Aussie rules
Relations with Australia were already quite bad, but this week’s citizenship fiasco has increased a feeling of mutual bad faith. At least this time, the issue has not grown out of any disrespect or resentment on the part of our respective peoples, as it did over Australia’s new hard-line deportation policy last year. We’ve needlessly fallen out this week because – possibly to no one’s great surprise – politicians on both sides of the Tasman simply couldn’t help themselves when a chance came to rark each other up, even when something greater, such as foreign relations, was at stake.
One relatively small but telling misjudgment in Wellington has led to an unprecedented line in the sand being drawn in Canberra. For the first time, a senior member of an Australian Government has cast doubt on its ability to work with a New Zealand government in future.
This lamentable tiff was over an issue that should have remained above party politics, given our two countries’ geographical and historical alliance. But with Australia’s governing parties in poll decline and their fraternal governing parties here also facing a rocky election road, suddenly, and shamefully, some politicians grabbed their chance for domestic leverage from a freakish situation: Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce, turned out to have New Zealand citizenship, making him ineligible for election under Australia’s constitution. Worse, his ejection from Parliament would leave the Government without a majority and just the Speaker’s casting vote away from falling. Before Joyce’s status was known, four Australian elected politicians had discovered they had dual citizenship. One Aussie commentator wryly noted that if another nation wanted to wreak havoc, it should simply pass a law bestowing citizenship on every Australian.
It’s in this context that New Zealand Labour MP Chris Hipkins discussed the issue with a former staffer now working for Australia’s Labor Opposition. Hipkins then lodged parliamentary questions about the matter. It’s a solemnly observed convention that MPs refrain from involvement in other countries’ domestic party politics. Being seen to assist a fraternal Australian Opposition party, even unintentionally, in potentially toppling a government is bad manners on an international scale.
Hipkins and the Australian staffer deny having prior knowledge that Joyce’s citizenship was in question when they talked. Hipkins says he acted out of curiosity. One parliamentary question, however, was carefully crafted to specifically query the situation of someone whose father was a New Zealander. In our respective countries’ hothouse political environment, this claim not to have had an inkling of a big scalp in the offing is hard to accept.
Luckily, perhaps, for Hipkins, the Joyce facts emerged thanks to an Australian media inquiry to Internal Affairs the day before Hipkins’ questions were lodged. Labour leader Jacinda Ardern swiftly rebuked her frontbencher for poor judgment – the last thing she wants is questions about whether Labour has the safe hands to govern. But in Canberra, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop lost little time in raising the stakes. She would now have difficulty trusting a future New Zealand government led by Labour, she said. Her New Zealand counterpart, Gerry Brownlee, enthusiastically endorsed this sentiment. As he would.
Although there are obvious elements of petty party politics and opportunistic posturing in all this, the Bishop statement was still a shock. It is an unprecedented break from a long tradition in which transtasman leaders have maintained warm relations whatever their party. Helen Clark and conservative John Howard got on like a house on fire. Labor’s Julia Gillard was possibly more liked and admired by New Zealand’s conservative Government than her own Labor Administration.
Yet Bishop’s outburst must, sadly, be read as a further sign of the ebbing importance of New Zealand in Australian foreign policy. Hipkins’ actions were thoughtless at best and dirty politics at worst, but Bishop’s response was grossly disproportionate. She didn’t hesitate to lob a grenade into future transtasman relations.
However, it’s hard to imagine this spat will affect our real and immediate friction points with Australia – deportations of New Zealand-passported criminals and our exports among others – no matter which shade of government we elect next month.
The lasting irony of it all is that the tougher “Made in Australia” labelling laws that will directly hurt New Zealand trade were announced this year by one Barnaby Joyce – the person most affected right now by a transtasman label.
Bishop’s outburst must be read as a further sign of the ebbing importance of New Zealand in Australian foreign policy.