Briefing to the Incoming Minister
Briefing to the Incoming Minister of Foreign Affairs
From New Zealand Alternative
26 November 2020
Hon. Nanaia Mahuta
Minister of Foreign Affairs & Trade Parliament Buildings WELLINGTON
Copy to: Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs Hon. Aupito William Sio, Minister of Defence Hon. Peeni Henare, Minister of Trade Hon. Damien O’Connor, Minister of Climate Change Hon. James Shaw
BRIEFING TO THE INCOMING MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS FROM NEW ZEALAND ALTERNATIVE
Dear Minister,
Tūngia te ururoa kia tupu whakaritorito te tutū o te harakeke. Set the overgrown bush alight, and the new flax shoots will appear.
Congratulations on your appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs this spring kōanga of 2020. We celebrate your significant appointment at this transformative time in our shared history across Papatūānuku. The Minister of Foreign Affairs role reflects who we are as a people on the world stage. We are Tangata Whenua, Pasifika, Tauiwi and Pākehā, and our relationships are founded upon Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Minister, we welcome your stance to lead foreign affairs with an Indigenous perspective. Below we share our re-imaginings of how this could happen. We would like to see New Zealand’s progressive domestic agenda reflected internationally. We would also like to diversify the voices and people included in developing Aotearoa New Zealand’s foreign policy. We see an exciting and effective way to open up discussions on foreign policy would be a series of creative public hui across the country on the future of Aotearoa New Zealand and the world. These hui may be hosted by your team, or NZA could host in collaboration with you. At any rate, we would welcome the opportunity to meet with you and share kōrero on these ideas for a new way forward.
Our relationship with the Minister: New Zealand Alternative is an independent organisation run by a group of New Zealanders with a commitment to an independent, values-driven foreign policy for our nation in Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. Our organisation works creatively and inclusively to discuss and shape an active international role for Aotearoa that reflects our values, fulfills our international obligations, and provides progressive global leadership. We aim to serve as a platform of engagement and reflection for people who do not traditionally speak on foreign policy.
1. TINO RANGATIRATANGA: Honouring He Whakaputanga and Te Tiriti o Waitangi: He Whakaputanga and Te Tiriti o Waitangi are foundational to our constitution and to our identity as a nation. These agreements assert the independence of Māori (tino rangatiratanga) and the Crown's right to a limited form of governance (kāwanatanga) and solidify the place of Māori and the Crown on the world stage. In representing Aotearoa authentically to the world, foreign policy must reflect the authority and values of both Treaty partners. To this end, the Ministry must ensure active collaboration with Māori as partners in foreign policy decision making and implementation. This point cannot be overstated, as tikanga and mātauranga hold the key to the transformative change the world requires. Several points below extend on how the Ministry can ensure Te Tiriti o Waitangi underpins our work internationally. As Ministers of the Crown within the kāwanatanga sphere of power, it is essential to look for innovative ways to engage hapū and iwi Māori in discussions over Aotearoa’s positions on international negotiations. This would require the Ministry to scale up its ability to listen to the diverse range of Māori priorities across New Zealand. This would not be easy, nor a traditional role for a Foreign Service as most are geared up to listen to what is happening internationally rather than domestically. This shift is necessary to lead from an Indigenous perspective as it ensures that what we represent on the world stage is reflective of our constitutional make up and values within our own lands.
2. KAITIAKITANGA: Protect Papatūānuku: As a nation that prides itself on being clean and green, our authenticity relies on a courageous commitment to protect Papatūānuku in the face of climate change, biodiversity loss and acidification of her oceans and waters. One of our greatest resources to respond to the global environmental crises are Māori and Pasifika peoples and the inter-generational mātauranga we hold in care for our lands and oceans and water. The Ministry can empower these insights by meeting the practical needs of working people alongside Indigenous peoples, ensuring meetings and work plans are accessible, affordable and appropriate to enable partnership. We have found creative solutions to incorporate Indigenous values into our legal protections, such as world leading legislation recognising legal personality of natural bodies in Te Urewera Act 2014 and Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017. As articulated by Tulia Thompson, we need to see: climate change mitigation in Aotearoa; respectful and non-patronising aid to countries in the Pacific; and support for Pasifika voices in international institutions. We must also be vocal in addressing climate change with Australia as they are our closest major polluter. Transformative leadership requires us to be frank about the harm done by fossil fuels. We should make tackling climate change central to all our diplomatic relationships and ensure our allies ramp up their climate ambition. Aotearoa New Zealand should work with all countries to set ambitious targets and meet them. This includes working with China, which has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2060 and with the new US Administration led by President Joe Biden, who has pledged to re-join the Paris Agreement. A New Zealand-led international ban on fossil fuels would also see Aotearoa tangibly live up to our obligations to our Pacific neighbours who are amongst the first to be affected by climate change. Pacific states are already active agents of change in the international response to climate change and have previously proposed such an international treaty. Working with other like-minded states, a multilateral initiative of this kind would build on New Zealand’s previous diplomatic work to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies.
3. WHAIORA: Re-Imagining Global Economic Governance:
3.1 Transformative Economic Policy: The global pandemic is a wake-up call to the possibility of walking an alternative economic path. COVID-19 showed us that deep cuts in emissions are possible in very short-time frames, and that governments are capable of bold and decisive action in the face of existential threats. New Zealand can show the world that it is possible to redesign an economy based on values and a new common sense, that fulfils local needs, cultures and aspirations, while working in alignment with natural systems. We also know that New Zealand can only be this example if our government gets its own house in order, including through addressing historical injustices that are perpetuated by an economic system that tells us how things ‘must be’.
Recent years have seen growing international concern about how well capitalism as an economic system serves people. In that context, we encourage the government to take a radical approach to economic change. This means greater redistribution (going beyond Labour's income tax changes); more debate about reversing privatisation and reasserting greater collective ownership of key public goods; and an active state, working alongside the tino rangatiratanga sphere, to shape industries for a post-pandemic future. In the foreign policy sphere, we encourage you as Minister to forge relationships with countries that are leading in exploring new approaches to the economy, such as the newly elected government in Bolivia, the anti-austerity coalition government in Spain, or governments in Africa and Asia that are forging a different role for the state.' Linked to this, we encourage you to lend New Zealand’s support towards debt cancellation in the Global South as well as broader World Bank and IMF reform.
3.2 Trade: New Zealand is well positioned to rethink international trade agreements, given its domestic work on the Living Standards Framework, an emerging alternative to GDP. If New Zealand’s foreign policy flowed out of (and was not disconnected from) the government’s domestic agenda, trade agreements might be reassessed as vehicles to consolidate and support progressive agendas. For example, they might be used to tackle transnational tax avoidance or to cement protections of indigenous rights across borders.
Labour has already committed in its manifesto to support the “inclusion of Indigenous collaborations agreements in the trade policy agenda that would create Indigenous-Indigenous opportunities”, and should honour the tino rangatiratanga of hapū Māori by ensuring they have a central place in trade negotiations as partners, not stakeholders. There are many objections to Investor-State Dispute Settlement and New Zealand must not include these mechanisms in new free trade agreements, and should ensure that agreements support the role of the state to build a different kind of economy, for example through green industrial policy. This is consistent with our obligations under the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), particularly Article 3 which recognises the right of Indigenous peoples to self-determination and by virtue of this right, “to freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”
3.3 Business and Human Rights Standards: It is an astonishing fact that corporations have rapidly grown to rival the economic and political power of countries in our globalised world. In Aotearoa today we have an “accountability void” with no legal or policy framework to ensure New Zealand businesses promote and live by human rights standards. New Zealand companies are currently linked to major violations of human rights in industries across the world; deforestation, conflict in occupied Western Sahara, exploitation of migrant and child labour, and failing to work with Indigenous communities, and not even our biggest companies have released policy statements about upholding human rights. We have a responsibility to ensure safe and honourable conduct in our business dealings home and abroad, and by promoting accountable. Aotearoa could lead by supporting the movement for a binding treaty on business and human rights, establish binding human rights standards for companies inside and outside New Zealand (including supporting the UN Human Rights Council Guiding Principles 2011 set out by Professor John Ruggie), and demand equitable governance and ownership of our businesses. These actions would not only enact values of manaakitanga, but will create significant economic and societal benefits, be a source of pride for New Zealanders working and travelling abroad, and provide a reputational boon for our companies that would be likely boost the value and desirability of our brands.
4. WHĀNAUNGATANGA: Our Pacific: Aotearoa New Zealand is a Pacific nation, the ocean embraces us and connects us to our Pasifika whānaunga and beyond. The government has promised to continue to work in the Pacific as a priority area, and to ensure “immigration policies work in the best interests of New Zealand, Pacific migrants and Pacific Island nations, including consideration of climate-related migration policies.” Aotearoa should listen closely to what Pacific peoples voices and support in amplifying those voices in global forums with our own platform. Further, New Zealand must guard against colonial erasure by acknowledging and apologising for the harms done as a coloniser in the Pacific. Aotearoa can be a world leader in our efforts to right wrongs and seek new solutions. An important and bold next step to decolonise the Pacific is to call for an end to offshore detention of refugees and asylum seekers.
5. MOTUHAKETANGA: Re-orienting New Zealand’s Relationships: Independence requires Aotearoa to stand for values based, ethical foreign policy. In September 2018, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spoke to the UN General Assembly stating that “we must rebuild and recommit to multilateralism.” We need to rebalance our focus, so that we build up connections in Asia, South America, and Africa rather than continue to invest in the US and the UK in particular - both of which have shown ailing moral leadership in their response to coronavirus. Furthermore, while our relationship with China is important for trade purposes, we must also be willing to speak out boldly about human rights and other concerns. As part of rebalancing our relationships we should continue to reflect on the utility of the Five Eyes alliances, the implications of free trade agreement with UK (especially if this is part of a UK-driven pivot to reinforcing relationships with white-majority Commonwealth countries), and other actions that could be taken to build up new alliances and support Indigenous to Indigenous alliances.
6. HOHOU TE RONGO: Conflict prevention and peace mediation: In 2018, New Zealand Alternative published a detailed report proposing the development of conflict prevention and peace mediation capacity in Aotearoa New Zealand so that we could provide assistance to other countries if we were called upon to do so. At the time, the previous Ardern government noted the idea for an independent Conflict Prevention Unit, but has not yet actively advanced it. The proposed new unit would consolidate in one place the expertise and experience that New Zealand and New Zealanders have developed through their work in conflict and post-conflict situations around the world. This proposal stemmed from an analysis of New Zealand’s own history and its interactions with peace over the years – from the people of Parihaka as world pioneers of strategic non-violence to New Zealand’s hosting of the Bougainville peace talks in the 1990s. The interviews and research we conducted suggested that, over time, this unit could become a central element of New Zealand’s foreign policy identity.
As a new Minister looking to do foreign affairs in a different way, a tangible initiative like the Conflict Prevention Unit, drawing on tikanga Māori and te ao Māori perspectives to prevent and resolve conflict could be a productive workstream. This again reflects our obligations in UNDRIP, particularly Article 40 which recognises “Indigenous peoples have the right to access to and prompt decision through just and fair procedures for the resolution of conflicts with States or other parties, as well as to effective remedies for all infringements of their individual and collective rights. Such a decision shall give due consideration to the customs, traditions, rules and legal systems of the Indigenous peoples concerned and the international human rights.”
7. MANA WĀHINE: Feminist Foreign Policies: It is the ira wāhine, the strategists and creators, that can provide new direction on peace keeping, protecting Papatūānuku and leadership for new global solutions. New Zealand has a proud history of being at the forefront of fighting for gender equality domestically, and again now with our first wāhine appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade. We can build on this strategy, learning from countries like Sweden and their feminist foreign policy and work with Canada to encourage other countries to do the same. Internally, we should ensure that more women, particularly Māori and Pasifika who are under-represented, are selected as ambassadors and in senior roles within the Ministry. This will strengthen our voice to ensure our development and foreign policy supports women’s rights to an even greater extent than currently, for example, through funding initiatives that combat domestic violence as an assault against whakapapa, violence against women and girls in conflict affected countries and in peace keeping negotiations. New Zealand needs to integrate Te Tiriti o Waitangi into our National Action Plan (NAPs) on Women, Peace and Security, and encourage other countries to include indigenous and minority groups in their NAPs) also.
We have many other ideas that we would be delighted to share with you about how Aotearoa New Zealand could play a strong, and progressive role in the world at this critical time.
Ngā mihi, nā,
New Zealand Alternative
Dr Nina Hall
Max Harris
Dr Arama Rata
Erin Matariki Carr
Dr Evelyn Marsters
Thomas Nash
Phoebe Matariki Carr