Dr. Geoffrey Miller

Jacinda Ardern’s speech at the China Business Summit was a crowd-pleaser. Geoffrey Miller explains its role in the “rebalancing” of New Zealand’s orientation to China and the West. For critics who believed she had gone soft on China, Jacinda Ardern’s line that differences between China and New Zealand were becoming “harder to reconcile” will be interpreted as tough talk. They will see the speech as backtracking and stepping back from what they considered an appeasement-like stance from Ardern’s foreign minister, Nanaia Mahuta. For its part, China will be likely to understand Ardern’s speech as a necessary component of a wider...

This Sunday marks the six-month anniversary of Nanaia Mahuta’s appointment as foreign minister. Geoffrey Miller looks at how she is grappling with some fundamental geopolitical challenges. In just her first six months, Nanaia Mahuta has already achieved something remarkable. She is arguably New Zealand’s highest-profile foreign minister in decades – and all without even leaving the country. Her speech to the China Council last week – and the ensuing Q&A in which she openly signalled an unwillingness to sign up to future Five Eyes statements criticising China – has proven to be a pivotal moment. It has unleashed a debate...

A new analysis by the Democracy Project of Nanaia Mahuta’s public statements and tweets over the past six months reveals some intriguing initial insights into her foreign policy agenda. By the end of Wednesday this week, Nanaia Mahuta had made 31 formal statements or speeches on foreign affairs in her time as minister. On Twitter, she had published 85 original tweets (i.e. excluding retweets of others) on foreign affairs over the same time period. Of the 31 official statements and speeches on the Beehive website, eight statements related to either Australia or the Pacific. Four were concerned with the provision...

Senior Twitter executives this week spoke at a Dunedin conference on social media and democracy to explain the platform’s approach towards freedom of expression. The high-level participation at the two-day conference by three of Twitter’s managers appears to be one of the first times that Twitter has engaged in such a public forum to explain its stance on free speech since the US Capitol was stormed on January 6. The events in Washington D.C.  that day precipitated the banning of then US President Donald Trump from both Twitter and Facebook and came against a backdrop of a wider discussion on...

A new analysis of the careers that MPs held before they were elected reveals New Zealand’s 53rd Parliament represents an extremely diverse range of work and life experiences. The research, by BlacklandPR and the Democracy Project, identified over 200 different careers, and over 500 individual jobs among Parliamentarians. The five most popular careers for MPs are (in descending order) managers, analysts, teachers, lawyers, and elected representatives. Blackland PR Director Mark Blackham says the findings demonstrate a surprising depth of career diversity and work experiences. “Parliament has more lawyers and teachers than you find in ordinary life, but it also has...

Below is an Arabic summary/translation of my article ‘New Zealand’s surprising relationship with the Middle East’, originally published in English for the Democracy Project on 29 November 2020. The summary/translation was produced and kindly offered for republication here by Mohammed Dagamseh of the Embassy of the State of Kuwait, Wellington: علاقة نيوزيلاند في الشرق الأوسط بين الحاضر والمستقبل في مقال للكاتب والمحلل السياسي Geoffrey Miller منشور له في جامعة فيكتوريا في ويلينغتون في مشروع معهد الديمقراطية/ Democracy Project أشار فيه إلى العلاقات النيوزيلاندية الشرق أوسطية في الوقت الحاضر والمستقبل مركزاً فيه على العلاقات العسكرية، والتجارية، والشعبية، والدبلوماسية، والوزارية. وتساءل ميلر...

Below is an Arabic summary/translation of my article ‘Foreign policy in a pandemic – Nanaia Mahuta’s first challenges as foreign minister’, originally published in English for the Democracy Project on 3 November 2020. The summary/translation was produced and kindly offered for republication here by Mohammed Dagamseh of the Embassy of the State of Kuwait, Wellington: ردود الفعل والتحديات أمام أول وزيرة خارجية لنيوزيلاند في مقال للكاتب والمحلل السياسي Geoffrey Miller منشور له في جامعة فيكتوريا في ويلينغتون في مشروع معهد الديمقراطية/ Democracy Project يوم 3/11/2020 أشار فيه إلى بروز وجه نسوي جديد لأول مرة في منصب وزير الخارجية النيوزيلاندية حيث...

Geoffrey Miller looks at New Zealand’s growing relationship with the Middle East and North Africa – and contemplates its future Amidst New Zealand’s level 4 coronavirus lockdown in March, all but a handful of the country’s troops stationed in Iraq returned home, three months earlier than scheduled. The New Zealand personnel had been deployed to Camp Taji since 2015 to train Iraqi soldiers, as part of the Global Coalition to Defeat Daesh/ISIS. The end to the deployment was officially unrelated to Covid-19, but it was heavily overshadowed by it. Yet the overall lack of fanfare was perhaps also symbolic of...

Over the past 30 years, ministerial responsibility for New Zealand’s foreign affairs has changed hands remarkably rarely. Since 1990, just four individuals have dominated the portfolio – Don McKinnon (1990-1999), Phil Goff (1999-2005), Winston Peters (2005-8 and again from 2017 to 2020) and Murray McCully (2008-2017). Only two others have held the role, and then only very briefly – Gerry Brownlee (for five months after McCully retired in 2017) and Helen Clark herself (in 2008, after she stood down Winston Peters from the position).  By contrast, over the same 30-year period, New Zealand has had no fewer than 12 different...