Earlier Saturday, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said the Government “haven’t actually been informed by the Chinese government as to why this task group is here”.
…God defend New Zealand because Luxon sure as Christ can’t!
Look at the way the Chinese Ambassador has the audacity to respond like this…
Stuff asked Chinese ambassador Dr Wang Xiaolong about the warships at the Wellington Lantern Festival on Saturday evening.
“Today is a moment for celebration,” he said. “I think you’ve asked the wrong question today.”
“Why is New Zealand warships near the coast of China?” he further responded.
…WTF?
THEY ARE LIVE TESTING WEAPONS IN THE BLOODY TASMAN SEA! That is 1000% different to what we are doing in the South China Sea!
Attempting to compare the two is Grade A bullshit!
Chinese Live Weapons testing in the Tasman Sea is NOT the same as the West sailing through the disputed South China Sea!
The South China Sea is an incredibly important Trade Route which International Law protects! We in NZ support that because it’s linked to the importance of those trade routes – THERE IS NO TRADE ROUTE FOR CHINA IN THE TASMAN SEA!
Who are they trading with? Antarctica?
To sail all the way down here to live test weapon fire is a provocation directly to our interests, especially in the same week China signed a secret deal with the Cook Islands in a direct encroachment against our interests!
This is an enormous geopolitical moment and it is one TDB has been tracking for almost 2 years with our Military Blogger Ben Morgan, so let’s count the ways NZ is ill prepared for Chinese live firing in the Tasman Sea shall we?
1 – Politically
National is little more than a front for Chinese Business Interests, that’s why a Chinese Spy inside their actual Party was tolerated for so long, so their ability to criticise China is greatly reduced because so many Chinese/NZers vote National and so many National Party MPs have Chinese business connections.
Our Defence Minister Judith Collins has an enormous amount of Chinese Business interests, which really challenges who she is actually working on behalf. Remember Oravida…
Judith Collins ‘regrets’ Oravida interactions
Justice Minister Judith Collins skipped a law and business meeting to visit dairy company Oravida’s Shanghai offices, Labour claims.
At Parliament’s Question Time, Labour said papers released last week show Collins was due to attend a law roundtable on a taxpayer-funded trip to China last year.
The main purpose of the trip was to discuss justice matters.
Collins said the itinerary was a draft – and she “utterly and totally” rejected the allegations.
Collins made a detour to Oravida’s office on the way to the airport.
…and cough cough, Swamp Kauri…
Govt stuck in the mud over swamp kauri allegations
The Government’s excuses for allowing the export of swamp kauri as finished products are being bogged down by mounting evidence that rough sawn slabs of kauri timber are being exported illegally, the Green Party said today.
…cough cough…
Digger driver behind Auckland’s fuel crisis, photos show
The case is growing that it was a digger driver who was trying to pull something out of a swamp that ruptured a pipeline and caused Auckland airport’s fuel shortage.
Refining New Zealand says that is obvious from pictures they’ve released to Newshub.
Torn white insulation tape exposes the damage underneath – and a deep indent reveals the inside of the fuel pipeline on Ruakaka farmland. In another picture, an indent from a bucket tooth and a gouge where it’s scraped not once, but many times, is clearly visible.
“You cannot help but draw the conclusion that while the person using that digger thought that he was pulling something out of the swamp,” Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) chief executive Carolyn Tremain says.
Just days ago Energy Minister Judith Collins said no swamp kauri has been dug on the site since 2011 – while locals say big trees were being pulled up a couple of years ago.
…and who was doing that Kauri digging? Cough cough…
On Thursday June 18 a story was published in the Northern Advocate, entitled “Call for Halt on Swamp Kauri Exports”.
This story mentioned that Kauri Ruakaka Limited, formerly known as Oravida, has a stockpile of swamp kauri at Ruakaka.
The story referred to Kauri Ruakaka Limited by its former name and described it as a Chinese company, when in fact Kauri Ruakaka Limited is and always has been a New Zealand registered company.
We wish to clarify that the article was not intended to give the impression that Kauri Ruakaka Limited (Oravida), Judith Collins MP and her husband have engaged in any illegal or improper conduct in respect of the collection or export of swamp kauri.
The Northern Advocate apologises if any of our readers formed an inaccurate view of the activities of Kauri Ruakaka Limited as a result of this story.
…y-e-a-h.
Maybe someone without so much exposure to China should be handling our response to China firing in the Tasman Sea?
John Key who seems to be China’s Honorary Ambassador in NZ isn’t on that list.
Whose side is National on?
2 – Economically
The Corporate Dairy Farmers of NZ who control the National Party have placed all our Cows in one Beijing paddock, (thanks to John Key), and we are economically subservient to China – thanks to those NZ Corporate Dairy Farmers and their Quisling National Party representatives.
There’s not a fucking thing we can do that doesn’t immediately threaten the interests of those Corporate Dairy Farmers which means National is impotent in standing up to China because if they do, Mr and Mrs Corporate Farmer will be screaming at their local National Party MP about China interrupting their contracts.
3 – Culturally
Some of our woke are so conflicted with criticising anyone who isn’t white that they are claiming NZs anger at the Cook Islands is colonialism and our reaction to China live-firing in the Tasman Sea is somehow hypocritical because…….. colonialism?
When anyone dared suggest a lab leak for Covid, the NZ Woke screamed xenophobe!
When anyone challenges Chinese Grey Zone warfare in the Pacific, the NZ Woke scream xenophobia!
And when anyone points out the brutal repression of the Uyghurs, the NZ Woke go very quiet because they aren’t sure who to scream at until they’ve checked their hierarchy of victimhood.
National are beholden to Chinese interests and the Left are beholden to woke activists screaming xenophobia at them so China’s threat is never honestly appraised by either side.
Media
Because our media rooms have been so gutted of actual journalists and filled with social media ‘journalists’ who are focused on feelings, clicks and shares more than actual Fourth Estate accountability, the content they generate is incapable of covering something as extreme as China sending a 3 ship fleet to test weapons in the Tasman Sea.
Seven Sharp is the totem poll of stupid, I mean how does Jeremy and Hil’s cover geopolitical threats with credibility?
They can’t.
We don’t understand the threat we face because the failing Mainstream Media are too busy trying to cater to consumer clickbait than informing citizens.
Militarily
Hahahahahahaha. We don’t have any military capacity. Isn’t 1/6th of our total fleet currently sitting on the bottom of the sea?
Folks, we’re going to need a bigger boat.
Rocket Labs
As I have been arguing for years, Rocket Labs has made us a legitimate military target with no debate whatsoever!
Rocket Lab ‘ready to serve’ Pentagon
Rocket Lab is poised to launch a satellite from Mahia Peninsula for a US company which is looking to bolster military and spying operations.
BlackSky’s plan is to add laser optic links later to its Gen-3 satellites to give “war-fighters real-time access to imagery during time-sensitive military operations worldwide”.
This comes shortly after Rocket Lab won a part in a mega-deal to help develop hypersonic weapons for the Pentagon, prompting the firm to state it was “ready to serve the US Department of Defense”.
BlackSky’s first Gen-3 satellite recently completed encapsulation onto an Electron rocket at Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in in New Zealand. Photo: Supplied
The New York-listed, New Zealand-born company has also completed a design review for 18 military satellites in a contract worth more than $800 million, for the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), which is putting up a web of low-orbit satellites for missile tracking and battlefield comms.
That deal, which was signed last year, cemented Rocket Lab as a “prime” – or lead – defence contractor in the US.
It’s good that there is growing skepticism about Rocket Lab…
Rocket Lab: Peter Beck defends spy satellite work, ex-director speaks of leaving
Rocket Lab’s meteoric rise in the global space industry hit turbulence recently with its first operational mission loss. Meanwhile, questions continue over its launch of US intelligence satellites from New Zealand soil.
Stuff reporter George Block sat down with co-founder and chief executive Peter Beck at the company’s Auckland factory. He also spoke to the company’s seed investor and former co-director Mark Rocket, who parted ways with the company in 2011 after it started taking defence contracts.
…the problem is that this debate isn’t going far enough because what the vast majority of New Zealander’s have no idea about is how Rocket Lab and the National Party have made us, for the first time in NZ’s history, a genuine military target.
Rocket Lab fires rockets into space for the secretive National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) this is their charming patch…
…nothing erodes faith in the check and balance of extreme power quite like a giant orange space octopus proclaiming that nothing is out of its reach. Unbeknownst to most NZers, Rocket Lab is a Military Industrial Complex franchise, not some plucky Number 8 Wire Dad Shed schlock that Rocket Lab like to project to the sleepy hobbits of Muddle Nu Zilind…
Rocket Lab’s link with the CIA’s venture capital firm was revealed in 2016 by US investigative journalism site The Intercept, but has not been reported by the New Zealand media.
Although it operates independently, In-Q-Tel invests on behalf of the CIA and the broader US intelligence community in companies whose products may have national security applications.
A document obtained by The Intercept shows that Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck spoke at a summit of In-Q-Tel portfolio companies in February 2016. Other speakers included then-FBI director James Comey. Beck earlier wrote about Rocket Lab for In-Q-Tel’s quarterly publication in 2015.
In contrast, Lockheed Martin’s investment in Rocket Lab is mentioned routinely in press coverage and was the subject of a jibe by departing Vector chairman Michael Stiassny to the Vector AGM last week.
However, the extent of Rocket Lab’s defence industry work has gone essentially unremarked. Details of this work had been removed from Rocket Lab’s website by the time the regulatory regime enabling the company’s activities in New Zealand came into law last year.
Put aside the zero public debate of whether or not we should get this close to the American Military Industrial Complex in the first place and note that no one ever explained to the NZ public how allowing Rocket Labs to launch US military satellites immediately upgrades NZ to being a legitimate military target!
Because of this, Chinese Subs and Russian Subs will legitimately sit off the East Coast of NZ targeting the launch site.
THIS is why we needed to buy 4 P-8s! Because America is able to launch military satellites from NZ, which makes us a target and we need to defend that target with sub hunting planes!
New sub-killer planes may never fire in anger but Govt wants the option
Defence Minister Ron Mark has announced the Government will buy four Boeing P-8A Poseidons to replace the defence force’s ageing fleet of P-3K Orions. The purchase has been a longtime coming.
The P-8s, known as submarine killers, mark a new era in defence procurement, with one expert calling this the most significant defence purchase in a generation.
…so under National, we signed up to a military space programme through our 5 Eyes network that has now made us a legitimate military target which we need to buy sub hunting planes and torpedoes for???
When will it be made clear to the rest of the electorate that we have done this and put everyones lives at risk by Rocket Lab making us a legitimate military target?
So are we going to talk about Rocket Lab welding us to Trump’s Military Industrial Complex?
Cook Islands and the MFAT fuck up
I hate to say I told you so.
B-u-t.
I was the ONLY blogger and I think I was the only one who was yelling about all of this in 2024 but no one seemed to understand the danger.
This was me, April 16th, 2024…
I said that Winston had failed us as a foreign minister because the first thing he did when becoming Foreign Minister was to allow America to encroach into our Realm…
US to open embassies in the Cook Islands, Niue
Announcement comes as US President Joe Biden prepares to host a second summit with Pacific Island leaders in Washington DC.
…why are we allowing the Realm of NZ to be encroached upon by the Americans?
Surely our job as an independent voice in the pacific is to protect our Pacific Neighbours in ensuring their agency over the interests of Washington and Beijing, especially when that pacific Neighbour is part of our Realm!
America has encroached into our Realm and neither Winston or Judith will criticise this encroachment because both are thralls of the American Military Industrial Complex!
They are both so keen to show America our subservience and acquiescence to whatever new war they want to drag us into, Judith and Winston will invite us themselves!
…what ended up happening after we allowed the fucking Americans to encroach directly into our Realm and declare Niue and the Cooks as Independent states with no relationship with NZ?
Why the Prime Minister of the Cooks took that declaration by the Americans to negotiate a deal with China that we knew nothing about!
We allowed America to redefine the relationship last year and the Cooks PM, Mark Brown, decided to take that redefinition and negotiate a deal with China.
It opens questions about why Mark Brown has signed this secret deal and whether he has been bribed by Chinese interests, because everywhere else China try this on sees allegations of bribery.
NZ got played by America last year and the result has been China encroaching directly into our Realm!
I would not be surprised if the current offshore Chinese fleet will sail around NZ and dock in the Cooks as a major ‘fuck you’ to NZ.
Trump
The Americans will demand to know how a 5 Eyes Member was blindsided by China in the Cooks and the millisecond Trump is told NZ won’t allow nuclear ships here, you can see how Trump may perceive sending a nuclear powered and armed ship directly into Wellington harbour would play out a s message of dominance to the Chinese WHILE slapping us as well.
Trump will see our military spend as pitiful, he despises Jacinda and he gets to look tough in the eyes of China by forcing us to accept a nuclear war ship after they’ve just done live firing in the Tasman Sea.
Will Luxon stand up to Trump when he calls to tell him he’s sending a nuclear ship while threatening us with Tariffs if we don’t accept it?
Like fuck he will, Luxon will roll over in a heartbeat and sell us all out when Trump calls and threatens tariffs if we don’t accept an American Nuclear Warship.
Conclusion
The question remains, will this stunt be the end and China pull their ships back or will they continue on and sail under Australia or sail under NZ and dock in the Cook Islands?
Look, you can debate the awfulness of white colonialism until the cows come home, but don’t pretend that China is somehow benign FFS! It’s an authoritarian Communist regime with an appalling human rights record whose size and power will crush the Pacific with their never ending demand for natural resources.
Yes white colonialism is terrible, but jumping from that into the arms of the Chinese is no win for anyone other than the Chinese.
China is in the Tasman Sea doing live firing drills, wake up sleepy hobbits.
We are New Zealanders, we should not be hostage to Washington OR Beijing.
We have served two masters for too long, our Chinese Economic Overlords and our American Political Masters, it is time for New Zealand to wake up to the naked reality that we are no longer in a benign geopolitical environment and that we do not want to be dominated by China OR America and that we must debate what that means and what the true price of an Independent Foreign Policy looks like.
THAT is the debate we need right now.
How do we get an Independent Foreign Policy and what the real price of that requires.
Mordor has come to the Shire sleepy hobbits.
We can’t pretend anymore after this Chinese political stunt/threat.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
On a lighter note; look at the photo above of the Blue Dragons.
Look at the faces of the three children in the bottom of the photo.
‘We cannot go swimming today because dad said we have to come here and wear these stupid blue shirts for this dumb photo with Uncle Jiang and some old white dude.’
That is the exact same expression my grandkids wear when they are told they have to spend Saturday morning learning Mandarin Chinese.
If we want to make progress these are the people we should influence. The older Chinese are a lost cause
(successful communist party members, business interests in China, family ties, years of brainwashing that other people are ‘foreign barbarians’ and ‘Imperialist Lackeys’).
Stock up with ice-cream and join me in luring the children of migrants to the left side.
Haven’t the Chinese Navy had ships down this way before for goodwill and R and R visits for the crews?
Luxon will do a deal with trump that he can have NZ instead of Greenland and Ukraine because we will have no where to re start the live export of cows that we were going to send to china because groundswell demanded a restart in return for 50 voted at the last election.
Imagine what the armed forces would look like if Greens and TPM were in control or even shared power with Labour. The forces would all take singing lesson so they could join their enemies round a camp fire for a talkfest
Really Trevor. I think the latest kit we have came in under the last government, and the Hercules must have been ordered some time ago. At least they actually spent some money on this country unlike wankers incorporated, who spend it on their mates. Seymour and Luxon will probably try and sell the P8’s. Willis will replace them with tiger moths and screech “I’ve delivered”
The armed forces personnel are leaving in droves under this coalition of chaos. The Greens and TPM would be a great improvement and at least the personnel would stay on our shores and be paid appropriately, unlike now.
new herculese planes arriving very soon bought and paid for by last government along side the P8s.Hows this lot doing on buying those two state of the art pre ordered ferries
Not that much different to be honest Trevor.
Gun boat diplomacy?
Australia’s biggest trading partner protecting its shipping lanes?
Related question, if NZ can be “very, very, very close friends” or an “ally” why can’t it export unlimited beef to its ally or have an FTA?
Give the Chinese navy the nautical charts we used in Samoa just before Chogm. That’ll take care of things.
Yeah so true, great article. These are scary times and they just got that much scarier with China doing live fire drills in the Tasman sea with nary a prior warning. WTF indeed. WTF!!!! And that fucked up answer by the Chinese ambassador is very reassuring…NOT. but the fact is, they don’t need to give us a reason and they are literally thumbing their nose at us. What to do??? Even if they set up camp in our harbour there wouldn’t be much we could do about it….things are getting real lawless since Trump’s three weeks in power….
Imagine a country having to endure live fire Naval exercises off it’s coastline conducted by foreign powers with total disregard for the historic national interest of those near by. My golly – what sort of foreign power(s) would do such things? Hard to imagine our navy along with the US, UK and Australia – for example – sailing off the coast of China and conducting military exercises.
Fine blog piece. I hadn’t read you in 6 months and seemingly you’ve improved
China concerns look generally valid.
Fear of involvement with the MIC of either great power is not misplaced.
Are the woke conflicted in the face of china perfidy?
Of course they are.
Bomber youre argument is arse about face. The only reason that China is down here with its 3 warships is that NZ and Australia have signed up to the US warmongers club to contain China’s economic expansion.
The cause is the US turning the Pacific into a war zone to stop China from producing stuff better, quicker and cheaper than the US as it slides back to the age of McKinley annexing the rest of the Americas and now threatening to do the same in the Pacific. As in Trumps pivot 2.0.
The effect is China arming itself in defense. It has never started a war in centuries. It does not need a war or to invade, annex or occupy anybody even when severely provoked. The US has troops 3 miles off the Chinese coast. Trump has changed the longstanding US recognition of the One China policy in Taiwan and is now following Biden in arming and defending Taiwan’s right to independence from China. Taiwan is not left any real self determination when the US is in charge. Everything China is doing is an effect of the US re-arming the first and second perimenter bases surrounding China.
I am an objective observer of these events as I regard both the US and China as imperialist powers driven by the need to expand their economic interests in the world. But this is the inevitability of capitalism’s development in the 20th century when capitalism becomes an epoch of crises, wars and revolutions.
So while in this confrontation it is clear that China is defending itself from US attacks this is the behaviour to be expected of the fading hegemon fighting literally to keep its global power against a rising power destined to be the new hegemon.
So the answer to this problem is NOT to unite workers behind either power going to war where workers kill other workers and where ultimately these wars must end in WW3. The answer is to unite workers internationally against their own ruling classes.
In the Pacific China’s rise has dragged into its orbit a rapidly rising number off states. The BRICS now includes most of the Asia Pacific countries and will probably attract more Pacific Island states. The last thing NZ should be doing is lining up behind the US to go to war against BRICS states who may be caught up as proxies like Ukraine.
NZ already shows that economically its dependence on China is a fact. The US under Trump will make that even more clear as the US economy will crash as the result of high tarrifs. China is able to advance the interests of workers in these countries but only by exploiting them. The recognition that China’s imperialism is no different to Western imperialism will unite workers in the struggle for independence from China.
So the interests of the worlds weakers states should be to take what they can get from China’s development but refuse to sacrifice themselves to illusions that any imperialism can meet their long term needs. We don’t need to join the EU state shooting themselves in the foot to go to war with Russia. We don’t need to abandon our trade with China to buy expensive US goods. We don’t need to boost arms spending to pay for even more genocides in the global south.
Workers’ interests are class interests. Uniting workers internationally to defend those interests dictates our actions.
Refuse to back imperialist wars! Refuse enlistment and drafts!
Support the right to self-determination of nations and peoples especially in the Asia Pacific region! Kick imperialists out of our countries!
Build unity across nations so that workers in every country can fight for workers’ governments to throw out a corrupt ruling classes tied to imperialism!
Expropriate without compensation the wealth of the ruling classes and plan an economy that meets our urgent needs to stop the destruction of nature and all its species!
For a socialist republic of Aoteareoa in which Maori also have the right to sovereignty!
For a Socialist Pacific and a federation of socialist republic!
TL;DR – we should have been prepared for this. We ARE a target whether we have Rocket Lab or not – like it or not. A live fire at the same time as they sailed into the Tasman. Maybe dropped a dead satellite into the South China Sea as well – we’ve gone soft. NZ should dig up the ghost of Rutherford, tool up with a credible deterrent and stop fucking around.
and just so you know – we should be prepared to do exactly the same to Uncle Sam and it’s rapidly deteriorating moral authority.
What can Aotearoa do in the face of these super powers. How on earth do we defend ourselves. This is just an excuse to spend money on defense that we just don’t have. Remember the ferry fiasco this government couldn’t find its way out of a paper bag let alone fight a war in the pacific .To spend more money than necessary is playing into the hands of China and now USA because only God knows whose side they are on at the moment. We’d better be quiet because otherwise trump will gift us to Russia for Christmas
yep – it’s fucking woeful – conservative cucks to the right – progressive wokes to the left. It’s almost so bad that Elon Musk is looking like a better option – lol. Now is the time to go out on a limb and borrow up large to secure our future. It will never be paid back anyway and if we have the right deterrents, we won’t have too. Sometimes I think the place is upside down – we should have the Mongrel Mob running the country and politicians having to sell meth to get by. Could it be any worse.