OPINION
The last time New Zealand was attacked by a so-called friend was in 1985 when France sent spies from its Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) to bomb the Rainbow Warrior at Auckland’s Marsden Wharf.
It may initially seem a stretch to compare that attack with the one on our Parliament by cyber spies linked to China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) in 2021, revealed this week by Judith Collins, the Minister in charge of our Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and Security Intelligence Service (SIS).
But isn’t the main difference just the technology?
Imagine our outrage if, in the pre-internet era, China had sent physical spies to break into the Beehive and Parliament to copy and steal paper files.
What’s the difference between that and the attack in 2021 by MSS spies known by the GCSB and our Five Eyes allies as Advanced Persistent Threat 40?
One crucial difference between France’s 1985 attack and China’s 2021 operation is that France killed Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira – a citizen of its Nato allies Portugal and the Netherlands – when he went below deck to retrieve his camera equipment after the warning blast, drowning when the second and bigger French bomb went off.
But that too is partly related to the available technology. It’s not difficult to imagine, had China physically sent spies into the Beehive and Parliament to steal papers, that it might have unintentionally killed any parliamentary worker that discovered them.
France’s attack on New Zealand was arguably more egregious since New Zealand soldiers had, in just the previous 70 years, twice been sent to fight and die in France to help save it from Germany, whereas attacks by China’s authoritarian regime are only to be expected.
Yet, with apologies to Greenpeace and Pereira’s loved ones for being so blunt, France’s disgraceful and inexcusable attack on New Zealand soil was at least against a third party. China’s attack was against the very heart of the New Zealand state and our most fundamental democratic institutions.
In going public on the Chinese attack this week in alliance with the United States and United Kingdom, Collins is showing the same steel in her role as spy chief that made her famous as police minister in the Key Government.
The similarities between the French and Chinese attacks on our sovereignty go further.
Like France in 1985, China, when caught, vehemently denied involvement. According to its embassy in Wellington – which increasingly communicates like the Writers’ Building in Kolkata during the British Raj or a Soviet embassy in eastern Europe or parts of Asia during the Cold War – Collins’ revelations were “groundless and irresponsible”. She was, it claimed, “completely barking up the wrong tree”.
The embassy said China had “lodged serious démarches to New Zealand’s relevant authorities, expressing strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition”. It urged New Zealand to “practice the letter and spirit of its longstanding and proud independent foreign policy”, which is code for an anti-Australian and anti-American foreign policy.
Hilariously given its practice of regularly issuing edicts to New Zealand, the embassy said that, rather than supporting our Five Eyes friends, New Zealand should be “independently making judgments and decisions in its best interests rather than blindly following other’s words and actions”.
The embassy will have to forgive New Zealanders for rejecting its denials. Whatever we think individually about our Labour or National parties, we know the Chinese Communist Party is worse. In 1985, we preferred to accept the word of Prime Minister David Lange and Opposition Leader Jim McLay over that of French President Francois Mitterrand, his Prime Minister Laurent Fabius and his Defence Minister Charles Hernu.
Likewise in 2024, New Zealanders are right to accept the word of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Collins, Opposition Leader Chris Hipkins and former spy minister Andrew Little over that of Chinese President Xi Jinping, his Prime Minister Li Qiang and their mouthpieces in Wellington.
Despite the evidence in 1985 being so obvious that one French official lamented “the only missing clues were a baguette, a black beret and a bottle of Beaujolais”, it took France, a democracy, 74 days before Fabius publicly admitted the truth. Don’t expect similar honesty from Li, ever.
Our police proved more competent in getting to the bottom of the French attack than the DGSE in covering it up, but New Zealand nevertheless still ended up humiliated.
In 1985, about 20 per cent of New Zealand’s exports were still going to what was then called the European Economic Community (EEC) and France had sufficient power in Brussels to put that all at risk.
Back then, New Zealand was also in the process of betraying Australia, the US, the UK and the rest of the free world with Lange’s anti-nuclear grandstanding.
Despite his fine rhetoric and the French spies being sentenced to 10 years’ jail by the New Zealand courts, Lange ultimately had no choice but to hand them back to France less than a year after the attack, and accept what was described as 30 pieces of silver in compensation.
Last year, China took about the same percentage of New Zealand exports as went to the EEC in 1985.
Like Lange before them, Luxon, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Collins – who together do the job Lange did alone – had no choice but to use softer language than justified in condemning China’s attack on New Zealand’s sovereignty.
They made sure Beijing knew the condemnation was coming, Collins confirmed New Zealand continued to see China as “a very good friend”, Luxon went out of his way to deny the MSS had infiltrated our electoral system and no sanctions will be imposed – as if they would matter to China anyway.
Moreover of course, China also knows that it did in fact attack us, that we know it did, and that more evidence could be issued publicly if necessary.
That should be the end of the matter. But one thing also protects New Zealand from Chinese power the way we were not from France’s arrogance in the mid-1980s.
This time, New Zealand has excellent and ever-improving relations with Australia, our other three Five Eyes intelligence friends, the rest of Nato, plus Japan, South Korea, and the other Asian democracies.
Unlike 1985, we can count on their public support when we come under attack from other alleged “friends”.
National’s Murray McCully and Gerry Brownlee, and Labour’s Nanaia Mahuta are part of the reason why. But, more importantly, we have Peters’ work as Foreign Minister for Helen Clark, Jacinda Ardern and now Luxon to thank most of all.
Disclosure: Matthew Hooton has over 30 years’ experience in political and corporate communications and strategy for clients in Australasia, Asia, Europe and North America, including the National and Act parties, and the Mayor of Auckland.
Meanwhile, the post-election rally cooled in the United States.