Infrastructure, Criminal Deportation on the Agenda for Australia-NZ Leaders Meeting

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon speaks at a meeting attended by New South Wales state Premier Chris Minns at state Parliament in Sydney, Australia on Aug. 15, 2024. (Rick Rycroft-Pool/Getty Images)

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has arrived in Australia ahead of his first official trans-Tasman bilateral meeting with Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese.

Speaking to reporters in Sydney, he flagged AUKUS—and security and defence generally—trade, and the resumption of deportations of so-called “501s” (New Zealanders who’ve committed crimes in Australia) as being among the issues he was keen to discuss.

The last formal Australian and New Zealand Leaders’ Meeting (ANZLM) was held in Wellington with former Labour Prime Minister Chris Hipkins in July 2023.

This will, however, be Luxon’s third visit to Australia as prime minister. The first was a quick meet-and-greet—his first official international trip since taking office—and then his second was in March to meet with ASEAN leaders.

Before meeting Albanese on Aug. 16 he will attend a range of meetings focused on infrastructure, and then make his first official foreign policy speech at the Lowy Institute on Aug. 15 evening.

Infrastructure Building a Major Focus

He’s accompanied by Minister for Infrastructure Chris Bishop, Minister for Resources Shane Jones, and Minister for Transport Simeon Brown.

They hope to learn from New South Wales’ (NSW) experience in delivering major infrastructure projects. In addition to meeting with Infrastructure New South Wales’ chair and chief executive on Aug. 15, Luxon also met NSW Premier Chris Minns and New Zealand engineering consultancy company Beca.

The New Zealand government plans to create a similar infrastructure body, and Luxon made it clear they felt NSW was a good model.

“What we want to do is take the politics out of infrastructure, because with our short political cycles ... we want to be able to make sure that we can depoliticise it,” Luxon told reporters. “And that’s what Infrastructure New South Wales has done.”

“Yes, there might be conditions economically where you have to tighten up what you can physically spend, but what’s not in dispute is the relative priority of projects for the benefit of the country, and so that’s the [type of] body that we’re looking for to put in place.

“For that to work, it’s got to have some pretty good definition around what its role is, and also its independence, and also its approach to prioritising projects.”

The prime minister said New Zealand leaders would often look to learn from similar sized economies or jurisdictions.

“New South Wales is comparable to New Zealand. Slightly bigger than New Zealand as a population, certainly bigger as an economy, but we look a lot at other small, advanced countries around the world to say, what can we learn? We’ve got a lot to offer those countries as well. But we do look at New South Wales, Victoria, for that matter, as actually similar sized operations to what we deal with in New Zealand,” he said.

Luxon was also keen to streamline project building.

“For example, tunnelling. If we’ve got tunnellers in there, doing a central interceptor, we don’t want the Italian tunnellers leaving New Zealand because they don’t know what’s coming next. We actually want to roll into three or four or five other projects that use those skills and that capability on roads of national significance.”

Other Issues to Discuss

The meeting of the two Prime Ministers is likely to cover a number of issues, several of them potentially contentious, but none more so than Australia’s decision to renege on an agreement made between then New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern when Albanese first came to power: that on the issue of deportation, Australian authorities would give more weight to a person’s ties to the country and length of time living there.

After a voter backlash from Australians, the government returned to its previous policy, which has seen a rise in arrivals to New Zealand of people with no real ties to the country and who, in many cases, have begun committing crimes there.

Luxon said he would continue to advocate “very strongly for our difference of opinion on that issue.”

With 2023 marking 40 years since the Closer Economic Relations agreement was signed, and with Australia representing New Zealand’s most important trading partner and biggest investor—with two-way trade worth more than $31 billion last year—advancing the relationship will also feature.

Luxon has signalled that he wants to make it even easier to do business across the Tasman.

On defence, the talks are likely to focus on AUKUS and understanding the reasons behind Australia’s enthusiasm for the pact.

The two leaders will also discuss the problems of negotiating the difficult geostrategic region, particularly both countries’ relationships with India and China, which represent major trading partners.

Luxon and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters have both promoted the idea of the Pacific Island Forum (PIF) as being the “architecture” that deals with challenges in the region.