Source: New Zealand Government
Good Evening
Let us begin by acknowledging Professor David Capie and the PIPSA team for convening this important conference over the next few days. Whenever the Pacific Islands region comes together, we have a precious opportunity to share perspectives and learn from each other. That is especially true in our region, where distances between us are large.
We acknowledge, too, members of the Diplomatic Corps, Parliamentary colleagues, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
New Zealand’s place in the world
New Zealand, as a country, has a myriad of influences. We have enduringly strong connections – for reasons of history, migration and foreign policy alignment – to our traditional partners of Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
First and foremost, among these is Australia, New Zealand’s one formal ally, and our closest and most likeminded partner. We cooperate extremely closely with Australia, in the Pacific and around the world.
We are increasingly integrated socially, economically and strategically into Asia, with large and increasing Asian communities here in New Zealand and ever closer diplomatic relationships in South, South East, and North East Asia.
At the same time, the starting point for understanding how New Zealand views the Pacific is the following, very simple statement: New Zealand is a Pacific Island country, linked by geography, history, culture, politics, demography and indeed DNA.
Fully 1.3 million New Zealanders, or about one-in-four of us are in full or part Polynesian, Melanesian or Micronesian, with either Māori heritage or relatives or ancestors from other Pacific islands.
Auckland is home to more Polynesians than any other city. Around the same number of Samoans and Tongans live in New Zealand as do in Samoa and Tonga. Vastly more Cook Islanders, Niueans and Tokelauans live in New Zealand than back in their homelands.
The original discovery and settlement of the Pacific Islands, including New Zealand, is one of the most remarkable stories of exploration in human history. The late New Zealand historian Michael King compared it to space exploration as both were voyages into the unknown.
But Pacific navigation is arguably even more remarkable because the canoes that set out from the Asian landmass knew not where they would land, nor when, nor indeed if they would find any new territory.
But find land they did, as they forged new identities and societies on atolls and islands that today stand as a testament to their imagination, endurance and the resilience to overcome formidable challenges of distance, geography, demography, and resource scarcity.
Last year, we had the enormous privilege of visiting almost all of those island nations spread across our vast Blue Continent. So, this evening we’d like to share some reflections about the Pacific, within the context of New Zealand’s Foreign Policy Reset.
We note, too, your conference theme, which raises the question of whether the Pacific Islands are a zone of peace or ocean of discontent. In 1520, the great Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan named this massive body of water the Pacific, due to its calmness – Pacific meaning peaceful. Ironically, it didn’t end that way for him, or some of his crew, so your conference theme holds both historical justification and appeal.
An active, engaged Pacific policy
When we again took on the role of New Zealand Foreign Minister in November 2023, we were determined to put the Pacific at the forefront of an energetic, engaged and active New Zealand foreign policy once more. This lay behind our decision to undertake the most ambitious, intensive year of Pacific diplomacy in New Zealand history.
Never before has a New Zealand political leader tried to spend time in all 18 member countries of the Pacific Islands Forum in a single year. But try we did: meeting the many diverse peoples scattered across this vast, beautiful blue continent.
As often as we were able, we took Parliamentary colleagues from across the spectrum of New Zealand’s political parties to reinforce that our friendship is bipartisan, enduring and long-term.
The purpose of all these discussions was to take the pulse of the region. As a democratic country operating in a democratic region, New Zealand is driven in our Pacific policy by three foundational questions focused on our region’s people:
Is what New Zealand is doing in the region reflective of what the people of the Pacific Islands want and need?
Are we effectively supporting the prosperity and security of Pacific Island peoples?; and
Are we undertaking and explaining this work in a way which maintains New Zealanders’ support for our objectives in the region?
When describing our observations of last year’s travel, an obvious starting point is the unimaginable vastness of our region. It is a massive ocean, covering over 30 percent of the Earth’s surface.
While in the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau, we learned of the logistical difficulties they faced in getting to last year’s Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga. We decided on the spot to offer the use of one of our 757 aircraft to take Micronesian leaders to and from Nuku’alofa. We have also announced, over the past year, significant investment in digital connectivity in the Pacific, alongside such partners as the Australia, Taiwan, United States and Japan.
Connecting all members of the Pacific family is vital given the huge, isolating physical distances between us. But because we believe that all Pacific voices are important and that talanoa – coming together for dialogue – must be regular and meaningful, we were happy to facilitate their coming together in Nuku’alofa.
Why? Because Pacific regionalism sits at the core of our Pacific approach, with the Pacific Islands Forum at its centre. We are a region with challenging issues that can polarise us, such as deep seabed mining and how best to manage strategic competition. The Forum plays a critical role in helping us to form a cohesive approach, resolve differences, bolster regional development and security, and use our collective voice to hold bigger countries to account.
The Blue Continent’s challenges
We have also reflected on how the Blue Pacific Continent and its peoples face a multitude of challenges. Our region is faced with the sharpest strategic competition it has confronted since World War 2 ended almost eighty years ago. As we face external pushes into our region to coerce, cajole and constrain, we must stand together as a region – always remembering that we are strongest when we act collectively to confront security and strategic challenges.
Climate change is a great threat facing the Pacific and we are at the global forefront of disaster risk exposure. Our ambition is that all Pacific peoples remain resilient to the impacts of climate change and other disasters and that New Zealand can support building resilience in practical ways.
Fisheries are vital to the economies, livelihoods, food security, and social and cultural wellbeing of many Pacific Island countries and is a crucial source of government revenue. But they face several complex interrelated and transboundary issues, such as illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and the management of migratory fish species.
After years of volatility, the long-term growth trajectory risks settling well below pre-COVID averages for Pacific Island countries. Increasing investment, building fiscal and climate resilience, and improving the access to finance and greater regional connectivity will be key to improving long-run growth prospects in the Pacific.
Answering to the people
One truism that runs through our three stints as Foreign Minister is this: there are no votes in it. Struggling New Zealand taxpayers and their families find it difficult to understand why their government is handing out multi-million-dollar aid grants overseas.
Foreign policy practitioners and academics may focus intently on our obligations to New Zealand’s development partners and the way we conduct our relations with them. But the bottom line is that we are accountable first and foremost to the New Zealand taxpayer.
During our three tenures as Foreign Minister, we have demonstrated a staunch commitment to a well-resourced New Zealand development programme with a predominant focus on the Pacific.
Few New Zealand Governments have gone to the wire to significantly lift the size of our international development programme as a proportion of New Zealand’s Gross National Income. One was Norman Kirk’s Government in the 1970s. Two others were during my two previous terms as Foreign Minister.
In short, we have been determined to use all of our influence and all of our negotiating power to get the best possible New Zealand development programme for the Pacific.
And while times are very tough here at home right now, we will continue to advocate with our Cabinet colleagues and the New Zealand people for the importance of an active Pacific policy and a properly-resourced international agenda – whether in defence, foreign policy, or development. That’s what is right for New Zealand and it’s what is in the best interests of the Pacific.
We will never apologise for directly connecting New Zealand’s security and prosperity to the security and prosperity of the region and world around us.
The Coalition Government’s Foreign Policy Reset established a new strategic direction for New Zealand, including for our international development programme, with an emphasis on sustaining our deep focus on the Pacific.
As part of ensuring our accountability to the New Zealand taxpayer, last year the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade undertook a review of our development programme to gauge alignment with government priorities and assess its overall impact and efficiency. A report on the review’s findings is being released today.
The review found that while our development is generally aligned with Government priorities, some reshaping and streamlining is required. In short, we will achieve more impact by doing fewer, bigger, projects better. This work is already under way.
Our predominant focus remains on the Pacific, where we will be working with partners including the United States, Australia, Japan and in Europe to more intensively leverage greater support for the region. We will maintain the high tempo of political engagement across the Pacific to ensure alignment between our programme and New Zealand and partner priorities. And we will work more strategically with Pacific Governments to strengthen their systems, so they can better deliver the services their people need.
Greater development funding is being devoted to South East Asia to meet our ambition for closer relations overall with this important region. We have also increased humanitarian funding in response to the scale of need regionally and globally. And we have reduced multilateral funding, to focus on those partners who make the most concrete impact.
We see this work of reshaping our development programme as part of meeting our obligation to the New Zealand taxpayers whose continuing support underpins its social licence.
Friendship, challenges and dialogue
Over the decades, our Pacific-oriented foreign policy has been defined as much by our actions as our words. We are there in times of need, whether in response to natural disasters, helping with budget support during fiscal emergencies, spurring economic development, or helping to resolve conflicts.
Our 2018 Pacific Reset emphasised that exhibiting friendship in all our engagements was the cornerstone of our Pacific foreign policy orientation. What does friendship in that context mean?
It means we are honest, empathetic, trustful and respectful through frequent engagement. And it means having frank and open conversations with our Pacific counterparts.
Over the past year, we have consistently stressed that we see all states as equal, whatever their size. We are guided by the mutual respect and trust that has grown over time between New Zealand and other Pacific Island countries. A second theme that has run through all our public engagements is just how important diplomacy is in our troubled world.
New Zealand has faced two isolated challenges in the past twelve months in our relations with the Pacific. In these two very different cases, our accountability to our taxpayers and our fidelity to promoting the interests of Pacific peoples throughout the region require that we explain openly what has taken place.
Of the 18 Pacific Islands Forum member countries, the only one we did not spend time in during the past year was Kiribati. That was not for a lack of trying.
For more than a year we respected Kiribati’s preference to avoid outside engagement. But with over $100 million of development assistance committed to Kiribati over the past three years, we had to review the status of existing projects and understand Kiribati’s ongoing development needs. After all, we all have to negotiate with our Ministers of Finance.
This requirement was urgent given our own budget cycle and the need to make decisions about how future development spending is allocated in Micronesian countries and across the region for the next three years.
So, we were pleased when a visit to Kiribati was finally scheduled for January 2025. We began organising our cross-party Parliamentary group to visit Tarawa. Then, with about a week to go, we were told President Maamau, who is also my counterpart as Kiribati’s Foreign Affairs Minister, would no longer meet with our delegation.
We made public our regret and concern, as well as our consequent decision to review our development programme to Kiribati. We are accountable to the worker in Kaitaia, the builder in Gore, and the farmer in the Waikato for the spending of taxpayer money, and we felt it important to express our concerns openly and transparently.
At the same time, we have a long-standing relationship with the Kiribati people, which has overcome previous challenges. We will weather this one too.
We have made clear that we are still working towards meaningful dialogue with Kiribati’s President and Foreign Minister, whether in Kiribati, New Zealand or elsewhere in the region. We are taking positive steps towards that goal in coming weeks.
The second isolated challenge we have faced has been developments in our relationship with the Cook Islands Government. Unlike the people of Samoa, the people of the Cook Islands have never opted for their country to be fully independent from New Zealand – though they are of course always free to choose to do so.
Rather, they have opted since 1965 to be in free association with New Zealand. This means that New Zealand is bound constitutionally to the Cook Islands by sharing the King of New Zealand as a head of state, a common, single citizenship and passport, as well as by shared values and interests.
Over the past 60 years, New Zealand has taken very seriously its obligations and commitments to the Cook Islands people. Every year we deliver for the Cook Islands people in areas as broad as health and education, economic development, defence and security, good governance, resources and environment, and culture and heritage.
The Cook Islands, in exercising self-government, is supported by New Zealand funding and provision of expertise. As long as the Cook Islands remain tied to New Zealand constitutionally, we have an expectation that the Government of the Cook Islands will not seek benefits only available to fully independent states – such as separate passports and citizenship, or membership of the United Nations or the Commonwealth – or pursue policies that are significantly at variance with New Zealand’s interests.
We also have an expectation that New Zealand will be fully and meaningfully consulted on all major international actions that the Cook Islands contemplates that affect our interests.
These are not unreasonable expectations. And they are not new. For example, our Prime Ministers, Norman Kirk in 1973, David Lange in 1986 and Helen Clark in 2001 all expressed these expectations formally.
To use but one example: in 2001, Helen Clark stated that Cook Islanders retained New Zealand citizenship “on the basis that there will continue to be a mutually acceptable standard of values in Cook Islands’ laws and policies”. She again repeated our longstanding position that if full independence from New Zealand was what the Cook Islands people wanted, then they were free to opt for it at any time.
These have been well-established and previously settled understandings between us, although there have been periodic attempts by Cook Islands Prime Ministers to test the boundaries of this constitutional pact.
But our free association relationship in its current form has endured because the overwhelming majority of Cook Islands people have wanted to maintain their New Zealand citizenship and passport and the rights it affords them to the same opportunities and privileges as all other New Zealanders, including in health and education. The wishes of the Cook Islands people are paramount here.
Our explicit advice to Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown and his officials since he first raised the issue with us in July 2024 was that if he proceeded with trying to implement a separate Cook Islands citizenship and passport system then the people of the Cook Islands would risk losing their New Zealand citizenship and passport – an outcome we know is opposed by the vast majority of Cook Islanders.
There is also the matter of the Cook Islands Government’s decision to enter into a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) and a number of other agreements with China last week without any meaningful consultation with New Zealand or its own people over either the architecture or details of those deals.
New Zealand and the Cook Islands people remain, as of this evening, in the dark over all but one the agreements signed by China and the Cooks last week.
Given this lack of consultation, the New Zealand Government, once it has seen the text of all of the agreements that were signed, will need to undertake its own careful analysis of how they impact our vital national interests. Only then will we be able to fully gauge the deals’ impact on the relationship between New Zealand and the Cook Islands.
While the connection between the people of the Cook Islands and New Zealand remains resolutely strong, we currently face challenges in the government-to-government relationship.
But this state of affairs – disagreements and debates between the leaders of New Zealand and the Cook Islands – has been a periodic feature of our 60 years of free association. We have always found a way through, guided by the wisdom and wishes of the Cook Islands people.
As then US President Franklin Roosevelt said in 1945, “We shall strive for perfection. We shall not achieve it immediately – but we still shall strive. We may make mistakes – but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principle”.
During 2025, as we celebrate 60 years of free association, we are going to need to reset the government-to-government relationship. We will also need to find a way, as we did in 1973 and 2001, to formally re-state the mutual responsibilities and obligations that we have for one another and the overall parameters and constraints of the free association model.
Resetting and formally re-stating the parameters of the relationship is not a small task. But it is one which we are confident we can meet – powered by the history of goodwill and common bonds between New Zealand and the Cook Islands people.
Another issue on which the region has devoted significant attention over the past year has been New Caledonia – which is, geographically, New Zealand’s closest neighbour. Uncertainty and discord there is obviously something that prompts concern and discussion right around our region.
From the moment of the unrest onwards, New Zealand has been very clear that everyone – no matter their view on New Caledonia’s political status – should agree that violence is not the answer.
The focus must be on dialogue – and finding a new pathway forward on the important issues facing New Caledonia. We had the benefit – working closely with authorities in Paris and Nouméa – to have had a productive visit to New Caledonia in December.
We went there to listen and to learn, and to engage with a very wide range of New Caledonians of all backgrounds. Hearing New Caledonians voice their hopes and dreams for economic development led us to the view that there may be lessons from New Zealand’s own experiences that might be of value.
We hope lessons from New Zealand’s own economic development as a multi-ethnic Pacific Island country can be shared with New Caledonians, who might be able to adapt them to their unique context.
Conclusions
When we reflect on the past year, it is impossible not to be optimistic about this region’s future. As we travelled to places as diverse as Suva, Pohnpei, Alofi, Port Vila, Nauru and Apia, we were struck also by a profound commonality.
Pacific Islanders scattered around our vast, beautiful region all want a brighter, more prosperous and more secure future for their children and for future generations.
As a founding member of the Pacific Islands Forum, and as a Pacific and Polynesian country itself, New Zealand has always been at the forefront of efforts to bring about that future.
Over the past year, we have done our very best to deliver, through words and actions, on New Zealand’s commitment to contribute to a brighter future for all Pacific peoples. This very important work – involving discussion, debate and, yes, sometimes disagreement – will continue.
The Pacific Islands region is a profoundly democratic one. People from every village, town or city in every Pacific Island country have a direct say in how their affairs are run. Just this year, people in six Pacific Islands Forum countries – Australia, the Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, New Caledonia, Tonga and Vanuatu – are heading to the polls to cast ballots which will help determine the future direction of their countries.
And so it is Pacific peoples’ hopes and aspirations which must drive political leaders and policy makers. Our policies must be responsive and accountable to the perspectives of those we represent.
And no matter the future we face, or the challenges we encounter, we will always be members of the same Pacific family. We inhabit the most vast and breathtaking ocean continent in the world. And as family, we will always find a way forward, together, towards the secure and prosperous future that our people deserve.
Thank you. Kia kaha. Go well.