Kilda.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and This is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented.
By The New Zealand Herald.
This week is seeing New Zealand's highest ranking politicians walking a tricky diplomatic tight rope. Prime Minister Christopher Luxen has been courting his Indian counterpartner Andra Mody to kickstart trade deal discussions, but their meeting took a twist when Mody raised concerns about anti Indian activity in New Zealand. Around the same time, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters has been in Washington for his first face to
face talks with the second Trump administration. Those come at a time when the US is causing upset in Europe with its stance on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
So how should New Zealand.
Handle these new diplomatic relationships and can we apply any of our tactics from our relationship with today on the front page? Why can't our university professor of international law, Our Gillespie is with us to look at our changing world?
Now let's start with India.
The meeting between Luxon and Mody seemed quite positive for the most part, Hey, but There was a small discussion near the end where Mody said, and I quote, we have shared our concerns about anti India activities by some illegal elements in New Zealand. We are confident that we will continue to receive the support of the New Zealand government in taking action against these illegal elements. Now he's referring to the separatist Kalistan movement. What do you make of this coming up in the talks?
This is a difficult area. I think the first point is that when he mister Mody mentioned illegal elements, he's talking about illegal in terms of India, not illegal in terms of Zealand. The problem of seek separatism and its link to violence and terror historically has been very strong and there has been a number of atrocious acts and reprisals against these communities over time. The way India has responded is that it's designated a number of these groups
associated with separatism as terrorist organizations. New Zealand and other countries haven't responded in the same way, and this has created difficulties not just with this current statement, but also like with countries like Canada, whereby there has been interference in Canadian domestic affairs against some of these separatist groups.
From here, the question will be whether there is pressure put upon the government to designate the separatists seek separatists as terror groups, which would mean talking in support of them, raising finance for them, or any advocacy for them a criminal activity, or the approach with New Zealand has which has continued to allow them to exercise their freedom of
speech and exercise it responsibly. The key thing is that there should never be an advocacy for violence at home or advocacy for violence abroad.
Luxeon quickly said after that statement, New Zealand has strong free speech laws and this had been expressed. Does this suggest a potential issue further down the track.
It does suggest a potential issue because some of these communities seeking separatism do methods like they hold fake referendums, or they have advocacy which can be quite confrontational to India. And the question will be where the New Zealand does
more to control these groups. It's hard for us because we value freedom of speech and dissent quite strongly, and we allow diaspora communities to speak freely without fear of repercussion from their original countries, and so we see this worth communities from China, communities from Russia and communities from Iran, whereby they are allowed to speak with the freedoms that New Zealand gives an opposition to the countries that they
once came from. The point where it becomes difficult and it should not be tolerated is if it involves any advocacy of violence. But for discussion of peaceful change, I think we need to be liberal and open to these avenues.
New Zealand is committed to doing more with India across a wide range of areas, defense and security, trade and economics, people to people ties, education, tourism, sports and culture. Our two way trade today stands at around three billion New Zealand dollars a year, but there is huge potential to grow.
And it is in that context that I want to say thank you and I'm pleased to welcome me if it's a Minister Goyal and Minister maclay on their agreement between New Zealand and India that we will launch immediately free comprehensive free trade agreement negotiations making sure that we work towards a balanced ambition and comprehensive agreement.
How do we balance things like this when we are hard launching our pitch for a trade deal with India, does the fact that we're perhaps keener than India for this deal give them power.
We're at a point in international politics where everything's becoming quite muddy, and an ideal world, discussions about trade wouldn't be muddied by discussions about dissident groups in foreign countries. But what you're seeing is that discussions about trade are now linked to the war on drugs, illegal immigration gangs. And you don't have to see mister Trump for this.
And so what used to be distinct avenues whereby you'd have your negotiations and deal with it one problem at a time, now everything is getting quite muddy, and so that means it's not unexpected that you might find the relationship for a trade deal linked to political repression of a group that is deemed by terrorist organization in India but not in New.
Zealand on the other side of the world.
Winston Peters has been in the US with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday.
Well, we shared some significant information. For example that since eighteen seventy we've been asking it about a trade agreement and I put it out to him how patient they were on a matter of tariff. We had set the centard four decades ago and other countries were catching up in terms of fairness. He understood that. So we came where much more confident than when we originally came here.
He's came to secure New Zealand an exemption from agricultural tariffs the US has promised from April second. Now, New Zealand doesn't currently seem to be on the US's radar when it comes to these tariffs and the trade wars happening overseas. What do you think we need to do to not catch their attention, to stay under the radar.
Well, I think we are on the radar. It just hasn't been announced, and we aren't going to find out whether we've been detected and will be impacted until April the second. I think what will happen, and what has been happenant is what we have tried exceptionally hard not to cause offense to mister Trump or his regime. And this means that when things have been difficult or some of mister Trump's suggestions have been problematic for New Zealand in terms of what we believe as a rule based order,
we haven't been critical unlike other countries. And then when mister Goff, our ambassador, our highest diplomat in Britain's made some undiplomatic comments, he was removed from his post. And so our approach so far has been not to upset mister Trump, even though he may be doing things which
are not in our interest. The problem we face is that it might not be enough just being quiet and not upsetting mister Trump, because he's already made clear with the countries which is closer to like Australia than New Zealand, that even they will not have exemptions over the moves of a free trade and so I would be surprised if we are exempt from the new next level of tariffs while comparable countries which are closer to him are not exempt. But having said that, I think that the
role here is manifest uncertainty. We really can't predict what will happen or why, but you can expect that things will be linked together in unexpected ways, and so you might find that we are exemple in a trade deal if we do something else that's not related to trade.
What do you think the US will want to see from New Zealand going forward over the next four years.
I think political support will be very important for initiatives that the United States wants, and these will be from reforming the international system through to bilateral initiatives that may involve security. And so they certainly won't expect us to be critical of any other decisions of mister Trump, because these aren't seen as policy decisions. They're seen as personal decisions,
and they can be held quite detrimentally against us. So I think as he reforms the international architecture, he will expect us to step in behind and not voice opposition. That will get quite hard as things like the details of Ukraine's peace agreement come to the fore, and we may have to swallow a peace agreement which we have
vocally and strategically defended Ukraine for. We may now have to find that some of the things that we hold sacrisant, like non annexation of territory, accountability for crimes, freedom of countries to join the security arrangements that they want, may all get pushed to one side. Because mister Trump will make a peace here with mister Putin. We will either have to be silent or if the international world divides
and Europe forms a different group. Have to choose between mister Trump and the European approach.
Defense has become a big talking point in recent months. Trump has reaffirmed his previous wishes to see the US's partners spend more on defense, and both Luxeen and Peters have been pushing that message as well, including in India. But Trump wanted to see a two percent of GDP go towards defense when he was last in office. That would be double what our government committed in last year's budget. So can we afford to invest this much in defense?
And what would happen if we aren't being shown to pull our weight.
I think two percent now is your minimum opening bid. Countries in Europe are getting closer to three or four percent. We are in a very concerning arms race right now. That the two percent is your minimum, and that that's the NATO target that we're being tied to. Mister Luxon has expressed approval of the two percent target, But the question we have is when will that be achieved by
and what kit you will buy and from who. The question of affordability is a horrible question because every piece of military kit you buy has an opportunity cost, which means it's not being spent on housing, health or education. The challenge we've got is that the world is changing so quickly and the risks are rising. That countries similar to us have the same challenge, but they too have to make the same commitment of a two percent or
more change. It's not like anyone's flush with money right now, but everyone's facing the same risks and needs to prepare forward.
It a high stakes phone call today between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
We're getting down to a very critical stage.
It's believed to be the first time Trump and Putin are speaking to each other since Ukraine agreed to a thirty day ceasefire with US negotiators a week ago. Still no guarantees from Russia.
And it's a bad situation in Russia, and it's a bad situation in Ukraine.
What's happening in Ukraine is not good.
But we're going to see if we can work a peace agreement.
Both leaders said to discuss the future of the war in Ukraine, including possibly how land and assets in Ukraine could be divided.
Speaking of defense and conflicts, Luxon took part in a virtual leader's summit for the Coalition of the Willing so countries backing Ukraine and looking to deploy peacekeepers to the region. Now, the US's stance on Ukraine has flip flopped a bit in recent weeks, hey since we last spoke. Currently, the US and Ukraine have agreed to the potential of a ceasefire, but Russia doesn't seem very interested in The US currently isn't doing much to force them to the table. Despite
a mammoth two hour call between Putin and Trump. Where does this leave New Zealand? Do you think we will be siding with Europe more on this one?
It's too early to say. And the ceasefire that's been negotiated between mister Putin and mister Trump is at an early stage, and they've agreed a partial ceasefire to cover energy infrastructure. They're going to talk about a maritime ceasefire over the Black Sea. There's no discussion of a ceasefire on the front lines where the soldier's arm but mister Putin has made it clear that he expects that there will be no rearmament or resupply of uk position, which
puts Ukraine at a distinct disadvantage. There's no international observers to see whether the small bit that they've agreed will actually even be monitored independently. Mister Putin seems to be saying that they want the ceasefire to be linked to substantive peace negotiations at the same time, which means that he will have leverage that Zelensky doesn't have in the way that if the negotiations go badly, the partial ceasefire
will break quite quickly. For New Zealand, what this means is we have to see what the terms of the agreement are. And it appears that mister Putin and mister Trump have agreed that there will be some annexation of territory. And that's even before we discuss issues of compensation, accountability and sovereign choices of alliances. With that one principle of annexation of territory being given over that this goes against the UN Charter, that this goes against basic principles of
international law. And so if the Americans and Russian degree this is the first step for peace, we're instantly going to find a reaction from Europe. And because the Europeans might say no, we don't accept this, and we will continue to support Ukraine. If that does happen, New Zealand will have to say, well, we're either going to follow Trump's approach or the approach of the Europeans with the
Coalition of the Willing. This is a discussion between France and Britain at the forefront about whether there would be some soldiers who would be put as a security blanket for Ukraine against further potential aggression by Russia. At the moment, mister Putin seems to have no tolerance for this idea, and so we've got to be careful about talking ourselves into a circle until we know exactly what the parameters are that Trump and Putin want.
Should we be taking a harderligne on this.
We are doing the correct thing being part of the discussion of the Coalition of the Willing, and we are doing the correct thing to show our willingness to be part of this approach. It's premage sure to try to say what path we should take until we can see where Putin and Trump land, and only then we should
be able to respond. But at the same time we need to be very careful that we don't sacrifice principles about international rules and international order which help keep peace and security for all of the world and benefit countries like New Zealand.
Our New Zealand has a unique relationship with China compared to our other Five Eyes partners. We tend to get along with them pretty well, even when Australia and the US are at odds with them. Are there any key lessons, any dos or don'ts from that relationship we could look at applying to the Trump administration, to India, to any of those tense geopolitical situations.
At the moment, I think.
That the diplomatic relationship with China is good. It could be better. There was concerning what happened over the Cook Islands and this will be difficult to manage in the future. I think the economic relationship is excellent. I think the cultural relationship could be strengthened, and we need to find more initiatives between countries to build bonds bilaterally and in
the region. But the lesson for the United States and New Zealand is that with China we speak freely behind closed doors and the discussions are robust and forthright, but we try not to conduct those in public. But that is beginning to change now as some actions come to our attention. But with America, I think it's the same.
We need to be able to speak very clearly behind closed doors, but be very careful what we say in public, because whether we like it or not, some misplaced words could have implications of ten to millions of dollars for New Zealand exporters.
Would you like to see us taking a stronger stance in any realm the same way we did, say forty years ago, with nuclear testing, Yes, yeah, I would.
I think the one area I'm particularly concerned about is the arms race and what we need to be more forthright. Even though we must increase our capacity, we need to consider that the choice of how we increase our capacity, because warfare in betwenty first century is very different to warfare in betwentieth century, and so we're going to have to work out who our suppliers are and what the
obligations of those shall be. But at the same time, we need to redouble our reference for disarmament and international debates around this, whether it's artificial intelligence and nuclear planning, whether it's the fragmentation of the architecture which keeps nuclear
weapons at Bay. We need to become more engaged than we have in recent years, and so we need to almost have a dual process where we increase our own security but we raise our voice to try to mitigate the threat of nuclear weapons.
Thanks for joining us out.
You're welcome, Chelsea.
That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzadherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also our sound engineer.
I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.