Address to Tāmaki electorate
H E Ms Harinder Sidhu AM,
Australian High Commissioner to New Zealand
Friday 7 March 2025
Thank you Minister.
And thank you for inviting me to speak with the people of Tamaki, an electorate that has held considerable sway over New Zealand’s history, from the time it elected Robert Muldoon as its representative.
It’s a real pleasure to have to the opportunity to speak to you all today in what is actually my second last week as Australian High Commissioner to New Zealand.
Of course, I’m very sad to be concluding my term, but it has also provided me with the opportunity to reflect on my time here.
Over the three years that I’ve had the privilege of representing Australia in New Zealand as High Commissioner, I’ve noticed something about how we tend to describe the Australia-New Zealand relationship.
Amidst the harking to our shared history, our Anzac tradition, or our references to sporting rivalry and...yes…competition over who owns the pavlova, one word keeps popping up with great regularity.
That word is “family”.
And the longer I have been here, the more I can see why we would say that.
After all, a family is made up of people with deep relationships. Some 700,000 Kiwis call Australia home. There is virtually no Australian or New Zealander who doesn’t have at least a friend or relative living across the ditch. We are deeply interconnected.
Like families, our shared histories and cultures mean that we don’t have to explain ourselves to the other when we meet. We instantly understand each other and get on. We laugh at the same jokes…mostly.
And like families, even when we have our differences, when push comes to shove we have each others’ backs. In times of trouble, we back each other and we turn to each other for help before we go anywhere else.
This was brought home to me so strongly when, in my first few months in this job, I had the great honour to present Australian Emergency Service Medals to over 460 Kiwi firefighters, military personnel and other volunteers who came to help us fight the horrific bushfires in 2019-20.
That was the greatest bushfire catastrophe Australia had ever experienced. It burned over a million hectares of land. More than 3,000 homes were lost and 34 people lost their lives.
Yet, I heard the same story over and over again when I spoke to these folk. On hearing about our distress, when the call came, they did not hesitate. Some people packed up at only some hours’ notice, leaving their jobs and families behind to go to Australia to fight the bushfires. When they left, they didn’t know where in Australia they would go, or how long they would be there.
One man, who had been severely and permanently injured by a burning tree branch, told me cheerfully that if he was still able, he would do it all over again.
When I tell this story to others, they often reply “well, that’s what friends are for”. They’re wrong. With New Zealand and Australia, it’s more than that. It’s family.
What that says is that there is a deep well of goodwill, of confidence and of trust between our two people and countries.
As a diplomat, my job is to find ways for our two countries to work closer and better together. This is especially important now, as we face a world that is becoming much more unpredictable, volatile and, yes, dangerous.
In my job, that trust between Australia and New Zealand is unique. It’s an unbreakable tie that has allowed us in the past to think audaciously and ambitiously - for example, in building economic integration through the CER agreement in 1983.
But there are limits to thinking about ourselves as family when we are talking about relationships between two countries.
Families can also take each other for granted. They can stop listening to each other or doing the work to understand where the other is coming from. They can forget to care for and nurture their relationships until, sometimes, it is too late.
In the world we are living in now, that is something Australia and New Zealand cannot afford to do.
So my focus during my tenure as High Commissioner has been to think about how Australia and New Zealand might usefully build upon the strong foundation of family ties and deep trust between us.
I have worked to get both countries to think differently about our relationship. To see ourselves as in a mature partnership between two countries working together in defence of our interests in an increasingly contested world.
If we are to succeed, then we need to focus.
We have to be able to look at the many, many links and connections between Australia and New Zealand and identify which issues are the most important – where we are going to invest most of our efforts.
In July 2023, our Prime Ministers did just that when they launched the Trans-Tasman Roadmap to 2035.
The Roadmap is a statement of where and how we will work together as we face a changing world over the coming decade.
It aims, in the words of Prime Minister Albanese, to make our partnership “fit for the modern era”.
So, how does the Roadmap propose to do that?
For a start, instead of trying to cover off on everything in our relationship, we are investing our efforts in five areas which we see will bring us the greatest benefit in the twenty-first century.
These are:
A modern economic partnership – building new areas of economic partnership, such as in climate change or the digital economy;
Building security and resilience – recognising the value of our military alliance and working toward regional stability and security;
Partnering in the Pacific – bringing each of our distinct relationships and approaches to bear in a joint enterprise with our Pacific partners;
Upholding global principles, values and norms; and
Nurturing our people-to-people links.
This isn’t just a fancy diplomatic document which will sit on the shelf gathering dust. The Roadmap is now translating into action. I’ve seen in my time here just the impact this has had.
There has been a tangible uplift in how we work together to address the challenges we face in the world. We are now working together more closely and with a greater sense of purpose, than has been the case in recent years.
This extends across our engagement in the Pacific, between our defence forces and security institutions and on our approach to building a digital economy, on climate change and the energy transition.
This new, energised partnership is especially important today.
We are facing a world now of increasing disruption. Just look around at what is going on. Wars are underway in the Middle East and Ukraine; the Pacific has become a region of permanent strategic contest for us both; and authoritarian powers are flexing their muscles. Those certainties under which both Australia and New Zealand have prospered for so many decades – things like international law or global trading rules – are all now under challenge.
In this world, the Australia-New Zealand partnership has a fresh relevance. Right now, we need friends and allies who we can trust completely as we navigate uncertainty.
Dare I say it, but right now we need family.
And if there is one thing that is certain, it is that the next few years will continue to test us both. My successor, Daniel Sloper, will have his work cut out for him.
But I think we are both up to the challenge. We are now building our relationship on very solid foundations, with a clear focus provided by the Roadmap.
l return to Australia in a couple of weeks, with a clear conviction about the value of this relationship. You can be sure that I will continue to be a strong advocate for us both from Canberra.
It remains only for me to wish the people of New Zealand the very best. It has been a tremendous honour and privilege to serve as High Commissioner to New Zealand, and I want to thank you all for making it so rewarding.
Thank you all for your attention.
