NZ Prime Minister Christopher Luxon vows to press Anthony Albanese on criminal deportations
New Zealand's Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says he'll raise Australia's criminal deportations policy when he meets Anthony Albanese in Canberra. Mr Albanese promised former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern the federal government would take a different approach to deportations, but he reversed course earlier this year.
Transcript
00:00The Prime Minister, of course, is trying to square a circle here, because on the one hand
00:05he's saying that common sense should apply, but on the other hand he is making it pretty
00:10clear, as the government has for months, that in the end what's really going to count for
00:14Australia is the question of community safety, and that that will outweigh other considerations,
00:20including the length of time that people have spent in the country.
00:23Now this does mean that it's going to continue to be a point of friction between New Zealand
00:28and Australia, because the argument that we've heard repeatedly from New Zealand is
00:32that it is simply not reasonable for people who've spent all of their formative years
00:36in Australia to be sent to New Zealand, simply because they happen to hold New Zealand citizenship.
00:42And it does sound, from what the Prime Minister said just then, that there is still a difference
00:46of opinion.
00:47Now both sides have obviously agreed to continue to talk on this.
00:51They say they have a common purpose, but not necessarily a completely common understanding.
00:56In the end, a lot of this will simply come down to how this new ministerial direction
01:01unveiled a few months ago is applied, what weight is put on people's links to the community
01:05versus community safety, and whether we see any more of those instances of people with
01:10absolutely no connection to New Zealand being sent there or not.
01:14Obviously this is still a point of real friction in the relationship, and Prime Minister Luxen
01:19has made it clear, albeit in very measured tones, that he's going to continue to keep
01:23a very close eye on this, and that New Zealand will want to see an approach taken that doesn't
01:28see us back in the days where we had large numbers of people with no connection to New
01:32Zealand sent right across the ditch.
01:35And Stephen, to what extent could this disagreement over deportations risk or compromise other
01:41elements of cooperation with New Zealand?
01:44Look, I think it's a little bit more than an irritant in the relationship, but we also
01:48shouldn't overstate it.
01:49The reality is that it's only one part of a big, broad relationship between Australia
01:54and New Zealand which remains, across multiple domains, extremely close and with an awful
01:59lot of common purpose.
02:01And we saw plenty of evidence of that in the press conference today, perhaps particularly
02:05when it comes to strategic and defence cooperation.
02:08You heard there from Christopher Luxen a couple of times in talking about the need for Australia
02:12and New Zealand to be interoperable when it comes to their military forces.
02:16You've also heard new plans put in place to put senior defence or very senior defence
02:21personnel essentially embedding them in the New Zealand Defence Force and vice versa.
02:26You've also got a new determination from New Zealand to invest, according to Christopher
02:31Luxen, in new capabilities through its Defence Capability Review, which he says will help
02:36New Zealand act as what he's called a force multiplier for Australia in the region.
02:41And of course, both countries share enormous anxieties, including over Russia's invasion
02:46of Ukraine, but also about China's increasingly assertive presence in the Pacific and elsewhere
02:52in the region.
02:53Now, let's take a quick listen to Christopher Luxen talking about his vision for interoperable
02:58forces between Australia and New Zealand and what New Zealand wants to do to bolster its
03:02own security.
03:03New Zealand wants to build over time in its defence capability.
03:07So that work we hope to have completed towards the end of the year, maybe early next year.
03:12We obviously want to do that in close engagement because our intention is to say, you know,
03:16we want to be fully interoperable with Australia's defence forces.
03:19We want to be a force multiplier for Australia.
03:22And by making sure that we can do things like joint procurement, we have alignment on what
03:26we can bring.
03:27That's the work that will go on through the course of the year.
03:30And Stephen, there has been agreement on another issue.
03:33New Zealand has backed a Pacific policing plan that Australia has been pushing.
03:37What did the leaders have to say about that?
03:39Yeah, this is an interesting initiative.
03:41It hasn't got a whole lot of attention yet, but I think that will start to change over time.
03:45Essentially, this is something called the Pacific Policing Initiative that would see
03:49a new training facility set up for Pacific police in Brisbane, just near the airport.
03:53It would also see, at least in theory, a new rotating force of police officers trained
03:58in Australia who could deploy to hotspots across the region, as well as a whole lot
04:02of centres of excellence set up for specialised technical training for police across the Pacific.
04:08Now, it's been described by Australia as a Pacific-led initiative, but the brute reality
04:12is that Australia has been the one that's really been pushing this, and it will be funded
04:17almost entirely by considerable amounts of money from Australian taxpayers.
04:21And there's no denying what's behind this.
04:23It's basically not just a desire to try and bolster Pacific police forces, but also strategic
04:29denial and an attempt to keep China out of the Pacific policing space.
04:33Now, Christopher Luxon backed this in fully today, saying that New Zealand was entirely
04:37supportive of the proposal.
04:39It will be interesting to see what happens next week, or the week after, rather, at the
04:42Pacific Islands Forum leaders' meeting, where they're being asked to essentially endorse
04:46the entire plan.
04:48Solomon Islands has already raised concerns about this being, quote, steamrolled through.
04:52So it will be a critical test of just where this initiative stands at that meeting in
04:56Tonga towards the end of the month.
04:59Foreign Affairs reporter Stephen Judges, thank you for that update.