Just four months since taking office after a decade of conservative rule, and while trying to carefully balance the views of three parties in government, New Zealand is already showing signs of regaining its trademark standing as a small but confident, principled and creative presence internationally. And Australia should take notice.
Foreign policy is perpetually a balance between interests and values. But too often it is easy to focus on the security and economic imperatives of the first and forget the second, or not realise that the two are inextricably linked.
Australia used to be the gold standard for charting the right course. Our foreign policy in the 1980s and early 1990s was characterised by Gareth Evans’ concept of being “a good international citizen” which he used to say was about “no more – and no less – than the pursuit of enlightened self-interest”. Our crafting of the Cambodia Peace Plan and the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons were two clear examples, as was our opposition to apartheid. But these were pursued within a wider understanding that our future prosperity and security was in Asia and we also needed to cement a role for ourselves in the region, not least through our founding of Apec.
If anything, New Zealand wore their values even more strongly on their sleeves, famously sending a ship with a cabinet minister on board to protest at the edge of a French nuclear testing site in 1973, and then in 1985 refusing entry to the nuclear-powered USS Buchanan (which unfortunately caused the breakdown of their involvement in ANZUS). But it is important to remember this was driven by the people.
Source: theguardian
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