Working out a sensible link with our Tasman neighbour

Press, 10 February 1989, Page 8

Working out a sensible link with our Tasman neighbour

Stuart McMillan,

of “The Press,” assesses

L I the New Zealand-Australia relationship

Brian Taiboys, a former New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs and Overseas Trade, said that New Zealanders recognised instinctively that the relationship with Australia was more important to us than our relationship with any other country. He advocated taking it from the back of our minds to the forefront The year was 1977. In 1989 the relationship with. Australia is bound to dominate Njew Zealand’s external relations. Central to the issue of the relationship will be whether New Zealand will join Australia in the frigates project While some members of the Government are showing that they understand the stakes, there is formidable opposition to the proposal, including other members of the Government. Until recently the Government seemed unwilling to tackle arguments and views which advanced against the proposal. The opposition to the proposal falls into four main camps. Some opponents belong to several camps. The first group includes the pacifists, the neutralists, the isolationists, and those who think that New Zealand does not need Armed Forces beyond those required for patrolling the Exclusive Economic Zone. The neutralists generally want a neutral or non-aligned New Zealand. One group advocates positive neutrality, by which is meant an activist role in international peace-mak-ing and conflict resolution. For most, the core objection is that the frigates seem to represent a step back to A.N.Z.U.S. and what they saw as involvement in the nuclear posture of the United States. The first camp has staunch allies in the strongest supporters of Rogernomics. The motivation is different. The Rogernomics group sees the ANZAC frigates as another “think big” project, perhaps the worst of the lot. Mr Roger Douglas is himself the leading opponent of the frigates on economic grounds. Although he may see opposition to the frigates as generating support for him in a second bid to replace Mr Lange, he was an opponent even while he was secure in the finance portfolio. The third group includes many who believe that the money to be spent on the frigates would be better spent on education or social welfare. The fourth group opposes the frigates on technical grounds. Some among them agree that New Zealand should have a bluewater navy, but think that the

frigates are the wrong ships. Some believe that the defence budget would be badly distorted by a: concentration of so much money ;on; one defence item, leaving llittfe or nothing for the Army dr the Air Force. Others believe that the frigates would be defenceless against modem weapons such as Exocet missiles, and that-within a few minutes of hostilities New Zealand would see an end to its ships. One argument widely voiced is that New Zealand has no enemies, and that no threat is predicted for 10 years or more. An accurate appreciation of Australian thinking and the importance of the New ZealandAustralian link to New Zealand is a glaring omission from many of the comments made. All too often the views are presented in terms which suggest that another country is trying to stop New Zealand conducting its own affairs. Sometimes they are presented in terms of New ZealandAustralian rivalry. Sometimes they are presented in terms of Australia trying to bully New Zealand into doing what Australia wants. An unlikely bully is seen in Mr Kim Beazley, the Australian Minister of Defence, who is now in New Zealand. All those are limited and inaccurate ways of viewing Australia and looking at the relationship between New Zealand and Australia. While there is rivalry, the rivalry is basically friendly and similar to that between provincial rugby teams. Nor is anyone interfering with the right of New Zealand to do its own thing. Mr Beazley has certainly been talking about the issue of the frigates, but it has not been in tones of bullying. He has not put any of his arguments in terms of "if New Zealand will not buy our frigates then we will do this or that to New Zealand.” What he has implied is that there may be a change in the relationship between New Zealand and Australia. Although calculating what such a change would mean is not easy, the causes of the change are easier to determine. A sense of broken trust would play a part in the first two causes. To understand the context it is necessary to go back to the decision by the New Zealand Government to deny port access

to United States ships which might be carrying nuclear weapons. From Australia’s point of view that endangered a treaty arrangement with the United States Australia wanted to preserve. As it turned out the treaty was preserved as far as Australia and the United States were concerned. But New Zealand had put the treaty at risk, which was an action against Australia’s interest. A second issue was more subtle. There was an accepted, though rarely acknowledged, understanding between the two Governments that they wanted to keep the United States involved, in some tangible way, in the South Pacific region. The understanding was between themselves, not something the two shared with the United States. Yet the New Zealand Government, backed by a generally enthusiastic public, ignored that understanding. As it turned out, Australia proved sophisticated enough to cope with those two outcomes, retaining its defence relationship through A.N.Z.U.S. with the United States and bilaterally with New Zealand. It accepted the assurances that the New Zealand Government gave at the time. These assurances, made publicly and repeated frequently, were that the policy was not isolationist, or pacifist, and that New Zealand would continue to play a defence role in the South Pacific. The New Zealand Government insisted that it would give the Armed Forces a much more independent defence capability so that they were no longer designed to form part of a larger United States force. The new Armed Forces would concentrate on New Zealand’s immediate area of strategic concern. At the same time Government acknowledged that Australia was part of New Zealand’s area of direct strategic concern. These assurances were observed by a number of Governments around the world, nowhere more attentively than in Australia. Privately, there were reservations expressed about the ultimate direction of New Zealand policy. Was New Zealand, perhaps not immediately, but eventually, headed towards nonalignment or neutrality? Would it withdraw from world affairs and turn inwards towards isolation-

ism? To which countries, in the future, would New Zealand offer allegiance? The Prime Minister, Mr Lange, then also Minister of Foreign Affairs, made extensive tours of Europe trying to reassure Europeans that neither neutrality nor isolationism would be the outcome of the Government’s decision to keep out United States warships. Countries judge one another by deeds as well as words. So the frigates issue became a litmus test of whether New Zealand was going to be as good as its Government’s word. Would New Zealand actually pursue the role in regional conventional defence that it said it would? How did the ANZAC frigates project come to be regarded as the litmus test? It was largely through the New Zealand Government’s own choosing, it had, after all, specified the type of ships it thought would serve New Zealand’s purposes in the 1987 Defence Review. That review was the Government’s considered outline of the new role it saw New Zealand adopting in defence. The New Zealand Government compiled the review after three years in office. The exclusion from A.N.Z.U.S. had already occurred. Extensive public consultations were taken. The Defence Review was meant to be the blueprint for the future. It was not a Defence Ministry or a Navy “wish list” document, but had the full authority of the Government behind it. The Defence Review was consistent with the earlier expressions of intentions made by the Government. Thus, if New Zealand departed from that policy significantly it would be abandoning not only the undertakings it made at the height of the nuclear ships row, but also the policies it advanced in a written document which was supposed to contain its considered intentions and carried its full approval. The third compelling factor in the frigates issue is Mr Beazley himself. Like New Zealand, Australia has gone through a period of assessing where its defence interests lie. Mr Beazley is very serious about his defence plans and committed to a concentration of Australian defences on the region and on the Australian

continent In making his calculation he has assumed that New Zealand would play a certain role. If New Zealand decided that it would not play this role then Australia would almost certainly increase the size of its forces to compensate and New Zealand would seem to be irrelevant to Australia’s provision for its defence. Yet Mr Beazley cannot be accused of devising a plan for Australian and New Zealand defence and then requiring New Zealand to join. He is properly concerned with providing for the defence of Australia. By counting on New Zealand assistance — based on what the New Zealand Government says it needs and wants — he is continuing the process of defence co-operation between New Zealand and Australia. How would Australia’s relationship with New Zealand alter if New Zealand decided not to join the ANZAC frigate project? It appears to me to be one of those utterly incalculable matters. What is being talked about is the possibility of a breakdown in trust. In close relationships a loss of trust can have dramatic effects. Both the New Zealand Government and the New Zealand public have to consider the question: does Australia matter? The issues Brian Taiboys put forward more than a decade ago have still to be faced. The business world long ago made up its mind that Australia did matter. The public may still have to come to terms with what it thinks about Australia and how important Australia is to New Zealand. The number of New Zealanders who have lived for a period in Australia and the number of New Zealand families who have at least one member living in Australia should heighten the community’s awareness and appreciation of Australia. It would not take much for New Zealanders to begin to see the rivalry in perspective, or to understand that New Zealand’s capacity to do its own thing can include sensible co-operation with Australia. Recognising the importance of Australia does not imply any servility to Australia. What is being talked about is trust, reliance on rational argument as an accepted way of conducting relations, and a cool, healthily sceptical joint assessment of where New Zealand and Australian interests lie.