Australia pumps the brakes on New Zealand's Aukus debate

Saturday, 7 December 2024

ANALYSIS: Call it a diplomatic dressing-down, or a dose of reality. Australia has urged New Zealand -- in particular the Labour Party -- to “take a deep breath” about the Aukus defence agreement.

In an uncommon, if indirect, intervention in the New Zealand political debate, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles delivered their Labour Party cousins a message at a press conference in Auckland on Friday.

It was a response to Labour leader Chris Hipkins’ line-in-the-sand declaration last weekend, promising Labour would not “join up” to Aukus pillar two if in Government, and to Labour foreign policy spokesperson David Parker’s labelling the defence agreement a US-led “China containment” plot.

“We just need to take a deep breath here,” said Marles.

It was not the first breath we have been asked to take over Aukus this week. Before Australia weighed in, the Wellington foreign policy establishment was softly admonishing Labour for its policy during hearings at Parliament.

Defence secretary Brook Barrington told MPs on Wednesday that “in some respects, perhaps we're getting a little ahead of ourselves on this and deep breaths would be, um, is what we’re doing”.

Barrington said, “you do not join Aukus pillar two”. Instead, participation in this defence technology sharing agreement by countries other than Australia, United Kingdom, and the United States would occur on a “specific issue” under the agreement’s rubric.

Similarly, foreign secretary Bede Corry said on Thursday that pillar two was possibly for New Zealand an “agreement to co-operate on a given technology domain, not signing up to some kind of new alliance or pact”. How other countries viewed Aukus was for them, he said.

Had Marles caught wind of this commentary? His and Wong’s comments on Friday followed the same thread: Aukus countries were talking with others about working on a “project-by-project basis” on specific defence technologies.

But New Zealand was not front of mind for this.

“We've made clear that the first country with whom we would co-operate with is Japan, but even there, you know, that's not about to happen tomorrow either,” Marles said.

Wong said she had “seen some comments about containment” and Australia did not “engage in this”.

“We get engaged with this, in these decisions, always for the purpose of seeking greater regional stability in circumstances where we see more contest and more competition.”

So much for this persistent question about whether New Zealand will “join” Aukus. Regardless of what Labour decides, it’s now obvious there will be no “Aukusnz”.

It’s a wonder why it took so long for this much to be said so plainly in public. This understanding of Aukus and New Zealand’s possible place in pillar two has percolated in Wellington and Canberra for much of the year, at least, while the debate in New Zealand has bubbled on.

But with this intervention, the argument over Aukus sharpens somewhat. Instead of debating whether New Zealand should “join”, really Aukus has become a proxy for a greater debate.

The Government clearly backs the Australian framing, that Aukus offers an opportunity to develop cutting-edge defence technology, a possible boon for the Defence Force, domestic industry, and New Zealand’s relevance to strategic partners.

This view also requires agreeing with Australia’s strategic assessment that obtaining nuclear-powered submarines through Aukus will help deter China’s navy from being troublesome in Pacific sea lanes, as it has in the South China Sea, or outright militant in the region in the coming decades.

In this understanding, pillar two is somewhat separate, part of the broader effort to contest Chinese military might by combining all-of-country efforts across the Aukus countries to produce new defence tech.

For Labour and others concerned, Aukus is seen primarily as a nuclear-powered submarine sharing agreement vainly aimed at propping up US primacy in Asia as a new multi-polar world emerges, risking great power conflict.

“I would argue that it's entirely artificial to say that one pillar is completely separate from the other. They’re both part of the same security pact and Aukus is designed to contain China's growing influence,” said Phil Twyford, a senior Labour MP, in an exchange with Corry this week.

Aside from factoring in reasonable misgivings about US power and the coming Trump administration, this understanding also requires a few assumptions that go unmentioned.

Including that Australia seeks to prop up US primacy, no matter Canberra’s talk of wanting “strategic equilibirum” in the region. And that such an effort will inevitably fail as US decline meets China’s rise, which is not as worrisome as the hawks claim.

Also, that Australia’s taking on US submarines locks it into a US-led war with China, if it invades Taiwan (again, this is contested by Canberra).

Though it’s unsaid, Labour’s position by extension implies a war over Taiwan is not New Zealand’s fight.

There are a lot of hypotheticals at play when thinking about New Zealand’s hypothetical involvement in Aukus. A practical example is also helpful in evaluating Labour’s position.

As with Australia and the US, New Zealand operates a fleet of P-8 Poseidon submarine hunting surveillance aircraft, and Kiwi pilots and crew train in Adelaide where the Australian fleet is based. Greater “interoperability” with the Australia and the US is a core military mission for New Zealand, and increasingly there are joint exercises and contributions to security efforts in Asia.

One of the first Aukus pillar two projects is the development of a new algorithm to improve the connectivity of sonobuoys which are shot from the rear of P-8s to listen for submarines -- a technology that could be useful for New Zealand’s P-8s.

While Labour has drawn a line on Aukus, Parker this week said any Labour Government would still use military technology to emerge from the agreement, and the party continued to believe in interoperability with Australia and the US.

Which begs a question. Does using Aukus technology, and continuing the trend of military involvement with Australia and the US, not amount to participating in this so-called China containment strategy all the same?