Address to NZIIA Wairarapa Branch - A partnership in action

Address to NZIIA Wairarapa Branch - HE Harinder Sidhu AM

‘A partnership in action’

17 October 2024

E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā iwi, e rau rangatira mā,

Tēnā koutou katoa

Ko au te māngai o te whenua moemoeā

Ko Harinder Sidhu tōkū ingoa

Ngā mihi mahana kia koutou katoa.

Introduction

I am delighted to be with you all this evening.

I’d like to thank the NZIIA Wairarapa Branch for inviting me to make the very windy drive across the Remutaka Ranges to be here this evening, and for hosting tonight’s event. My thanks especially to Richard Jackson for your warm introduction and hospitality.

I’ve visited the Wairarapa on a number of occasions during my tenure – mostly to enjoy the sunny weather and beautiful wine country – but this the first time I’ve had the opportunity to come and speak to the NZIIA Branch.

I know many of you here tonight are retired diplomats and civil servants, people who have considerable experience in public policy and international affairs. This is perhaps unsurprising – I’m told that half of New Zealand’s public service retires to the Wairarapa!

So it is a particular pleasure to talk to this learned audience tonight about the Australia-New Zealand relationship.

To start off, I’m often struck by how little the relationship between Australia and New Zealand is actually discussed and analysed in academic discourse or broader commentary.

And I think this is because, for the most part, the relationship just works so well that it appears unexciting. We’re so alike, after all. We know each other well and we see the world the same way - mostly. Even where we have irritants, they are not showstoppers and our bonds are strong enough to go beyond them.

What I hope to establish this evening, though, is that the trans-Tasman relationship is not just important, but that it is consequential.

And in fact, given the challenges we face today, now is the time to nurture and build our relationship with our closest friend. This makes thinking intentionally and strategically about the trans Tasman relationship perhaps more important than ever.

The foundations of our partnership

I see my role as High Commissioner as being very much a steward of the bilateral relationship.

So of course the first thing I did when I arrived in Wellington over two years ago was to figure out what the starting point for the relationship was. I made three observations that I expect you can all relate to:

First, it has always been the case that we’ve enjoyed very deep people linkages across the Tasman – it’s why we refer to ‘family’ when we speak about each other. Myself included, most of us have a family member or two on the other side of the ditch.

Second, every relationship has its artefacts, the things that people point to when they try to describe it. For us it is a nostalgia about our historical links and the Anzac tradition, or banter about sport or who owns the pavlova.

My third observation was the sheer breadth of touch points between us across virtually every dimension of national life. I’m referring not just to the commercial links you might see when you walk downtown, or how often our leaders meet.

But it’s also in the way we do business as two nations. Whether it is on economic policy, tax regimes, immigration policy, tourism, emerging technology – on almost any given issue, we each look to the other for ideas or ways to connect.

There are particular challenges which arise from a relationship as broad as ours.

For a start, it can be very difficult to decide what matters most and where it is best to focus your energy or resources. You spread yourself too thin, because you are trying to do everything all at once.

There is also a very real risk that we take each other for granted. We know that the other will always be there, so we don’t really invest the time, thought and effort we might do otherwise to move the relationship forward. The risk of us drifting apart as we are preoccupied elsewhere becomes quite real.

That’s not a risk we can afford in the world we inhabit today.

A challenging global outlook

I don’t need to spell out to this audience the economic and strategic challenges facing everyone, but particularly in the Indo-Pacific region, today.

Australia’s Government has said we find ourselves in the most challenging strategic circumstances since the Second World War. In the words of Australia’s Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, we now find ourselves in a ‘state of permanent contest’ in the Pacific.

We face multiple headwinds to our economic wellbeing, our social cohesion and to our security.

We see war and conflict. Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine has led to a war that is now well in its second year.

In the Middle East, both Australia and New Zealand have repeatedly called for a ceasefire. Just last week in Laos the two Prime Ministers met in the margins of the East Asia Summit to discuss their deep concerns at the escalation of conflict in the Middle East. The global community has made clear that this destructive cycle must stop.

China’s challenges to international law and unsafe behaviour of Chinese vessels in the South China Sea risk miscalculation and escalation.

Climate change and sea level rise raise existential and economic risks to all countries but particularly to island nations in the Pacific, threatening food and water security.

It is becoming ever more difficult for countries to meet their economic priorities in a world of rising protectionism and threats to supply chains.

Technology brings great benefits but also risks to our institutions, democracies and economies through, for example, cyber attack or mis- and dis-information.

In short, we now live in a world of multiple, concurrent and overlapping crises and challenges to our national interest for which there is no single, neat solution.

In meeting these challenges, Australia is harnessing all our tools of statecraft. We are mindful of all our national assets – the resilience of our multicultural society, the strength of our economy and the power of our democratic institutions and rule of law. At the same time, we are harnessing our diplomatic effort and strengthening our defence and security capability.

As we confront a world of unprecedented disruptions, we are reminded of the value of having partners we know, trust and can depend on. None of us can face the headwinds alone.

This is where the Trans-Tasman relationship has increasing salience.

Australia counts New Zealand among our closest partners.

Australia and New Zealand each bring to our partnership unique view points, skills, ideas and capabilities.

Beneath it all lies a level of genuine trust that is rare in an increasingly contested international environment. That trust is a strategic asset.

So there is a strong case for both our countries to look at our relationship with fresh eyes, and to consider how we can face these challenges together.

This, as it happens, is what is already happening now.

Moving the trans-Tasman relationship to a new stage.

As a first step, our two Prime Ministers agreed to a Trans Tasman Road Map to 2035 in August last year, reaffirmed in December.

The Road Map sets out the five highest priorities where Australia and New Zealand should focus our efforts over the coming decade, to put us in the best position to meet global challenges in that time.

Its aim is, in the words of Prime Minister Albanese, to make our partnership “fit for the modern era”.

Those five priorities set out in the Road Map are in:

Modernising and streamlining our economic partnership
Deepening our alliance and cooperation on defence and security
Working together as partners in the Pacific
Upholding and advocating for our shared global values; and
Supporting the connections between our people.

Setting the frame for the future direction of our relationship, Prime Minister Albanese said as he stood alongside PM Luxon in Canberra in July.

“ours is more than a bond of old affection. It is a partnership driven by a new determination, one that recognises that together we’re stronger than just individual countries...”

Building on the Road Map’s framework, this year has seen a significant uplift in interactions between our ministers and Prime Ministers.

For example, in February, Australian and New Zealand Foreign and Defence Ministers met for the first time in a new “2+2” format known as ANZMIN.

This was the first time NZ had participated in a four-way meeting of this kind with any country. Ministers agreed this will be an annual meeting, reflecting the scale of geostrategic issues we are both now facing and our shared strategic interests in addressing them together.

In July this year, we held the second iteration of yet another “2+2” meeting – this time with Ministers for Climate Change and for Finance on both sides. It’s the only such 2+2 meeting of its kind in the world. And that’s because it makes sense to align our efforts to meet the economic, energy and climate transition we are both facing.

Last month New Zealand hosted the annual Closer Economic Relations (CER) Trade Ministers’ meeting in Rotorua. This is a longstanding meeting that underpins the deep economic connections between our two countries. But our renewed focus and the energy that we are bringing to the relationship means that we have been able to view even our longest-running meetings through new eyes.

Even here, we are doing old things in new ways. This year, we combined the Trade Ministers Meeting with a first of its kind trilateral trade ministers meeting between New Zealand, Australia and Fiji. The trilateral talks included discussion of the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER) Plus and how it supports investment and jobs, improves living standards, and deepens Pacific trade connections.

Implementing the Road Map

While we are bringing a renewed focus to all our ministerial engagement, ultimately ours is a leader-led relationship. So it is no surprise that Prime Ministers Albanese and Luxon have met on five separate occasions since November last year.

And their formal Leaders Meeting in Canberra in July was an opportunity to move forward action on the Road Map. I’ll sketch out some of the key points.

On our economic partnership

On the economic relationship, Prime Ministers acknowledged that the world we are in is very different to 1983 when we signed the Closer Economic Relations Agreement.

So, drawing on the work of the Climate and Finance Ministers 2+2, our Leaders agreed to work to ensure our standards for the Net Zero transition are consistent across the Tasman. They also agreed ways to make trans Tasman travel and work easier and more seamless, and to find opportunities for New Zealand businesses to be part of Australia's 'Future Made In Australia' initiative.

On national security and defence

As longstanding military allies, Prime Ministers have committed to ‘deepen and expand our defence partnership’[Joint Statement] between our two nations.

They announced a vision in July this year for our defence forces ‘to be able to come together as an ‘Anzac’ force to respond to regional and global challenges’.

To achieve this, we are taking forward work on joint exercises, joint procurement, exchanges of senior military officers, closer integration of our defence industries, and "increasing our combined operational tempo and presence together in the Indo-Pacific" (Joint Statement).

And they also agreed that a serious cyber-attack on either nation could evoke Article IV of the ANZUS Treaty.

Beneath these agreements between the Prime Ministers there is a recognition that, irrespective of the differences in scale and capability between our defence forces, our security partnership matters.

We each stand to benefit most when our defence forces are interoperable – from joint disaster response through to joint maritime surveillance operations in our region.

On working together in the Pacific

Indeed, nowhere is our collective effort and ambition – on security and beyond – more relevant than in the Pacific.

The Pacific is home for both Australia and New Zealand.

Our future prosperity and our security is tied to that of our Pacific neighbourhood.

Collectively, we want to be the partner of choice for Pacific nations.

Both of us have stepped up our engagement across the Pacific. We want to be present and active listeners with all Pacific countries. Importantly, we’re both founding members of the Pacific Islands Forum, which sits at the region’s core.

This doesn’t mean we engage and invest in exactly the same way. We recognise that Australia and New Zealand each have distinct Pacific personalities, geographies and histories. We are working together to respond to Pacific priorities in a way that harnesses the respective strengths and styles of both countries.

Let me sketch out just a couple of examples of this for you.

As we speak, personnel from across the Australian and New Zealand systems are coordinating closely, working in lockstep to support the Government of Samoa to deliver a successful Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, or CHOGM, next week.

As you know, Samoa is a small country. It will have thousands of delegates descending on it, including both our Prime Ministers and King Charles. At the request of Samoa, we’ll be deploying hundreds of Australian and New Zealand personnel to work side by side – including defence personnel, police, doctors, nurses, cyber experts and legal specialists – to help Samoa deliver a successful CHOGM that truly elevates Pacific voices and priorities.

This is part of the reason why close operational coordination between Australia and New Zealand matters so much – it allows us to be effective partners when called upon to support the delivery of regional priorities.

The second example is about how we are listening and responding to the longer-term, strategic challenges that the region faces.

When we ask our Pacific partners what their biggest concerns are, they tell us climate change is their biggest security challenge. Countries across the region are grappling with the impacts of extreme weather events and disasters.

Just recently, Fiji hosted a Ministerial Talanoa – or meeting – with Australia, New Zealand, and other Pacific Island Countries’ ministers responsible for climate change.

They discussed the Pacific’s regional priorities ahead of COP29 in November and Australia’s bid to co-host COP31 in partnership with the Pacific in 2026.

We want to work together with New Zealand and our Pacific partners on COP31 to draw the world’s attention to the immediate impact of the climate crisis on our region and the urgent need to accelerate global action.

The world may be changing around us, but our geography will not. So it is no surprise that, when Australia and New Zealand look out at the world, the first place we will always see is the Pacific.

Conclusion

In closing, I want to make the case – indeed, it’s a bit of a plea – for looking at our relationship with fresh eyes.

One of my observations, in my last few years as High Commissioner, has been how often we resort to sentimental shorthands when describing ourselves. We talk of our shared ANZAC tradition. We describe ourselves as ‘family’. We have joking rivalries over sport and pavlova.

These things represent the depth of the connections between our peoples. But we do our relationship a disservice if we allow ourselves to be defined only in such sentimental terms. It’s a short step from there to taking one another for granted.

Better, I think, to work toward building a mature, respectful relationship between equals. And, in doing so, to look to the future.

We should consider how we can harness our incredible foundation of trust, confidence and shared values, not just to our mutual benefit, but also to meet the very considerable challenges the world is throwing at us.

This is precisely what we are doing through the Road Map and through the kinds of agreements that our Leaders and Ministers are delivering when they meet.

The Road Map has enabled us to focus our efforts on the areas that best serve our interests into the future - on strengthening our economic links; on deepening our security partnership and on harnessing our strengths as Pacific nations.

This is a big agenda, but one I feel hugely optimistic we can deliver on.

None of this work can be led by Governments alone.

We need to bring together all the key players – civil society, business, academia, and our best minds.

We need to harness our deep well of trust, our personal connections and our shared values.

Far from being unremarkable, this is now a relationship with great energy and dynamism.

And given the nature of the multiple, concurrent challenges we both face – domestically, regionally and globally – the Australia-New Zealand partnership matters now more than ever.

We have an opportunity to make a real difference to our nations and to our region if we get it right.

I look forward to our discussion and to exploring with you the ways we might achieve that together.

Thank you

Address to NZIIA Wairarapa Branch - A partnership in action

Address to NZIIA Wairarapa Branch - HE Harinder Sidhu AM

‘A partnership in action’

17 October 2024

E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā iwi, e rau rangatira mā,

Tēnā koutou katoa

Ko au te māngai o te whenua moemoeā

Ko Harinder Sidhu tōkū ingoa

Ngā mihi mahana kia koutou katoa.

Introduction

I am delighted to be with you all this evening.

I’d like to thank the NZIIA Wairarapa Branch for inviting me to make the very windy drive across the Remutaka Ranges to be here this evening, and for hosting tonight’s event. My thanks especially to Richard Jackson for your warm introduction and hospitality.

I’ve visited the Wairarapa on a number of occasions during my tenure – mostly to enjoy the sunny weather and beautiful wine country – but this the first time I’ve had the opportunity to come and speak to the NZIIA Branch.

I know many of you here tonight are retired diplomats and civil servants, people who have considerable experience in public policy and international affairs. This is perhaps unsurprising – I’m told that half of New Zealand’s public service retires to the Wairarapa!

So it is a particular pleasure to talk to this learned audience tonight about the Australia-New Zealand relationship.

To start off, I’m often struck by how little the relationship between Australia and New Zealand is actually discussed and analysed in academic discourse or broader commentary.

What I hope to establish this evening, though, is that the trans-Tasman relationship is not just important, but that it is consequential.

And in fact, given the challenges we face today, now is the time to nurture and build our relationship with our closest friend. This makes thinking intentionally and strategically about the trans Tasman relationship perhaps more important than ever.

The foundations of our partnership

I see my role as High Commissioner as being very much a steward of the bilateral relationship.

So of course the first thing I did when I arrived in Wellington over two years ago was to figure out what the starting point for the relationship was. I made three observations that I expect you can all relate to:

First, it has always been the case that we’ve enjoyed very deep people linkages across the Tasman – it’s why we refer to ‘family’ when we speak about each other. Myself included, most of us have a family member or two on the other side of the ditch.

Second, every relationship has its artefacts, the things that people point to when they try to describe it. For us it is a nostalgia about our historical links and the Anzac tradition, or banter about sport or who owns the pavlova.

My third observation was the sheer breadth of touch points between us across virtually every dimension of national life. I’m referring not just to the commercial links you might see when you walk downtown, or how often our leaders meet.

But it’s also in the way we do business as two nations. Whether it is on economic policy, tax regimes, immigration policy, tourism, emerging technology – on almost any given issue, we each look to the other for ideas or ways to connect.

There are particular challenges which arise from a relationship as broad as ours.

For a start, it can be very difficult to decide what matters most and where it is best to focus your energy or resources. You spread yourself too thin, because you are trying to do everything all at once.

That’s not a risk we can afford in the world we inhabit today.

A challenging global outlook

I don’t need to spell out to this audience the economic and strategic challenges facing everyone, but particularly in the Indo-Pacific region, today.

Australia’s Government has said we find ourselves in the most challenging strategic circumstances since the Second World War. In the words of Australia’s Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, we now find ourselves in a ‘state of permanent contest’ in the Pacific.

We face multiple headwinds to our economic wellbeing, our social cohesion and to our security.

We see war and conflict. Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine has led to a war that is now well in its second year.

China’s challenges to international law and unsafe behaviour of Chinese vessels in the South China Sea risk miscalculation and escalation.

Climate change and sea level rise raise existential and economic risks to all countries but particularly to island nations in the Pacific, threatening food and water security.

It is becoming ever more difficult for countries to meet their economic priorities in a world of rising protectionism and threats to supply chains.

Technology brings great benefits but also risks to our institutions, democracies and economies through, for example, cyber attack or mis- and dis-information.

In short, we now live in a world of multiple, concurrent and overlapping crises and challenges to our national interest for which there is no single, neat solution.

As we confront a world of unprecedented disruptions, we are reminded of the value of having partners we know, trust and can depend on. None of us can face the headwinds alone.

This is where the Trans-Tasman relationship has increasing salience.

Australia counts New Zealand among our closest partners.

Australia and New Zealand each bring to our partnership unique view points, skills, ideas and capabilities.

Beneath it all lies a level of genuine trust that is rare in an increasingly contested international environment. That trust is a strategic asset.

So there is a strong case for both our countries to look at our relationship with fresh eyes, and to consider how we can face these challenges together.

This, as it happens, is what is already happening now.

Moving the trans-Tasman relationship to a new stage.

As a first step, our two Prime Ministers agreed to a Trans Tasman Road Map to 2035 in August last year, reaffirmed in December.

The Road Map sets out the five highest priorities where Australia and New Zealand should focus our efforts over the coming decade, to put us in the best position to meet global challenges in that time.

Its aim is, in the words of Prime Minister Albanese, to make our partnership “fit for the modern era”.

Those five priorities set out in the Road Map are in:

Modernising and streamlining our economic partnership

Deepening our alliance and cooperation on defence and security

Working together as partners in the Pacific

Upholding and advocating for our shared global values; and

Supporting the connections between our people.

Setting the frame for the future direction of our relationship, Prime Minister Albanese said as he stood alongside PM Luxon in Canberra in July.

“ours is more than a bond of old affection. It is a partnership driven by a new determination, one that recognises that together we’re stronger than just individual countries...”

Building on the Road Map’s framework, this year has seen a significant uplift in interactions between our ministers and Prime Ministers.

For example, in February, Australian and New Zealand Foreign and Defence Ministers met for the first time in a new “2+2” format known as ANZMIN.

This was the first time NZ had participated in a four-way meeting of this kind with any country. Ministers agreed this will be an annual meeting, reflecting the scale of geostrategic issues we are both now facing and our shared strategic interests in addressing them together.

Implementing the Road Map

While we are bringing a renewed focus to all our ministerial engagement, ultimately ours is a leader-led relationship. So it is no surprise that Prime Ministers Albanese and Luxon have met on five separate occasions since November last year.

And their formal Leaders Meeting in Canberra in July was an opportunity to move forward action on the Road Map. I’ll sketch out some of the key points.

On our economic partnership

On the economic relationship, Prime Ministers acknowledged that the world we are in is very different to 1983 when we signed the Closer Economic Relations Agreement.

On national security and defence

As longstanding military allies, Prime Ministers have committed to ‘deepen and expand our defence partnership’[Joint Statement] between our two nations.

They announced a vision in July this year for our defence forces ‘to be able to come together as an ‘Anzac’ force to respond to regional and global challenges’.

To achieve this, we are taking forward work on joint exercises, joint procurement, exchanges of senior military officers, closer integration of our defence industries, and "increasing our combined operational tempo and presence together in the Indo-Pacific" (Joint Statement).

And they also agreed that a serious cyber-attack on either nation could evoke Article IV of the ANZUS Treaty.

Beneath these agreements between the Prime Ministers there is a recognition that, irrespective of the differences in scale and capability between our defence forces, our security partnership matters.

We each stand to benefit most when our defence forces are interoperable – from joint disaster response through to joint maritime surveillance operations in our region.

On working together in the Pacific