What have the Pacific pixies been up to? What are the latest doings of our cuddly cousins across the Tasman who have been so agreeable in dealing with China?
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Why, it seems they have developed backbones.
New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta this week met her Chinese counterpart, Qin Gang. "I noted New Zealand's deep concerns regarding the human rights situation in Xinjiang and the erosion of rights and freedoms in Hong Kong," Mahuta says, reporting on the meeting. Indeed, she made a similarly pushy statement to China last year.
This is a new attitude for New Zealand. Even as resistance to China grew among democratic countries after about 2016, New Zealand kept its head down, preferring to protect its trade and let others cop the cost of taking a stand.
Yes, its officials delivered complaints to Beijing, but they did it quietly. Nothing would be mentioned in public, so the Chinese side well understood the criticisms were intended to amount to nothing. Lamb-chop exports would be safe.
New Zealand Trade Minister Damien O'Connor was kind enough two years ago to advise Australia to "follow us and show respect" to China. Australia should be "cautious with wording", he said. He didn't actually give a demonstration of how to perform a particularly low kowtow, but many of us were hoping to see how it was done.
Now Mahuta is expressing dissatisfaction not just with China's internal oppression but also its ambitions for territorial expansion. She says she raised concerns about "developments in the South China Sea" (that is, China's attempt to take control of it) "and increasing tensions in the Taiwan Strait" (China's preparations to wage war to seize Taiwan).
It's a fair bet Beijing's moves to gain influence over Pacific islands, maybe to put military bases on them, have finally shaken Kiwi attention away from wine and cheese sales.
So on Tuesday we heard New Zealand Defence Minister Andrew Little saying his country was looking at whether it should participate in the non-nuclear aspects of AUKUS, our defence-technology agreement with Britain and the US.
But how about the nuclear aspects, Mr Little? How about New Zealand ponying up to buy two nuclear submarines to add to our eight?
Now there's an idea that would cause conniptions in the land of the long white peacenik.
New Zealand's verbal dealings with Beijing may have toughened up, but defence spending is where the rubber hits the road. And New Zealand is still loafing. As our defence budget moves above 2 per cent of gross domestic product, New Zealand is at 1.4 per cent.
What's more, New Zealand gets negligible military capability from its money. It has neither fighters nor submarines. It does have two weak frigates, but its most important equipment will be just four Boeing P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft it ordered in 2018.
The Poseidons were too warlike for The Dominion Post, New Zealand's equivalent of The Canberra Times. New Zealand "should arguably concentrate its resources on what it's good at," the newspaper said, "and what the Royal New Zealand Air Force is good at is maritime search and rescue."
How cute is that? A military force that should avoid military missions.
After making truly magnificent contributions in the world wars, New Zealand has become a sanctimonious bludger. It has a distaste for hard defence power and strikes a saintly pose in its refusal to let nuclear submarines visit its ports. Meanwhile, it quietly calculates that Australia and the US will always stand between it and a military threat.
The idea of New Zealand buying two nuclear submarines is not a joke, or shouldn't be. New Zealand has as much at stake in guarding against China's aggression, as we do. If we are forced into subservience to the Chinese Communist Party, the Kiwis will be, too.
MORE AGE OF THE DRAGON:
New Zealand has about one-fifth as many people as Australia, raising a presumption its forces should be about 20 per cent as strong as ours. For many types of equipment, New Zealand could, indeed, just add about 20 per cent to what Australia buys.
So a pair of subs would be about right. An RNZAF F-35 squadron would be, too, ideally using our support facilities as far as possible to save money.
I'm not sure I'd wish our disastrous Hunter-class frigate program on the Kiwis - they haven't been that badly behaved - but if we bought more air-defence destroyers we could reasonably suggest two more such ships should join their navy.
It's a Labour government in Wellington that's waking up, at least diplomatically. But the National opposition seems to be still living in the world it imagined existed before it lost office in 2017 - one in which there was no China threat.
AUKUS does not make New Zealand safer, the Nationals' foreign affairs spokesperson, Gerry Brownlee, told AAP this week, somehow thinking less military strength in the face of China would be better.
The problem is the West's us-versus-them attitude, Brownlee suggests. "The Chinese are wanting to assert themselves a little bit more on the world stage ... so they must be the enemy and we've got to worry about them," he says. "I'm not sure that's the right sort of thinking."
Oh, so that's it. China is merely asserting itself "a little bit more" and everyone's overreacting.
Brownlee has clearly paid very little attention to China's aggression and not thought for a moment about where Australia and New Zealand will end up if an aggressive, nationalist and authoritarian superpower is allowed to impose its will on East Asia.
The traditional mentality of Pacific pixies is still with us
- Bradley Perrett was based in Beijing as a journalist from 2004 to 2020.
Bradley Perrett
Bradley Perrett is a regular ACM columnist with a focus on Australia's relationship with China, covering defence, strategy, trade, economics and domestic policy. He was based in Beijing as a journalist from 2004 to 2020.
Bradley Perrett is a regular ACM columnist with a focus on Australia's relationship with China, covering defence, strategy, trade, economics and domestic policy. He was based in Beijing as a journalist from 2004 to 2020.
