During a visit to Dunedin yesterday, Australian High Commissioner to New Zealand Harinder Sidhu said the world had been "largely peaceful" over the past 40 years, with little "strategic challenge" in our region.
However, we were now facing things like geostrategic competition, economic coercion and the sense that "might is right", instead of playing by long-established rules.
"We’re talking about China and also what Russia is doing in the Ukraine.
"We’re talking about big countries and a sense that if you’re a big country and a powerful country, you can do what you choose."
Ms Sidhu said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins met last week and celebrated a "trifecta of anniversaries" — 40 years of the Closer Economic Relations (CER) trade agreement, 50 years of the transtasman travel arrangement and 80 years of diplomatic representation in each other’s countries.
They provided clear and consistent rules, everybody stuck by those rules and they supported free and open trade, she said.
"And they’ve been a massive benefit to the two countries ever since.
"Where we are now, 40 years later, is a world where the challenges are more strategic than economic.
"The challenges are actually about the stability of the global system.
"What we need to do is work together as two countries that have benefited from the rules-based order, to actually reinforce that order.
"And we particularly want to maintain peace and security in the Pacific.
"We are a massive island nation, we have a lot of sea that we have to cover, and everywhere we look around us, it’s much more contested than it was."
She said people thought Australia was a big country, but neither it or New Zealand were big enough to actually stop instability without working together.
"As our two countries go forward into the future, we don’t have to be absolutely identical in the way we face the challenges, but we do have to have a sense of common purpose.
"It’s about emphasising that where we’ve done well in history before, is actually where we’ve collaborated rather than competed."
She said Australia was taking a "two-pronged" approach.
One was increasing its deterrence abilities by investing more in defence so the nation could continue to be a strong security provider and regional partner.
"New Zealand is a military ally of Australia’s.
"When we think about our security, we think about New Zealand’s security as well.
"So what makes sense is, if both our defence forces can work in lock-step to the extent possible.
"We would always want New Zealand by our side."
The second prong was increasing investment in diplomacy, aid and climate change.
"When things get tricky in the world, you want to be with people you trust, and truly, speaking as an Australian, there’s no country we trust as much as we trust New Zealand."
Ms Sidhu was part of a panel discussion at the University of Otago last night, which covered the breadth of the transtasman relationship, if New Zealand should join Aukus and the respective indigenous journeys of both nations.
