Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern meets Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison at the Asean Summit in Singapore in November. Photo / Pool
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern meets Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison at the Asean Summit in Singapore in November. Photo / Pool
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison arrives in Auckland tomorrow for the annual Australia-New Zealand Leaders' Meeting with our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
It will be Morrison's first visit to New Zealand as Australian Prime Minister. He will be accompanied by his wife Jenny.
When Morrison and Ardern met for thefirst time in Singapore in November last year, he joked that he would like tomorrow's meeting to be on Waiheke Island. Ardern suggested rural Waikato.
Waiheke Island was the meeting place of choice for Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and his Australian counterpart Marise Payne when she visited earlier this month.
But Ardern and Morrison will actually be meeting in Auckland, where they will lay a wreath together before having a "lengthy bilateral", Ardern told reporters yesterday.
Morrison will be in New Zealand for the day, which Ardern said was understandable. "The Prime Minister is in election year and there will be other calls on his time."
Issues such as citizenship and the deportation of New Zealanders are expected to be on the agenda, as well as regional security. They are all issues Ardern raised at their previous meeting.
"We always have a standing item around regional issues, regional security. We're both stepping up our roles in the Pacific," Ardern said.
