Foreign Minister Winston Peters stated that New Zealand will begin talks with Australia about cooperating with the Aukus trilateral defence partnership between Australia, Britain and the United States on Wednesday, saying that Washington must do more to counter other political influences in the Pacific.
On Wednesday, Peters will visit Australia for an inaugural joint meeting of the foreign and defence ministers of New Zealand and Australia, in which they will also discuss the benefits of Wellington joining an expanded Aukus grouping.
“Pillar two [of Aukus] is the examination we’re going to look at beginning tonight and tomorrow and going forward,” he said in an interview.
“Pillar two” of the Aukus pact is separate from the first pillar which aims to deliver nuclear-powered attack submarines to Australia, but what such a new agreement would look like is not yet known. There has been no indication that New Zealand’s nuclear free policy will change since the 1980s.
According to Peters, the United States neglected the Pacific since the Second World War, and others filled the vacuum.
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“They’ve certainly upped their game, but they need to work with greater intensity on the immediate problems at the ground level of many of the island nations,” he said.
Peters did not mention China by name, but the competition between Washington and Beijing for influence in the Pacific has grown in recent years over issues such as security, defence, aid, and infrastructure.
Peters, who served as foreign minister from 2005 to 2008 and again from 2017 to 2020, returned to the role when a new conservative coalition government was elected in late 2023.
A “Pacific Reset” was launched in 2017 to boost engagement with the region and pour aid in an effort to woo neighbouring countries as China rapidly increased its presence.
