Christopher Luxon on foreign affairs, Winston Peters, Aukus and the global events that shaped him

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says greater spending on defence is needed. Photo / Marty Melville

Christopher Luxon is a man of the world.

In foreign affairs, as he fulfils his duties as Prime Minister by connecting to the rest of the world, it is clear that he thrives on those connections, making new ones and adding vim to old ones.

It’s also clear that he is very comfortable in that role, which may have more to do with Cockle Bay Primary School than being a former chief executive of Air New Zealand.

It was at school that he started the habit of studying world leaders, he says in an interview this week in his Beehive office, Pepsi at hand and the slight din of a Spotify playlist ever-present.

By the time he turned 20, he started doing it seriously, picking a leader a year and reading everything by them and about them – although he has taken a pause this year.

It’s a habit that fed both his love of history and his fascination with leadership, be it Winston Churchill, Madeleine Albright or Lee Kwan Yew.

The one that made a big impact on him was former United States President Ronald Reagan, who beat one-term Democrat President Jimmy Carter in 1980.

“He inherited a period of the 70s which had been very challenging for America economically, but also socially and culturally, and he brought some optimism to the place and he brought a plan.”

Reagan had given the American people hope after what had felt like a hopeless decade in the 1970s.

And if the Vietnam War shaped the minds of a generation before him, the big global event that shaped Luxon’s formative years was the Cold War, and the nightmare movie of his age was The Day After about nuclear obliteration.

“We were right in the middle of the Cold War. There was a very big nuclear existential threat to the world.”

The bombing of Greenpeace ship the Rainbow Warrior in 1985, which happened just before his 15th birthday, made a big impact and he said he supported New Zealand’s anti-nuclear position of the day.

But it was Reagan’s role at that time and his management of the Cold War that impressed the young man. It led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 when Luxon was aged 19 and the collapse of the Soviet Union not long after that.

“I watched the Berlin Wall come down at that age and stage and then obviously the economic openness that happened immediately after that,” said Luxon.

“Then I joined a big global company [Unilever] and was in Moscow and central-eastern Europe and places as they opened up to the world.

“I was in Asia as it really took off, as the middle classes started to grow, as those economies liberalised and went forward. That’s been my journey through it.”

Luxon led his first business mission as PM to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines and confides that the survey feedback from the delegation was the highest since New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) started running such trips – 95 per cent. In March he hosted the Prime Minister of Vietnam, Pham Minh Chinh, and plans further engagement with Indonesia and Malaysia, the other big Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) players.

The Spotify set is starting to annoy him and he switches it off (he doesn’t know what it is, but it began with “a very cool blues guy” Leon Bridges).

Christopher Luxon got high marks for his business mission to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines. Photo / Marty Melville

Much is made of Luxon’s former role as Air New Zealand CEO but it was almost certainly at Unilever, in which he spent 16 years overseas, that he became a truly global citizen.

“I spent a lot of time out in the world and I got to live in Australia and the UK, US and Canada and then I had global and regional jobs for each of those places I was based in.

“I’m used to that global engagement part in my past life and again here.”

Before he entered politics, he had taken his family, wife, kids, parents and parents-in-law on a 10-day holiday to China.

Listening to Luxon’s global exploits with Unilever and to a lesser extent Air NZ, he may not have the experience of Winston Peters, now in his third stint as Foreign Minister, but he is hardly a novice either.

He emphasises the team effort, and there is no doubt that he and Peters, plus Defence Minister Judith Collins and Trade Minister Todd McClay, have injected pace into their roles.

Peters is abroad again next week on his second Pacific mission, this time to Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Tuvalu, and this week McClay launched talks for a free trade agreement with the United Arab Emirates.

Peters has, of course, created some domestic controversy with his exuberance for a technology-sharing subset of Aukus, the deal intended to deliver a fleet of eight nuclear-propelled submarines for Australia from the United States and Britain.

It’s a big deal because it would formally attach New Zealand (and likely Japan, South Korea and Canada, all formal allies of the US) to a new alliance designed to counter China’s military expansion.

But Luxon has Peters’ back, 100 per cent. He does not deviate a millimetre from the view that there is not a jot of difference between the former Labour Government’s position and his Government’s position.

Christopher Luxon says the Government is open to exploring a role in Aukus "but there’s a long way to go". Photo / Marty Melville

But depending on which quote is used, there are differences. Luxon himself told an Australian audience on Sky News last week that “from a New Zealand perspective, Aukus does provide the region with better security and stability. I think it is a good thing”.

In the Newshub leaders’ debate in the election campaign, Labour leader Chris Hipkins said of Aukus pillar II: “My preference is some other arrangement rather than being part of Aukus.”

Perhaps then, an acceptable way to put it would be that Labour explored it cautiously, while Luxon’s Government was exploring it enthusiastically - but that’s not acceptable either. That’s “wordsmithing”, says Luxon.

“I think we are getting back a bigger conversation which is [that] bipartisanship in foreign policy I think is important for a small country like New Zealand.”

He saw the previous Labour Opposition oppose the negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) then sign up to it in Government when it became the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

“So maybe we call it a Comprehensive and Progressive Aukus Agreement – we might have alignment maybe.”

Luxon said bipartisanship mattered because New Zealand’s partners needed to know they were going to get a consistent relationship under successive Governments.

His go-to line on Labour and Aukus is to wonder aloud who is responsible for Labour policy – former Prime Minister Helen Clark, former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr or open critic Phil Twyford.

So, to use Winston Peters’ language in his joint statement with the US, does Luxon see “powerful reasons” to engage practically with Aukus?

Christopher Luxon and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters in Parliament. Photo / Mark Mitchell

“Yes, yes, yes. I mean we do,” he replies. “It’s no different from the previous position the Labour Government had 161 days ago that we are open to exploring pillar II in Aukus. Our nuclear position is going to remain completely utterly unchanged.”

But he said it was only recently that discussions to explore what it meant had opened up.

“It is only in the last few weeks that a pathway for us to be able to do that and engage with the other three parties, the partners in Aukus, has materialised.

“It is still very undefined, there is a long way to go and our officials will continue that work.

“It’s a very slow burn.”

He was not sure whether any outcome would be known this term. But he agreed that commitment to higher defence spending is inevitable – echoed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis on Thursday.

“I think it’s important. The reality in the contested world today is it’s all very well saying a whole bunch of words and statements but you’ve actually got to follow up and that does mean, over time, you’ve got to have greater defence capability to support your security arrangements.

“That is the price of entry.

“In the same way on the economic front you’ve got to have a store of relationships and you’ve got to be building out different capabilities as you build the economic agenda too.”

That was very different to how it might have been five years or 10 or 15 years ago.

“So that has evolved and the price of entry on both economic and security is higher.”

Audrey Young, senior political correspondent, interviewing the Prime Minister in his Beehive office this week. Photo / Marty Melville

The Government’s priority was to increase the intensity of relationships in the Indo-Pacific, with the three areas of focus being Australia, the Pacific, and Asia, including India.

Luxon said he wanted to deepen the longstanding relationship with China, which he described as “complex”.

“But we also have to acknowledge that we have different political histories, different political cultures, different political systems. And that will mean, as it has always meant, that we have moments when we disagree and we will predictably, consistently, publicly or private call those out.”

Asked if he feared retaliation by China if New Zealand attached itself to Aukus, he said: “It’s about a principled basis of believing in some values.

“And so when you need talk to your values, you need to be able to talk to your values and take action.”

He bristles at the suggestion that sounds as if he would join Aukus for values rather than because of a threat.

“Again, we are not there. We are exploring Aukus and I think it is disingenuous to position the Government’s position as being any different to the previous one.

“We’re open to exploring it but there’s a long way to go.”

Audrey Young is the New Zealand Herald’s senior political correspondent. She was named Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards in 2023, 2020 and 2018.