Behind the scenes at APEC 2025: Golf, fried chicken, and choppers

Luxon will have at the economic conference. Despite the two not having a formal bilateral the summit is straight off the back of one with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or Arsian. Newstalk ZB political reporter Azaria Hawe has been traveling alongside Luxon and she joins us now on the Front Page. First off, Azaria apek Yan For people who don't know what these acronyms are, what are they?

Chris Luxin has met with a number of world leaders at this and had face to face what we call bilateral meetings, So those are really significant. It's sort of having these countries together, and New Zealand is a country that relies on trade quite a lot, so it is really important that we put face to name and keep up those relationships in terms of trading. There's also a number of deals that have taken place or some that

are getting closer to taking place as well. So the Association of Southeast Asian Nations a huge sort of trading block there in New Zealand, aiming to really finalize and ratify a comprehensive strategic partnership that would make it one of sort of just a few countries in the world that has that basically an upgraded trading relationship, and that would be really significant for New Zealand exporters, but also

for the global economy of Usian. We've been hearing that ASIAN and APEC represent sort of about sixty to seventy percent of the world's economy, which is massive. I mean we're talking about some of the people that are at APEC as well, China's Jijinpeing, the US's Donald Trump as well.

So some of the most important people in the world are here and Chris Luxen is getting a chance to see some of these people face to face talk about It's also really significant as it comes with the tariff rollout amidst all of that from the US President Donald Trump. But basically the gist of these meetings APEC is in South Korea this year, Asian which was just wrapped up recently.

That was in Kuala Lumpur. So the Prime Minister has traveled across the world for these so have a lot of world leaders as well, So really significant economic talks. Also talks about security and trade and just giving an opportunity for those countries to meet each other and speak and maybe get some trade deals across the line, or at least a bit closer to happening.

with Malaysia, A big investment was announced. One of them was on renewable energy, so that was supporting wind energy into New Zealand. And also hotel, the hotel industry and tourism. That's a massive industry for New Zealand as well. I mean, it's a very significant one, and especially if we look at how it works in Asia, it's relatively nearby in terms of that, so hoping that that might boost travel. So take me through Acion.

trading relationship there. The Prime ministers also match with the leader of Cambodia as well and also Thailand, those as well really significant globally. There's been a conflict taking place. There's been a cease fire as well that has been overseen by the American President, So it is good to see how those nations are reacting. Chris Luxen speaking about them both highly and also praising some of the efforts to get where we are now in terms of that

cease fire as well. So there's been a number of meetings and also as we've been talking about, a number of business meetings as well that have been taking place. A lot of people actually some people have recognized Chris Luxin from a former life, people saying he was the former chief executive of Air New Zealand as well while introducing him, and I feel like Luxon has also been using that to his advantage. He's sat in a press conference recently that he's spoken about his business background as

well with a number of people. So that is a really significant, I suppose skill that Chris Luxon has coming into this having that business background and also being the Prime Minister of New Zealand being able to mash those together in terms of these big economic talks very significant here.

to everybody else. And as you've seen a lot of what you know otherwise, he creates chaos, and it creates a lack of certainty and a lack of clarity, and as a result, businesses don't invest in, consumers don't spend, and so you know, that's that's the second and third order consequences of the US and China not being working together for mutual benefit.

speak before they both went into a formal dinner. That dinner was hosted by the South Korean president and it was put on for APEC leaders, a really intimate dinner setting as well. It was a sort of small white table in quite a big room as well. Just the world leaders were there. So some of the other gala dinners that we've seen had officials and media as well. The media were there for a bit of it, but

there were no officials, no diplomats. It was just the big names, and Chris Luxen was one of those names. He went into this meeting with Donald Trump. World leaders had already arrived at the dinner. People like Anthony Alberanizi, Canada's Mark Karney as well were already sort of in the room in this kind of waiting room. I suppose with media before actually heading into the dinner, and then two p all came through the door, Chris Luxon and

Donald Trump. So they came through the door and had a few remarks to media and also had quite a quite a funny interaction. Last one here, I thought, so Chris Luckson obviously famously doesn't have any hair. It was quite a chummy and funny interaction between those leaders as well. But Chris Luckson had a press conference after that meeting and after that formal dinner as well, and managed to

speak a bit about what happened. He said he wouldn't give a blow by blow analysis, but said that it was a good opportunity to be able to speak to to Donald Trump and to a number of other world leaders. I believe there were about seven or eight leaders at that dinner table, so very intimate setting. He said, you would imagine the topic of tariffs to come up, but didn't really go into too much detail about what those

conversations look like. Also, interestingly, the Prime Minister invited Donald Trump to sort of have a look at New Zealand. Donald Trump is a keen golfer, and Chris Luckson said that New Zealand would maybe be a good place to practice some of that golf and to have a try on some of our golf courses as well. We'll see if that invitation is accepted. I believe there's been similar invitations in terms of Australia and things like that. Donald

Trump obviously a very busy man. But Chris Luckson did say at his press conference, if that were to happen, which is a big if, just to preface, if that were to happen, he thinks that New Zealand would be able to cope with this sort of security detail that would be needed for something like that. But in terms of the actual meeting, so so significant, so major. It's the first time actually that Donald Trump and Ris Luckson

have met in person. They spoke on the phone while when Trump was confirmed as the US president, as you'd expect, but on that day you'd also expect Trump to be getting calls from pretty much every world leader, so there wouldn't really be a chance to actually go into much detail. And also, finally, Donald Trump said Chris l Likesen was

a friend of his. And then after a sort of a bit of questions were thrown at Donald Trump in that press room before the dinner, he said, I like your man from New Zealand.

be in New Zealand's best interests. So he has been pushing in the background speaking about his views on tariffs. His views on tariffs are well known, but what we aren't one hundred percent clear about is how much of that actually got through to Donald Trump at that sort of dinner. He's saying he's not going to go into those details, but also said, well, it would be obvious that something like that would come up. I mean, this

is a major economic convention. There's a lot of these talks taking place, and tariffs is one of the biggest things globally that has been taking place in terms of the APEC region and just the world in terms of global trade. So you would expect that to come up, But in terms of what was actually spoken about, it's not very clear. The world leaders keeping relatively tight lipped, but you would assume that maybe they might even have to to sort of keep a good relationship with Donald

Trump as well. I mean, just getting that meeting is very significant, so you wouldn't want to be upsetting the man just after meeting him, you think.

part to play in that as well. And also yesterday there was an event at the Skyline lou that's a big company in New Zealand and sort of trying to get that investment and tourism as well, trying to really show New Zealand as a place to visit. And I mean, how much better of a way to do it than in a place where a bunch of world leaders from Asia and across the globe are in the same room together. There's media from all over the world here covering these

events and covering what is going on. So there's a number of things still taking place also, bilateral meetings with a number of people, Chris Luxen meeting with South Korea's President Lee as well after that sort of formal dinner that they had as well with Donald Trump and some other world leaders. So still a lot of economic talks, meetings and business events as well here.

interacted with. They actually came to an event at Asian as well, so we kind of were like, oh, I saw you a couple of days ago in Kuala Lumpur and now you're here in South Korea. But yeah, there's a lot of press packs, a lot of people, lots going on as well, and also just in the backgrounds and in the behind the scenes. A lot of cultural performances is food trucks as well with Korean food, so that's as well interesting trying to show that off to

the media and the Korean food, the Korean culture. There's been a performances drumming, We've had some fried chicken from a Korean food track, and in fact I was actually interviewed by Korean State TV on whether or not I liked the fried chicken. They were doing sort of boxes with some of the foreign media, and it was great.

It was really good. It's very good fried chicken. So trying to see if I can find that interview clip somewhere, but yeah, it's really cool to see all of the media here as well, a lot of American media as you'd expect as well, traveling with the American President Donald Trump. They're sort of also in the room as well. But yeah, it's been a really really interesting and significant event and one of the things that you would sort of expect, but has been really eye opening to see just the

amount of security everywhere. I mean, there's security guards, there's police as far as the eye can see the station sort of everywhere around the city as well. There's also flags around the city that say APEC on them. It's very obvious that APEC is taking place. There's also been

road closures for motorcades. And the other day actually we saw Trump's motorcade forty eight cars, forty eight vehicles that were in that motorcade and also get this, a helicopter above the motorcade as well, so massive, that was huge. New Zealand has a motiicate as well, but forty eight cars nowhere near.

to sniff through people's media bags as well. I mean, these are some of the biggest world leaders in the entire world, and they were They had dogs sniffing through people's bags. They had scanners and sort of things that you would see at an airport, so very high security here trying to protect some of the biggest diplomats, the biggest, most influential people.