NZ, Aust defence
p. 15 · Read in the full issue
ties under debate
IF there is one thing that has provided continuity and stability in the Pacific over the years it has been the closeness of the New Zealand-Australia relation
ship.
The two countries’ governments and particularly their prime ministers have not always seen eye to eye, even on Pacific affairs where their interests are so alike. But in the main they were always mates when it counted.
“It is hard to think of two countries in the world with closer ties,” Austra lia’s Governor-General Bill Hayden said a few years ago. “I cannot foresee circumstances in which we will not have close relations including defence ties with Australia,” New Zealand’s then prime minister David Lange said in 1986. This co-operation, especially in the area of defence and security, was a
comfort to the Pacific Island states, particularly in the bad old days of the Cold War when all that was certain was uncertainty and the Soviet Union was doing its utmost to seed dissent and expand its influence in the region.
Anzac co-operation even survived New Zealand’s anti nuclear legislation, which cost it its long-time ally status with the United States and strained the trans-Tasman relation ship. The Australian government did not like New Zealand’s move any more than one or two Pacific Island countries but it agreed to maintain defence ties, even at substantial cost to itself. This promised continuity for New Zealand and Australian links with the Pacific and a united response to natural disasters or civil unrest should an island government request Anzac intervention.
It is significant then that a number of influential New Zealanders have begun to question the defence relationship with Australia. The crux of the debate is whether New Zealand should stick with the Anzac alliance or put its faith in the United Nations to protect its interests should they ever be threatened. The main issues are the cost of defence self reliance and the need for New Zealand politicians to find the middle ground in a new political environment. Spending on defence is not popular and the politicians will need popularity more than ever if they are to share in power from the next election, which will be held under a new system of voting that makes coalition governments inevitable.
There are already signs that they see defence spending and the cost of the security relationship with Australia as soft targets. The opposition Labour Party is reviewing its entire foreign and defence policy. Former Prime Minister David Lange, who once said: “We cannot regard our interest in Australia’s security as confined to this side of the Blue Mountains,” says openly that he wants this country to distance itself from Canberra’s defence planning. Having
already decided to move away from bilateral alliances in favour of a multi lateral defence strategy, Lange says the party debate is now centred on the relationship with Australia. The New Zealand Alliance, which increasingly looks certain to figure in a future coalition government, is already com mitted to a non-aligned foreign and defence policy.
But the debate is not confined to the opposition. It has spread to the ruling National Party which has embraced the anti-nuclear policy and is now showing signs of questioning ties with Australia.
Cabinet minister Doug Graham and prominent National backbencher John Robertson have both openly questioned the contemporary value of Anzac de fence co-operation. Graham, the Min
ister for Disarmament and Arms Control, went to the heart of “middle” New Zealand when he cast doubt on the trans- Tasman defence alliance, saying: “It is becoming increas ingly difficult to justify diverting money from hospitals to hardware for defence forces designed to provide some self sufficiency.”
And Robertson tapped New Zealand chauvinism when he told Parliament New Zealand was providing “an increasing contribution to the defence of Australia and an increasingly dubious contribution to the defence of New Zealand”.
He was referring to the former Labour government’s decision to spend NZ$l.2 billion on two new frigates being built as part of a major Australian Navy re-equipment programme. Rubbing it in, Robertson, a former chairman of Parliament’s foreign affairs and defence select committee, added: “We are in danger of becoming trapped in the jaws of the Australian military machine.”
Nobody is talking about cancelling the frigate order, but there is little prospect of any party buying the two extra ships the government has on option. All sides agree that the global situations has changed dramatically since the contract was signed. Lange says the defence interests of Australia, a country with middle-power pretensions, a growing military industrial complex and a continuing nagging fear of invasion by Indonesia, are very different from New Zealand’s.
Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating and Foreign Minister Gareth Evans have both made explicit warnings in the last year that New Zealand must maintain its defence spending (which had been cut by nearly a third over the past six years to 1.6 per cent of Gross Domestic Product) to make a “realistic” contribution to regional security.
The tensions are bound to increase. The implications for the Pacific are not yet clear, but it’s a situation that bears watching.