When push comes to shove, you soon find out who your real friends are. The trans-Tasman relationship has long been regarded as one of the strongest in the world: 13% of New Zealanders live in Australia and Australia’s day of remembrance, ANZAC Day, explicitly acknowledges our shared history.
But it’s starting to look like the New Zealand government has found a new friend to play with.
As Australia weathers an unprecedented trade and diplomatic attack from a genocidal communist dictatorship, whose side is the Ardern government on? Not Australia’s.
New Zealand’s Trade Minister has called on Australia to show respect and a “little more” diplomacy towards China, in an extraordinary intervention in the year-long Beijing-Canberra dispute from a fellow Five Eyes security and intelligence partner.
At the same time that her ministers are parroting Beijing’s propaganda talking points and betraying New Zealand’s oldest and closest alliance, Jacinda Ardern is eagerly scrambling for her 30 pieces of silver.
China has moved in recent days to update its free-trade agreement with New Zealand and Communist Party-controlled media has called on Australia to follow the lead of Jacinda Ardern’s government and its strategic approach to China.
So take the money, shut up and sell ourselves out?
In an interview on Thursday, Trade Minister Damien O’Connor said he was willing to mediate a trade settlement between Australia and China, and said Canberra would be in a better position if Scott Morrison’s government was “more careful with wording” and showed more respect.
The People’s Daily couldn’t have put it better.
In fact, those are almost exactly the talking-points from Beijing, which has previously warned Australia to “speak and act cautiously”, and “respect” China.
Should we expect O’Connor to start re-posting Beijing’s “14 grievances” next?
But the Ardern government’s intervention of behalf of China raises a basic question: just what is it that the NZ government thinks Australia has done wrong?
Is it the call for an independent inquiry into the origins of the Wuhan virus?
Maybe it’s criticising China’s brutal crackdown in Hong Kong?
Or drawing attention to China’s Xinjiang genocide campaign?
Is it our co-operation with international allies in order to halt China’s virtual annexation of the Pacific?
Perhaps it was the fact that the Australian government is prepared to act against the Chinese Communist Party’s “silent invasion” of Australia?
New Zealand is part of the Five Eyes intelligence network with Australia, the US, Britain and Canada. Australian Strategic Policy Institute executive director Peter Jennings said New Zealand could be forced to consider its place in the Five Eyes — and choose between Canberra and Beijing — if it continues to placate China.
The Australian
So, come on, Jacinda Ardern: whose side are you on? Your nation’s closest partner, a liberal, democratic nation – or the Nazi Germany of the 21st century?
At the same time as another of her ministers is embroiled in an anti-Semitic scandal, shilling for a genocidal dictatorship is not a good look for the Queen of Kindness.
Ye shall know them by their fruits, indeed.
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