Ukraine Crisis: Christopher Luxon says New Zealand must keep independent foreign policy in aftermath of Ukraine conflict

National leader Christopher Luxon says New Zealand needs to be careful to keep independent in the Ukraine crisis.Photo / Jason Oxenham

National leader Christopher Luxon thinks New Zealand needs to stick to its historically independent foreign policy and avoid the temptation of getting dragged into the orbit of its Five Eyes partners and the wider Western alliance over the Ukraine crisis.

Luxon also said there would be no change to National's support for New Zealand's nuclear-free policy under his leadership. Russia had recently placed its nuclear deterrent on "high alert", prompting anxiety over nuclear deployments the world over.

New Zealand has historically taken an independent stance on foreign affairs matters, and tends to avoid getting sucked too firmly into the "camp" of any one power or group of nations.

Luxon did not think the crisis meant New Zealand was being dragged into the camp of the United States and its allies. Instead, he said the crisis had unified most of the world in outrage at Russia's violation of international law.

"We still have a strong, independent foreign policy - what you see here is the world uniting because what you see here is an affront to international law," Luxon said, describing the invasion by Russia as "unspeakable".

Luxon agreed New Zealand should avoid being dragged into one camp or another over the crisis.

"What you're seeing here is 'these are our values, these are the values of western, liberal democracies around the world', we're all saying this is a massive affront to those values, it's unacceptable, it's intolerable, and as a result what you're seeing is unified action," Luxon said.

Australia had recently joined other countries in sending "lethal aid" - weaponry - to Ukraine to assist the country in the conflict.

Luxon said he would be unlikely to back a similar move.

"I'm not familiar enough with what our capability is," he said, adding that he did not think "lethal aid" would be where New Zealand could "value add" to the crisis response.

Instead, he said the Government should up its response to the crisis by creating a special humanitarian visa to help the families of Ukrainians in New Zealand to come here, and to fast-track the applications of Ukrainians already in the immigration system.

Luxon said the final measure he wanted to see was the implementation of an autonomous sanctions bill, which would give New Zealand the ability to sanction countries outside of the United Nations process, where such sanctions would almost certainly be vetoed by Russia.

The Government has been reluctant to support an autonomous sanctions bill, and voted down a National members' bill to that effect last year. Instead, it is looking at a more bespoke response.

Luxon backed the prime minister's decision to launch a series of trade missions this year, reconnecting New Zealand to the post-Covid world.

"I think it's excellent the Prime Minister is out there doing business for NZ, it's absolutely what we want our prime minister doing," Luxon said.

"We've got a lot of work to do to rebuild some of that connectivity with our key trading partners, just reiterating that New Zealand is back and open for business," he said.

He said one of the things New Zealanders would likely see as a result of the invasion is more inflation, particularly in the area of fuel prices.

Luxon said the Government should look at adjusting things like the Auckland Regional Fuel tax to help soften some of the blow of rising prices.