 Board members, friends, and supporters of the Lowy Institute, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning and welcome. I'm Angus Houston, a board member of the Lowy Institute. It's my pleasure to welcome all of you gathered here at 31 Bly Street, as well as to welcome our audience joining online. Here from the 40th Prime Minister of New Zealand, the right honourable Jacinda Ardern. Let me begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which the Lowy Institute stands. The Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging. Our Executive Director, Dr Michael Fullerab is currently on annual leave overseas. He sends his apologies that he cannot be here today to host this important event. I will say a few words now to introduce our guest, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who will then give some remarks. Afterwards, she has agreed to have a conversation with our Director of Research, Herve Lemaha, and to take some questions from the audience. Prime Minister, we're very grateful that you've made the time to visit us at the Lowy Institute. You've just come back from the very important NATO gathering in Madrid. That summit and your attendance alongside that of our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, was rich in symbolism. It shows that democracies will stand together against unjustified military aggression and invasion carried out by revisionist powers. Closer to home, we have not been immune to the consequences of war in Europe, and we must contend with a range of other challenges. Australia's relationship with its largest trading partner, China, remains fraught. Beijing is also boldly seeking to expand its influence in the Southwest Pacific. In light of this, we are honoured to host Prime Minister Ardern at the Institute today to help us make sense of the world and better understand the role that New Zealand intends to play in addressing our shared challenges. Australia and New Zealand are natural allies with a strong trans-Tasman sense of family. In our annual Lowy Institute poll released last week, the majority of Australians described New Zealand as our country's best friend in the world. And Australians also have a very high regard for New Zealand's Prime Minister. For the fourth consecutive year, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is in poll position among global leaders and Australia's trust to do the right thing in world affairs. Incredibly, 80% of Australians express confidence in her. It is easy to see why. Mr. Ardern is admired around the world for her charisma and dedication to progressive foreign policy and politics. She was elected to the New Zealand Parliament in 2008 and became leader of the Labour Party in August 2017. Only a few months later, she became the world's youngest female head of government at the age of 37. Mr. Ardern's time in office has been rocked by several national traumas. Indeed, who could forget her calm and empathetic response to the appalling massacre at the Christchurch Mosque in 2019? The Prime Minister has earned the world's respect for the way she has handled this and other crises. Today, Mr. Ardern will speak to us about New Zealand's foreign policy in our complex world. So now, it is my great pleasure to invite the Prime Minister to the podium. Prime Minister, the lectern is yours. Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you all here today and greet you in the same manner in which I would greet an audience where I to be in Aotearoa, New Zealand. First, I acknowledge all of you here today, those who have passed and, importantly, what we would call the mana whenua or people of the land, in this case the Gadigal people of the Aura Nation. When I was asked to share a few thoughts with the prestigious Lowe Institute, I welcomed the opportunity. After all, I have just come off the back of trips into Asia, the United States and Europe. Only those in Australia know as much as we do how much thinking time that represents through flying. And so today represents an important opportunity then to reflect on a question that I myself and my Cabinet colleagues have been discussing for some time. And that is, in an increasingly polarized and contested world, when the push and pull of foreign diplomacy is heightened, how do you successfully sustain a truly independent foreign policy? Now I may not conclusively resolve this vexed question in the short time I have with you today, but I at least will share with you New Zealand's perspective on it. But first, some important scene setting. I'm mindful that in traversing the international environment at present, it may feel that I leave everyone a little bit bereft. After all, in just a few short years, we've seen the space in which we transact foreign policy becoming increasingly difficult. Europe is facing the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the complete disruption of the international rules-based order in their region. But more than that, the sense of peace and stability that they've broadly experienced since the aftermath of World War II has been shattered. And you feel that when you're there on the ground. The war itself is challenging our notions of conflict and demonstrating how multifaceted warfare now is with cyber attacks and disinformation accompanying the more traditional forms of combat. In our region, we're observing an increasingly contested environment and add to that the wider global impacts of an ongoing pandemic, the economic crisis that has ensued and the powerful forces that are disrupting social cohesion and the trust people have in the institutions that serve them. And if this isn't enough, we are yet to succeed in addressing one of the most immediate security issues in our region, that of climate change. In a word, it has grimmed out there. But just as I confess in a speech I gave just last week, I am an optimist at heart and remain so. The pressures we face present yes challenges, but also opportunities. Opportunities if we pull on our own terms in the same direction. Last week in that same speech, this was a sentiment I touched on, but I was asked in the aftermath what on our own terms meant. Now for me, the encapsulation of New Zealand's foreign policy today is best summed up in three broad principles. The first principle simply put is a sense of collectivism or global cooperation. There's a reason why in the aftermath of World War II, where like Australia and New Zealand suffered incredible loss of life, we were present for the establishment of the United Nations in San Francisco. We were seeking order and ballast as much as we were seeking a voice. In the face of global conflict and tension, we continue to position ourselves based on the principle of upholding the rules-based order through multilateral institutions. And when seeking solutions to issues, be it war or dispute, New Zealand will turn to these same institutions to act as mediator and when necessary as judge. Now I can point to a number of examples where we have used these institutions in recent times. We did so to put on record our concern about China's actions in the South China Sea, Hong Kong and Xinjiang, our condemnation of the military coup in Myanmar, and the threat to regional peace and stability posed by North Korea's repeated ballistic missile tests in clear violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions. And in many cases, we've obviously been in the company of others. If a nation values the rule-based order, human rights, being a good law-abiding neighbour as defined by the UN, sovereign rights no matter size, wealth or power, and a sense of shared responsibility, then it will pursue its interests accordingly, but more often than not in the company of others who share similar values and interests. But multilateral institutions are imperfect and they have and they will fail us. And when they do fail, our first port of call must always be to find ways to make them stronger. Equally, we cannot be left unable to respond to global challenges because we encounter dysfunction or worse yet moral failings. In recent times there has been no better example of that than the failure of the UN to appropriately respond to the war in Ukraine because of the position taken by Russia in the Security Council, a morally bankrupt position on their part, in the wake of a morally bankrupt and illegal war. Under these circumstances, waiting for our multilateral institutions to act was not an option for New Zealand. Here, when the system fails, we seek partnerships and approaches based on the second principle of our independent foreign policy, our values. A conviction that we have a moral responsibility to do our part to maintain the rules-based order that regardless of whether a collective approach is possible, maintaining the basic values of human rights, gender equality, state sovereignty, climate action, that falls on each of us to defend and uphold, that we are increasingly interdependent on one another and are and have always been impacted by the choice of others. But we of course have to recognise that these principles of collectivism or global cooperation and our values are and will always be shaped by the third principle, place. And our place is in the Pacific. The Pacific is who we are as well as where we are. It is both our identity and our place in the world. We are a nation whose founding document between its indigenous people and the Crown is known as the Treaty of Waitangi, or to Treaty of Waitangi. And it's our First Nations people who have shared a voyaging history. Our people came from Waka, mapping the Pacific. These documents, connections and history to continue to shape us as a nation. And while I know this is not often how we are positioned, when you look at a map with New Zealand at the centre rather than at the bottom, or if we're being honest, missing from the map entirely, our islands are bounded by the Pacific and Southern Oceans and the Tasman Sea, a region with its own history, culture and institutions. And one of the reasons when we took office, we launched the Pacific Reset. For us, the regional architecture of the Pacific is critical. New Zealand is absolutely committed to the Pacific Islands Forum as a vehicle for addressing regional challenges. To that end, foreign members have been working together to develop the 2050 strategy for the Blue Pacific continent to provide a long-term vision of what we want to achieve together for our region. We have a strong commitment to supporting broader ambitions for our region's security, as set out in the Bikitawa and Boe declarations. Importantly, we see local security challenges being resolved locally, with Pacific Island Forum members' security being addressed first and foremost by the Forum family. That's because we have a history of meeting one another's needs, including most recently through the regional deployment of personnel to Honiara to support the re-establishment of peace and stability following unrest. The model exists, and we should use it. That is not to say there will not be others who have an interest in the Pacific. There are. France, Japan, the UK, US and China have all played a role in the Pacific for many, many years. It would be wrong to characterize this engagement, including that of China, as new. It would also be wrong to position the Pacific in such a way that they have to pick sides. These are democratic nations with their own sovereign right to determine their foreign policy engagements. We can be country neutral in approach, but have a Pacific bias on the values we apply for these engagements. But priorities should be set by the Pacific. They should be free from coercion. Investment should be of high quality. And issues that affect the security of all of us, or may be seen as the militarization of the region, should come through PIF as set out in the Bikitawa and Boe declaration, as such change would rightly affect and deeply concern many. Ultimately, rather than increase strategic competition in the region though, we need instead to look for areas to build and cooperate, recognizing the sovereignty and independence of those for whom the region is home. And so while we each maintain our independence, and New Zealand certainly does, we are part of a family, one that is incredibly important to us and central in our decision making. When expressing the principles of an independent foreign policy in this way, the principles of cooperation, values in place, it would be easy to give the impression of a nice tidy matrix from which we sit down and make decisions. The honest reality is that the world is bloody messy. And yet, amongst all the complexity, we still often see issues portrayed in a black and white way. This is one of the challenges to an independent foreign policy. It is also a challenge for all those who seek peace and stability through dialogue and diplomacy, at a time when there is so little room for error and misunderstanding. Let me dwell on an example. The war in Ukraine is unquestionably illegal and unjustifiable. Russia must be held to account. We all have a role to play ensuring that happens. This is why New Zealand will intervene as a third party in Ukraine's case against Russia in the International Court of Justice. We must reform the United Nations so that we don't have to rely on individual countries imposing their own autonomous sanctions. We must also resource the International Criminal Court to undertake full investigations and prosecution of the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine. But in taking every possible action to respond to Russia's aggression and to hold it to account, we must remember that fundamentally this is Russia's war. And while there are those who have shown overt and direct support, such as Belarus, who must also see consequences for their role, let us not otherwise characterize this as a war of the West versus Russia, or democracy versus autocracy. It is not. Nor should we naturally assume it is a demonstration of the inevitable trajectory in other areas of geo-strategic contest. In the wake of the tensions we see rising, including in our Indo-Pacific region, diplomacy must become the strongest tool and de-escalation the loudest call. We won't succeed, however, if those parties we seek to engage with are increasingly isolated and the region we inhabit becomes increasingly divided and polarized. We must not allow the risk of a self-fulfilling prophecy to become an inevitable outcome for our region. And that is one of the reasons as New Zealand looks to the wider Indo-Pacific, we seek to ensure that the intensity of our engagement is increasing, and we call for others to do the same. We have a legacy and interest in the Indo-Pacific, as does Australia. Both countries have invested heavily in relationships and institutions there, not least because what happens in the Indo-Pacific region impacts our entire neighbourhood. It follows that we must strengthen the resilience of the Indo-Pacific through relationships and, importantly, economic architecture. But it's so often through strategic alignment that it seems to be the primary entry point for relationships. In our view, it's economic architecture that will truly build the resilience of our region. Since the turn of the century, New Zealand has looked for new ways to engage with those who share our trade and economic ambitions. The CEO of Australia, in 1983, has already mentioned, as I would say, the world's best example, what is also the comprehensive and progressive agreement for Trans-Pacific partnerships, still the worst-titled free-trade agreement that we have in the entire world, the ASEAN Australia-New Zealand FDA, the Super FDA Plus partnerships Australia and New Zealand concluded with Singapore, and more recently the Indo-Pacific economic framework. And we are now breaking new ground with the next generation trade agenda through initiatives such as the Agreement on Climate Change, Trade and Sustainability, which seeks to see climate-related goods and services move more freely, and also the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement. Our approach in New Zealand has always been inclusive. It means we leave the door open to others who can meet the same high standards. And that's because trade is a bridge-builder and a vehicle for grappling with challenges beyond just the exchange of goods and services, whether it's climate change, subsidies for fishing and fossil fuels, improved labour conditions, even gender equality with New Zealand recently embedding CEDOR into the EU-New Zealand FDA. These are all features of the progressive and inclusive trade agenda. New Zealand is both practicing and seeking to implement. Now at its heart, trade creates connections. It creates mutual obligations, shared interests and joint benefits. And all those things ultimately have a role to play in reducing conflict and ultimately contributing to peace, stability and prosperity. Trade, in our view, is no longer exclusively a vehicle for economic growth. Trade is a means of upholding shared values. And that extends to Indigenous cooperation and inclusive economic recovery at this challenging time. No wonder then that trade is such an increasing mainstay of New Zealand's foreign policy approach. The trade relationship we share with China, for example, continues to grow, underpinned by our bilateral FDA. But even as China becomes more assertive in the pursuit of its interests, there are still shared interests on which we can and should seek to cooperate. The post-war order and the rules that underpin it have supported China's rise. And as a permanent member of the Security Council, China has a crucial role to play in upholding that order. And so if these principles and ideas give you a sense of what on our own terms means, the second question you may ask is, in which direction are we pulling? Now on the long list of foreign policy priorities, there are some for New Zealand that have not changed in many decades. Almost 50 years ago, New Zealand Prime Minister Norman Kirk said farewell to the New Zealand frigate, HMNZS Otago, as it sailed to Murro Atoll, to protest against the French atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. He told the crew their mission was, quote, an honourable one. They were, quote, silent witnesses with the power to bring alive the conscious conscience of the world. Now we haven't been silent since then, nor have we been passive witnesses. 1986 together we established the Pacific Nuclear Free Zone and New Zealand is a proudly nuclear free country. Our values dictated that we had to stand up and speak out against the decades of nuclear testing in the Pacific. The opposing nuclear weapons is now a central tenet of New Zealand's foreign policy. The effects of nuclear testing in the Pacific are ongoing today and New Zealand is supportive of collective regional action on this issue. We've joined a Pacific Island Forum Task Force to take forward the nuclear legacy issues, which I look forward to discussing with other leaders at our meetings in Surva next week. This is no theoretical or purely regional issue either. As I said at NATO recently, we cannot allow a consequence of the conflict in Ukraine to be the further escalation of a nuclear arms race. After all, mutually assured destruction is nonetheless still destruction. I'd like to acknowledge here that New Zealand was pleased to welcome Australia as an observer to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the first meeting of state parties recently. New Zealand is a strong supporter of the Treaty, which makes it illegal for those who joined to have nuclear weapons. 50 years after Kirk nuclear disarmament remains a priority for us, but some of the challenges we face today did not even exist 50 years ago, and that means some of the answers to them may not be best addressed by traditional tools. As we confront a growing number of digital challenges and opportunities, we need to think beyond traditional multilateralism to how we build smart multi-stakeholder coalitions where governments work with civil society and industry on a shared problem set. This was our approach when a radicalized white supremacist attack to Christchurch mosques in March 2019 killing 51 people and injuring many, many others. We knew that what was needed was a strong global response and so we created the Christchurch call to action. The Christchurch call has galvanized both significant policy change and action by tech platforms to upgrade crisis readiness, share capabilities across the sector and work with the coal community to address terrorist and violent extremist content online. The call has made great progress in the three years it's existed, but it's incumbent on us as co-founders of the call to continue to see its ambition realized and that is as important now as it's ever been. That's why it will continue to be a priority for us and why we'll continue to innovate in the way we build partnerships to address the challenges we face. Now, this in itself is a bit of a change to our traditional statecraft and the institutions that out hold it, but we have to be prepared to go outside of our comfort zone and invest the time and resources to ensure civil society, business and indigenous populations are genuinely engaged. That approach is increasingly important when it comes to the issue of climate change. Now, I know I've said this many times, but it feels important to me given the emphasis that we have put on place to point out that for every Pacific Island forum I've had the privilege of attending, climate change has by far and away dominated the discussion and that's because it's not a challenge on paper. A few years ago I had what I believe will be one of the greatest experiences of my life, visiting every atoll of Tokalau. Tokalau is a realm country of New Zealand made up of three atolls that are accessed via a more than 24-hour long journey by sea from Samoa. Not too many people have the luck to go, but that doesn't mean we should take an out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach to the reality. Tokalau is low-lying. Some of their burial grounds are coastal. They've already had the devastating job of contemplating the relocation of gravesites in order to stop their ancestors washing away. The water has already begun to take out the coastal wall that we helped to create to slow down this inundation. And as weather events increase, I cannot tell you how much concern I have over the ability of us to reach this beautiful place and its wonderful people in a timely way. Climate change must be a foreign policy priority. While we all have a concern, and rightly so, about any moves towards militarisation of our region that must surely be matched by a concern for those who experience the violence of climate change. There are many who wish to support the reason's mitigation efforts. And it's why we've committed $1.3 billion over four years towards climate change and at least 50% going to the Pacific. But there is an opportunity on my mind for the Pacific Island Forum to play a role in establishing region-wide mitigation projects that climate funding can support. Not every external aid and development donor will have the capability to access our neighbours individually. We need to look to the role we can play to bring in that support on the terms that the Pacific sets, and the PIF is a great way to do that. And all of this needs to happen because ultimately this is our home. And that makes you our cousins. But more importantly over many years it has made you our friend. You are our second largest trading partner. You are our only formal ally. You are our largest market for foreign direct investment. 40% of arrivals into New Zealand in 2019 were from Australia. It's lucky we like you so much. We share our people, our problems and increasingly our solutions. In fact when we look to our principles, cooperation, values and place we naturally find you within them. Now we won't always agree, nor should we. But it's true that in the messy world we live, friendship matters. Where there is a commitment to work collaboratively. Where there is commitment to uphold the values that ensure progress comes not at the expense of another. And where there is commitment to respecting place and friendship to be found and progress to be made. These are the foundations upon which New Zealand has been able to prioritise and make progress in areas that are not just good for the Pacific but we hope good for the world. Be it through trade policy, efforts to tackle climate change, disarmament or taking on new challenges like online hate. And so in this messy world still full of opportunities and optimism I hope you will find us both on our own terms pulling in the same direction. So thank you all. Prime Minister thank you for those considered very thought provoking wide ranging remarks on New Zealand's independent foreign policy and its place in the world. Thank you also for agreeing to have a conversation with me and to take some questions from the audience a little later. In your speech you mentioned a litany of challenges. War, raising the specter of nuclear conflict. We've got climate change, threatening famine, flood, fire, inflation and economic crisis, forcing central banks to crush consumer demand. The pandemic which has had the secondary consequence of closing factories and exacerbating global inequality. So it brought to mind a concept that the historian Adam Tooze likes to mention which is a poly crisis basically. Politics we call it a cluster. That's right. I thought I'd be polite but I could have resorted to that as well. I mean each crisis is hard enough to parse by itself but it's the interconnected mess that is infinitely more difficult than prosecuting one challenge at a time. So your optimism is welcome. I think it's needed to say the least and there are many ways we could tackle this conversation but I thought I'd begin by coming back to something you said in the speech. You said when systems fail, when the multilateral system fails as it did clearly in the case of the war in Ukraine, New Zealand's position is to take recourse in its second principle of independence which is one rooted in values. And what we've seen essentially is a recourse to mini-lateralism as opposed to multilateralism by necessity and these are countries that share similar values that have democracy, liberal democracy in common and yet you've also been very reluctant to want to typify this conflict with Russia as a conflict between Russia or the East and the West or democracy versus authoritarian system. On the one hand there's a need to rejuvenate democracies and I think even the poll that we've just released of Australian attitudes on the world last week shows that support for democracy is at the highest level ever which is an amazing perhaps byproduct of our tumultuous times but does that mean that New Zealand is forced in some sense to have to resort to values-driven partnerships to mini-lateralism and abandoned multilateralism? We will not abandon multilateralism and that's why you heard me reference that despite the failings and even you see the United Nations Secretary General speak very frankly about this that despite those structural failings that have been built in by default into the Security Council we still sought the ability to respond to what our value set demands and so that's why it was incredibly meaningful for us that of course as a result of the Security Council not taking an approach to sanction that we still then created for the first time in autonomous sanctions regime but you still see the level of global cooperation because ultimately the sanctions will not and cannot have the desired effect were it not to see a broad base for those sanctions across multiple economies so despite the failing of those multilateral approach you see the importance of that collective and cooperative global cooperation as well and so just to make that point that we still though will seek the reform to ultimately ensure that we don't see a weakening or a lessening of the value or relevance of those multilateral institutions that's still very important to New Zealand but we will seek to respond in the meantime just one other note I mean even in our response you seek us looking to either for instance the NATO Trust Fund is our source of distribution for non-lethal aid we sought to partner with the UK for the decision that we took to contribute to lethal aid we're still seeking those partnerships but if I were to double back to just a second almost challenge that you posed in your question this issue of whether or not we are diminishing the importance of democracy in the way that we're characterising the conflict not at all of course you know we're a liberal democracy we seek to promote of course the values that are important to us but what we also seek is to ensure that we base our foreign policy responses on fact not assertion and assumption and you'll hear from within the Asia Pacific I think it was Prime Minister Lee in Singapore who first articulated this idea of when visiting the United States the idea of not turning in the war in Ukraine to democracy versus autocracy because we need to build a much broader base of response let's not assume that China as a member of the Security Council does not have a role to play in placing pressure and response to what is the loss of territorial integrity at the hands of Russia let's not just isolate and assume that there's only democracies that take this view but if we talk about the war and conflict in a very black and white way we immediately assume they don't have that role to play now at the NATO summit that you attended in Madrid NATO leaders declared China to be a threat to peace for the first time warning that Beijing's ambitions and coercive behaviour is a major challenge to the group's interests and different governments including those that you have visited in the last few weeks have warned that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has a direct parallel with China's potential ambitions or Taiwan do you agree with those assessments? You will have heard very much in the commentary that I gave speaking in broad terms that we should not immediately apply what we're seeing in Europe and just blanket say that this is the trajectory of other geostrategic issues that we're seeing in our region that is the kind of example of this very black and white narrative that I don't think allows us to then continue to engage in the dialogue and diplomacy that we need at this time I actually believe that there's a number who see that we need to acknowledge the complexity within Europe and beyond the other point that I would make about NATO and the fact that we had it wasn't the first time New Zealand has been present at NATO I should add it was the second at Prime Minister level at a summit the first time it was 2007-2008 Prime Minister Helen Clark attended I believe with John Howard in response to a meeting that was called to engage those who had played a role in Afghanistan so there's an example of where we see nations who of course not members of NATO but who have an interest in global conflict in a global conflict engaging directly with that alliance and I would draw the same parallel here I think what we see is an increasing recognition that regional boundaries are blurred now when you see cyber security issues and we see this playing out in the war in Ukraine it is both a war on the ground but a conflict in the cyber space and increasingly Russian disinformation affects everyone you only need to look at the recent survey that Microsoft released to see that New Zealand for instance the consumption of Russian disinformation in New Zealand was at times at the end of last year 30% higher than it was in the United States I don't believe that any more we can assume that the contests or issues we see are just confined to particular regions increasingly they are borderless and they affect all of us so conversations in Europe about China conversations in the Asia Indo-Pacific and Asia-Pacific about Russia when we see a threat to the international rules based order when we see multilateralism challenge we converse about it we discuss it and I think it's only Europe seeks the view of those of the Indo-Pacific and addressing these challenges and the way I seek the view of Europe and addressing the challenge of Ukraine so here New Zealand was not seeking formal additional military alliances we were there to create a world that doesn't need to call on them and that's very much I see the position of New Zealand so you're not what we might describe in Australia an Indo-Pacific parochialist in the sense that we'll hear from the way that I position New Zealand Pacific first and foremost but of course we see the challenges of the Indo-Pacific is our challenges the opportunities of the Indo-Pacific is our opportunities but we have a very central anchor point within that Pacific this is a compass turning to the bilateral relationship now I mean you must be relieved to see that climate policy is much more on our agenda in Australia following a change of government of course New Zealand has taken stock of geopolitics that's much more on your agenda and it always strikes me as a sort of foreigner I can't say that anymore it's an Australian but naturalized Australian that despite the huge similarities that exist between New Zealand and Australia there was or historically has been a very different geopolitical outlook a different way of engaging the United States a different way of engaging China so the question is this has New Zealand underweighted geopolitics or has Australia overweighted geopolitics I don't know I actually probably would say neither that in the face of different challenges you know we'll often share the same concerns but we may at any given time take a different political approach to an issue but that doesn't diminish I think the acknowledgement of those concerns or those issues that we face you know and here I can obviously feel much more comfortable speaking on behalf of New Zealand's foreign policy rather than Australia's but something that has long struck me about New Zealand in our view of the world and foreign policy generally is that we have levels of engagement with and understanding and awareness of the global environment in which we operate at a general population level that's quite broad brush and I think that that speaks to geographic isolation but also the fact that as young people as children as young people as adults we grow up learning and understanding the impact of the decisions that others have on us and I used a couple of examples last week just to illustrate the point that that shapes us as Kiwis but also it shapes us as politicians as a young person I was obviously I can't remember this but I was definitely told about it a lot my father missed my first birthday it's obviously my mother telling this story because my father who was a policeman was policing the Springbok tour and there was you know to this day New Zealanders will talk about the division and their families derived out of the political positioning of individuals in New Zealand which was deeply held around apartheid in South Africa deeply held and that idea of should New Zealand at all times and in all places politics or sports take a strong position on an issue of social and racial justice fast forward a few years and we had the bombing of the rainbow warrior and this is something that's just New Zealanders hold in their core because it attaches so strongly to our position on nuclear weapons and then in the 1990s we were all learning about the impact of the globe's use of chlorofluorocarbons and burning a hole in our ozone layer which became then a precursor to understanding that everyone's actions impacted our climate so that was probably the beginning in New Zealand for a whole generation of young people learning that it was maybe out of their control but it certainly had an impact we are very outward facing we know that the decision of another isn't just for them there are many ways very much a cork in the ocean and so we seek to speak out loudly regardless of size, power or wealth on those issues that affect us but particularly when they affect our values so that's where we inherently come at these issues as New Zealanders now you're very outward looking but of course we've come out of a very difficult two years of pandemic and lockdown we all have published about a year ago quite a critical position on what we term Fortress Australia in the sense that we thought the lockdown at least in terms of the closure of international borders had started to encumber our ability to engage with the region and the rest of the world do you think something similar happened in New Zealand? Look we can't deny that every every country's domestic policy on Covid came at a cost to someone absolutely there was no cost free approach to this horrific pandemic everyone made choices there will be the consequences of our closed borders I still remember just devastating stories from people about the impact that they had on Kiwis abroad or at home as did some of the restrictions at the times and places that we've had them I know certainly from New Zealand perhaps this is an example from Australia as well I think we made the assumption that other countries pushed on and didn't have for instance the same impacts of lockdown so they just chose to push on and they paid the health consequences but not so much the consequences to freedom if you go into London or parts of Europe they'll talk about the fact that even now they're only just returning to work that they've had in some cases eight months of continuous forms of isolation and I think we take for perhaps we take for granted just how devastating in different ways this pandemic was globally so yes it came at a cost do I believe it was the right decision to make I do would there be things we did differently at the margins of course always if you can't learn from an experience like that then you're not open to reviewing the experience but ultimately I think for New Zealand it saved thousands of lives and we sought other ways to stay connected which there will be a legacy that in some ways may be positive as well yeah now it's hard to argue with saving human lives it is so I thought I'd throw that in there at the end for you look let's turn to the Pacific now because it was such an important part of your speech and obviously competition whether we like it or not is heating up in the South Pacific the Pacific islands have their own ways of dealing with that amongst themselves and in relation to great powers but my question is in hindsight would your government have done anything differently in regard to China's trade and security agreement in the Solomon Islands was that as big of a concern to you as it was to us in Australia I'll answer that in two parts so was it of concern to us? Yes I think one of the things that we expressed was because ultimately the Solomon Islands expressed the decision to enter into that engagement as a result of a desire to provide peace and security to in particular foreign nationals within the Solomon Islands and so the point that we were at pains to make was that New Zealand and obviously Australia as well have always been willing open and available to meet those needs when New Zealand at the request of the Solomon Islands is present there we don't differentiate around who on behalf as citizens we're providing that security and stability for and so that I think will be a useful discussion within the Pacific Island Forum and that was our second call was as set out in those declarations the place in which we you know are and have committed to discussing those security needs and so we'll seek to do that but equally it falls it's incumbent on New Zealand and Australia to make sure that we use it forum for the same purpose on the question though that really positions both New Zealand and Australia on what different actions could we have undertaken a very careful care because almost by in the question itself is assumption that that you know the Solomon Islands doesn't have you know its own sovereign right to make decisions around its own engagement in connection with with other states and obviously they do and you know here again I would argue that yes we have long standing in deep relationships China has quite long standing relationships in the Pacific too and the Solomon Islands in 2019 obviously flipped their recognition from Taiwan to China and who are we to argue on that when New Zealand itself holds a one China policy so where our point of contest here is the fact that we're entering into this space that could lend itself to militarization which we have deep concern over the final point I'll make though is that whilst a number of different countries have long standing relationships in the region and I mentioned a few of them there you know New Zealand's relationships I still see as different you know within New Zealand we have Pacific Island communities that are almost in some cases as large if not larger than in their home country we have a very deep historical and cultural connection to parts of the Pacific and that I think you know in my mind impacts the way that we engage with the region the region is family for us and so we will treat it with the respect of family as well but also speaking to concerns when we see them as well right so we've got about 10 minutes and I thought I would give you one more yes no question it's a bit tricky and then we'll move to audience questions but you spoke a lot about economic architecture being a form of the economic balance of power is something that is hugely important to New Zealand of course we know New Zealand is a big trading nation what is New Zealand's position I mean you were in London last week and you warmly endorsed the UK's accession bid China and the CPTPP that's exactly right what's your position on China's bid to join the CPTPP look you know our view is again as you will have heard me say open and inclusive on our trade agenda the question for us is can you enter in at the high standards at which the CPTPP has set so that for New Zealand is our position would say the same thing to the UK that we would say to China here's the bar here's the conditions and it's for each to then demonstrate that they can be met fair enough we're going to open to audience questions now there wasn't a question by the way I thought I'd frame you afterwards then blame you for not answering yes or no are you in favour of accession yes or no that depends on the standards so I invite anyone to raise their hands at this point and ask a question I see a gentleman towards the front there I see Lydia Khalil so maybe we'll go to the gentleman first and then to Lydia in this mess of room I might not hear you oh hi a good question I think we probably need to position this where it's intended at the stage and so this is very much what I would describe at the stage in organizing instrument at officials and at a diplomatic level so that's where it sits in the architecture at the moment and I see it as a signal from the United States in the same way that I do around the Indo-Pacific economic framework of a greater willingness to engage in the Pacific region but what we've been very very clear on and I think probably I believe Australia as well is that that engagement needs to be consistent engagement shouldn't be simply because others are engaging in our region it should be because there's a desire to build long standing and committed relationships and I think it is that it needs to be on the Pacific's terms so I very much see this as a structure that enables those two priorities to be convened and pursued but again it is still very much at that level as opposed to a ministerial look at a higher level Lydia Khalil next and then we've got a few others Thank you Prime Minister for your address Lydia Khalil I'm from the Institute and one of the issues that I take a look at is international terrorism and extremism and so I'd like to ask you a question about the Christchurch call to action that you referred to so this was an initiative as you said that you led with the President Macron in France and I want to ask you a question both about the goals and the means of reaching the goals of the Christchurch call to action so one of the stated goals and the means of that is the voluntary commitments by tech companies and I'm wondering if you think that the goal is a realistic one given that violent extremist content is not only flourishing on platforms that are part of the gift CT the global internet form to counter terrorism and even on the platforms that are a part of the gift CT we've still seen an increase in the flourishing of extremist content online and so I'm wondering is the voluntary commitments enough and where or when or if do you see a role for greater international cooperation on the regulation of these global companies. Thank you for the question and for the interest. The first thing I'd point out is that within the Christchurch call there is also a call on governments to ensure that they are doing their part in responding to violent extremism and terrorism online so I wouldn't say it's correct that we let governments have the hook when it comes to the regulatory environment that they create and you've seen examples of since the Christchurch call establishment you'll see within the EU for instance some of their regulatory response to Digital Services Act and so on demonstrating that actually there is a call on us to respond in that way but I think because you'll see the call to action is also very heavily weighted towards the tech companies and in expectation that's an acknowledgement in this environment it is incredibly dynamic and that yes provisions around takedown and expectations around upholding terms of service and content regulation all incredibly important but all ultimately probably not at the pace and with the nuance that is required to actually make a difference because you take on its own, you take for example the trajectory of the radicalisation now if we only talk about whether or not we have the headings online or the live broadcast of terrorist acts then we leave which is very much the space that states tend to operate at because it's easy to establish thresholds when you come back and start thinking about early radicalisation much much harder for states to establish thresholds that dip into the space of hate crime, disinformation yet that is as important on that pathway to radicalisation so here the role of the Christchurch call it's made great progress on those immediate crisis response so for instance we know that for some of the recent terrorist or violent extremist activity we've seen broadcast live in the United States more recently in Buffalo as I recall there a deliberate decision by the perpetrator not to use one particular live stream platform that was used in our case because of the alterations that are being made to that setting and they considered it easier to use another platform then the proliferation of that content they broadcast it with the idea of them seeking wide reach as unfortunately the terrorists in New Zealand did they were not nearly as successful because we have a crisis response protocol now like a civil defence mechanism our team keeps me abreast because I'm always interested they'll tell me crisis response protocol initiated the online, the social media platforms they start sharing hash the ability to take down quickly they convene and operate almost seamlessly and that means that we have a vastly different immediate response but the next frontier for us is content curation what do we do around creating responsible algorithm curation and deployment and this is where ultimately audiences users are being fed sometimes by their own indicative choices online but sometimes without necessarily that being the case being fed particular content we're asking for much greater transparency around algorithm use and deployment and this is the next frontier for us the tech companies are there at the table it would be so hard to just simply take a legit sort of approach on that and that's why we need to take all elements of the discussion to the table and set an expectation I'll take one final question I saw my colleague Natasha had her hand up so we might go to Natasha and we might have to keep this one brief in order to try to end on time I can see I've got 45 seconds for this one Thank you Hervé and thank you Prime Minister Natasha Kasam from the Lovie Institute you talked about the need for diplomacy and de-escalation in other areas of geo-strategic contest I'm going to assume one of those areas is Taiwan New Zealand's one of the only countries that does have a free trade agreement with Taiwan my question to you is that as a part of a progressive and values based foreign policy does that extend to doing more democracy like Taiwan under threat and how do you see that challenge in our region Yeah I would see us as being a champion of the values framework that I expressed broadly within our region and beyond but what we seek equally is the ability to speak broadly on issues of concern in a way that doesn't for instance bring into contest those economic relationships with our ability to be freely raised where we have concerns in other areas and this is where I think generally liberal democracies want to have the ability to engage with mature relationships and have the ability to yes engage in trading relationships but also have the ability to in dialogue with one another exchange where we have concerns about issues that in our mind broadened beyond just the policies domestically of a nation because of that contest with the human rights gender equality and so on and so that's the way that I would express that we need to take a very broad approach to seeking those values but ensure that we don't see that conflation between our trading relationships and our ability to speak openly from a values perspective as well and very brief as well and I'll notice well that the New Zealand is one of the few countries to have a free trade agreement with Taiwan is something quite different to for example what exists in Australia so creative diplomacy there listen there's one more I would just invite you to make some personal reflections on the fact that you've been in power now almost for five years when you came to power you were sort of a world you forgot to say long five long years it's been a tumultuous five years you were a very rare specimen in terms of being progressive center left on the world stage this was a time when Donald Trump was still in power in 2017 shortly afterwards we had Scott Morrison here in Australia we had Boris Johnson come to power in the UK Boris Johnson of course is hanging by the skin of his teeth it would appear but we're now seeing more center left governments appear certainly in Australia certainly in the US but with that comes also huge expectations I mean you of all world leaders I think are really an icon for enormous expectations not just by the New Zealand population but also by populations the world over with high expectations comes a burden comes high costs and you can't change everything you've got to manage expectations as well I know this is something that Obama had to deal with and often lamented your former boss Tony Blair often spoke of how wary he was of public attention and the media because he knew it wouldn't last I'm not suggesting you're about to invade Iraq though but I am asking after five years in office how do you go from creating great expectations to managing those expectations in office knowing that there are real limits to what you could come up with? Such a good question I mean you used the word expectation I think probably you know the words that I would use would be hope and aspiration and I guess the issue that I have is that the alternative is to instead speak without any ambition or without any sense of hope and optimism if that means that it creates an expectation on us then good people should have an expectation of their politicians that they're always driving for better what we have to be honest about though is that change takes time and what I've always been very open about and not everyone will hear this and not everyone will agree with it but if you've been around politics for long enough you know that if you don't work hard to try and bring everyone with you and cement and change that people genuinely believe in then it will be undone within the first five minutes that you're out of office and that ultimately then isn't change at all so when people say transformational change I think in their minds they mean big and fast but in my mind I mean change that sticks and that might mean that you're making that progress in a way that just deliberately tries to seek to bring as many people with you as possible and whether that's on social you know welfare changes in transformation whether or not it's climate change you've got to keep that ambition and keep driving towards those goals but we also need to take people with us so that again I don't sit in the sidelines after a change of government and lament that all of that work is gone look I think and I expect that you'll be around in politics and on the world stage for many more years though I for one also look forward to your resumption to your other calling in life which is as a drum and bass I think that would that would be fantastic a post post office I will never combine both I shall show you both require perfection I mean I think that's what it is but I'm afraid that's all we have time for this morning Prime Minister thank you for spending such a generous amount of time with us with the nerds and the wonks this morning and for your clarity I'm a fellow traveler what can I say I'd like to thank in particular Sir Angus Houston for opening the events as well as to acknowledge the Honourable Penny Wensley another board member in attendance today and to thank in particular Dame Annette King New Zealand's High Commissioner to Australia and her excellent team really for all their work in making this event happen so thank you to everyone who's joined us here at Ply Street and online for this special event with Prime Minister Jacinda Adurn please join me in a warm round of applause to the Prime Minister