Geoffrey Miller

New Zealand’s new free trade agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council is a major win for both sides. Todd McClay, New Zealand’s trade minister, announced the long-awaited deal on Thursday with his counterparts in Doha, Qatar. It is a remarkable, yet also surprising sudden success: the genesis of the agreement lies in talks that began in 2006. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is made up of six countries that are among the world’s richest – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). For New Zealand, the Gulf states are both highly lucrative markets in themselves,...

Change is coming to America. Next month’s elections are likely to pave the way for an overhaul of US foreign policy– regardless of whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris wins the presidency. Decisions made in Washington will also have a direct impact on Wellington. While the Biden administration started its term with a strong, even dominant focus on the Indo-Pacific, Washington has inevitably become preoccupied by turmoil elsewhere – most recently in the Middle East, where a wider regional war centred on Iran and Israel is arguably already underway. One year on from the October 7 attacks by Hamas, there...

New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are moving closer together – at record pace. Just a year after agreeing to enter initial talks, Wellington and Abu Dhabi have concluded negotiations on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (or CEPA for short). The deal will go down as one of New Zealand’s fastest trade negotiations. It is arguably the biggest breakthrough for New Zealand’s relations with the Middle East since negotiations began in 2006 on a wider free trade agreement (FTA) with the six-country Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The CEPA is not a substitute for the wider deal with the...

New Zealand is not just on the same page, but is now in lockstep with Australia. That was the general theme of keynote foreign policy address by New Zealand’s Prime Minister to a Sydney thinktank on Thursday. Christopher Luxon’s 20-minute speech took a decisively hawkish tone. The Lowy Institute address restated and reiterated recent positioning both from Winston Peters, his foreign minister, and from a similar speech that Luxon had given in Tokyo in June. Indeed, Luxon was lavish in his praise for Peters, who he said was ‘among the most activist and impactful of New Zealand’s foreign ministers in...

As tensions in the Middle East rise further, New Zealand’s approach to the region continues to evolve. Neither Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, nor foreign minister Winston Peters were immediately keen to comment publicly about Israel’s assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. On social media, Luxon instead promoted the Government’s recently introduced tax cuts, while Peters posted on the launch of a new shortwave radio transmitter for Radio New Zealand’s Pacific-focused service, a key plank of Wellington’s public diplomacy efforts. But it would be wrong to call New Zealand reticent when it comes to the war in Gaza...

Christopher Luxon is finding his foreign policy feet. Now eight months into the job, New Zealand’s Prime Minister is in Washington DC this week to attend the NATO summit. It is the third year in a row that Wellington has been invited to the annual gathering of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the West’s premier political and military alliance. This year’s meeting – already carrying special weight by commemorating the 75th anniversary of NATO’s founding – looks set to be the most substantive summit yet in terms of New Zealand’s involvement. New plans are being unveiled for NATO’s cooperation with...

Don’t put it all at risk. That’s likely to be the take-home message for New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon in his meetings with Li Qiang, the Chinese Premier. Li’s visit to Wellington this week is the highest-ranking visit by a Chinese official since 2017. The trip down under – Li is also visiting Australia – constitutes something of a charm offensive by Beijing. Pandas are on the agenda for Li’s stop in Adelaide. China’s advance publicity for the trip has accentuated the positives and downplayed points of disagreement. The Chinese foreign ministry’s official spokesperson reminded journalists of the ‘enormous...

The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. Carr had made highly critical comments about Pillar II of the Aukus pact, which New Zealand is contemplating joining, at a conference held by New Zealand’s Labour Party opposition in Wellington in mid-April. Meanwhile, trade minister Todd McClay has engaged in some plain speaking of his own. In a press release on Thursday, McClay...

This could be a watershed week for New Zealand’s international relations. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, is heading to Washington DC for a full week of meetings. The surprisingly lengthy trip just happens to coincide with a major trilateral summit of leaders from the United States, Japan and the Philippines. And a media report at the weekend suggested a wider Aukus ‘Pillar II’ announcement is imminent. The original Aukus partners are Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Rahm Emanuel, the US Ambassador to Japan, wrote late last week that Japan was ‘about to become the first additional Pillar...