Luxon puts his money where his mouth is with Southeast Asia visit

The Prime Minister is putting his money where his mouth is with his first round of bilateral visits to Southeast Asia – an area of growing importance as the Government diversifies its trade ties, and attempts to navigate rising geostrategic tensions in the region.

Christopher Luxon, with a business delegation, will visit Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, during the week-long trip.

Luxon told Newsroom he wanted to increase the intensity of the relationship with Southeast Asia, both economically and in terms of security.

“I want to see a reprioritisation and a much bigger deepening and strengthening of the relationships across the whole of Southeast Asia,” he said.

The Government had set itself an ambitious target to double the value of the country’s exports in the next decade. And that meant looking to young, growing economies in the region.

Collectively, it was New Zealand’s third largest export market, worth $9.65 billion in 2022, up 28 percent from pre-Covid levels.

Member countries were included in a range of New Zealand’s trade agreements, including the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

At the same time, Trade Minister Todd McClay would be visiting China – making him the first from this Government to do so.

While China’s economic growth was slowing, it remained an important trade destination, McClay said. “But look, they’ve still got 4.5 percent growth in GDP this year and next year, and for many countries in the world, that’s something that they would like.”

Meanwhile, the bloc of Southeast Asian countries was on the frontline of rising tensions, thanks to China’s increasingly assertive stance, particularly in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait.

And the trip comes as speculation increased around New Zealand joining Aukus Pillar Two – a move that had been seen by many as a move to counter China’s growing influence in the region.

Singapore Love-in

Luxon said it was deliberate that his first bilateral visit as Prime Minister, after Australia, was to Singapore.

“It is our highest priority in the Southeast Asian region.”

Those watching the trip, should expect the first leg to be somewhat of a love-in. 

Luxon was on-record as a fervent supporter of what the city-state, and its current leader Lee Hsien Loong, had achieved.

“I’ve been a big admirer of him and his 20-year legacy and the role of what he’s brought to Singapore.”

Singapore – viewed as the springboard to the region – had a strong record of embracing knowledge-based industries and high-value products and services, Luxon said, adding that it also had an “outstanding” education system, effective public service delivery, and infrastructure master planning.

“Those are things that I’ve studied for a long time out of Singapore that I think have a lot of relevance for New Zealand.”

Luxon might also exchange notes with Lee on how the two countries were managing their China relationships. In both cases, they had strong trade ties with China, but security ties with Western countries, like the US. Both New Zealand and Singapore were part of the Five Power Defence Arrangement.

“There’s no doubt about it. We’re both small countries that are navigating increasing geopolitical tensions in the Indo Pacific region in general,” he said.

This would be Luxon’s third time meeting Lee, which spoke to the strong bond between the two countries, as well the Prime Minister’s personal interest in Singapore.

Luxon would also be getting time with Lee’s successor, Lawrence Wong.

Wong currently holds the position of Deputy Prime Minister and has been picked to succeed Lee when the country elections are held later this year.

It would be important for the strong leader-to-leader relationship to continue under Wong, and Luxon said he was confident it would. In fact, he’d already met the soon-to-be leader for a few hours in the past.

Ultimately, Luxon saw this visit as an opportunity to figure out his Government’s shared work plan with Singapore, now the relationship had been cemented.

Prime Manager meets Salesman-in-Chief

Luxon’s trip to Thailand would be the first time a New Zealand leader has been to the kingdom since the 2014 military coup.

As one of the world’s top 25 economies, and a partner for almost 70 years, Luxon said he saw it as a priority visit.

Thailand was a manufacturing powerhouse, and Bangkok had overtaken Paris as the world’s most visited city, receiving 17.6 million tourists in 2023.

The Prime Minister also had common ground with newly minted Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, which would help the pair when they met for the second time.

The 61-year-old worked at Proctor & Gamble while Luxon was at Unilever, before he went on to become president of his family’s property development company, Sansiri.

While Luxon had gotten a name as the country’s Prime Manager, Thavisin had been positioning himself as Thailand’s Salesman-in-Chief, since taking the helm last August.

Thavisin was also the country’s first Prime Minister in nearly a decade without a military background.

A chance to re-assert values

The final leg of this week’s trip will take the Prime Minister to the Philippines.

In a briefing from last year, foreign officials laid out a suggested schedule of visits for the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister for 2024 and 2025.

Of the six nations New Zealand needed to prioritise for prime ministerial visits, officials suggested Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia for 2024, followed by Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia in 2025. Obviously, Luxon has decided to swap Indonesia and Philippines in that suggested programme.

The last time a Prime Minister visited the Philippines on a bilateral visit – as opposed to a visit as part of a regional summit – was Helen Clark in 2006.

The lack of recent engagement was also linked to the problematic human rights record of former President Rodrigo Duterte.

Like Thailand and New Zealand, the Philippines has a new leader: President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos.

It was one of the fastest growing economies in the region and expected to be a top-20 global economy by 2050. It is seen as a sleeping giant with untapped opportunities in renewables and manufacturing.

Luxon said the Philippines was important to New Zealand, with 100,000 Filipinos in New Zealand, making it the fastest growing diaspora community in the country.

“We also do want to encourage the countries to resolve the tensions diplomatically because we do want to have peace and stability in the Indo Pacific region – in the South China Sea, particularly.”

Christopher Luxon

The trip to the Philippines would give Luxon an opportunity to reassert New Zealand’s long held stance on disputes in the South China Sea.

Recent aggressions by China had seen tensions rise further, and the Philippines had been an outlier in the Southeast Asia bloc for its assertive stance against the superpower.

“I think it’s just about reaffirming our position … New Zealand actually hasn’t taken a position on the various individual claims, but what we have said is that we do call on all the claimants to adhere to international law, and I think that’s the right position to be in,” Luxon said.

“We also do want to encourage the countries to resolve the tensions diplomatically because we do want to have peace and stability in the Indo Pacific region – in the South China Sea, particularly.”

More New Zealand, please

Newsroom understands that behind closed doors, Asean leaders have been asking New Zealand to play a bigger – more proportionate – role in the region.

And Luxon was answering the call.

This trip comes hot on the heels of a 48-hour flying visit to meet ASEAN leaders at a summit in Melbourne in March. That was his first opportunity to engage in diplomacy with a range of Asian leaders. Now, Luxon is following up on those conversations with the bilateral visits.

In December, the Foreign Ministry brought a briefing paper to the Government that stressed New Zealand’s engagement with the growing region had fallen off the pace.

The paper emphasised the importance of Southeast Asia, adding that decades of stability in the region were under pressure.

The briefing noted that showing up to Asean meetings was “essential, but not sufficient”.

David Capie, the director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University, said the region was important for security, diplomatic and economic reasons.

Strategic competition was playing out intensively in the region, while these countries were also facing non-traditional security threats like violent extremism, drug trafficking and irregular migration.

The Asean nations also played an important gatekeeper role.

They helped set the agenda for conversations about economic and security cooperation. These structures gave New Zealand an important seat at the table, which it might not have otherwise had.

Capie said it was easy to talk a big game, but it was harder to put the time and resources behind these types of visits when Prime Ministers had so many other demands on their time.

“I hate to sound like a cheerleader. But I’m genuinely really, really impressed and pleased to see this visit going ahead as it is.”

High-profile delegation

The economic opportunities would be highlighted by the business leaders joining Luxon on the trip.

“It almost feels like a New Zealand Prime Minister can’t leave the country these days without taking a business delegation,” Capie said.

This group had a wide range of big and small businesses. There were goods companies like Fonterra and Comvita; tourism companies like Air NZ, Auckland Airport and Sudima Hotels; Education providers including Massey University and AcademyEx; and businesses focused on the green economy like low-carbon concrete company Neocrete, sustainability certifier Carbon Click, and green hydrogen company Hiringa Energy.

The high-profile nature of the delegation was also noteworthy, with well-known chief executives and chairs travelling alongside the Prime Minister, including Air NZ chair Dame Therese Walsh, Fonterra chief executive Miles Hurrell and Massey University Vice-Chancellor Jan Thomas.

There would be a range of announcements and commitments made during the week-long programme.

Luxon said there were collaboration opportunities in the green economy.

“We have a very strong goods focus, which we’ll continue to have and there’s actually still lots of opportunities for us in the goods space … but ultimately, I do want New Zealand to be more embracing of science, technology and innovation.”

He’d even decided to take his Climate Change Minister Simon Watts, with National’s Filipino caucus member Paulo Garcia.

Watts said climate innovation remained a strategic priority.

“Through our delegates, we want to exchange ideas on innovative technology and highlight our ample capacity for renewable energy, which can address needs in Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines.” 

The Prime Minister and his delegation flew out of Auckland on Sunday morning, on the Air Force 757, due to return to New Zealand on Saturday, April 20.