PM Jacinda Ardern said she would not expect to have been asked for New Zealand to join the new AUKUS security pact. Video / Pool
New Zealand wasn’t left out of the three-nation Aukus deal, because it was never even considered it could make it to the “top-level room at the casino” for a nuclear submarine partnership, former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said.
And yet Morrison says then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was astonishedhe had made no mention of the deal until he telephoned the morning it was announced, it is revealed in a new chapter in the paperback edition of the book, The Secret History of the Five Eyes.
Author Richard Kerbaj spoke to Morrison over several months, with discussions focused on the deal struck by Australia with the United Kingdom and the United States (Aukus) for a new fleet of nuclear submarines.
In doing so, Morrison snubbed an existing deal with France and its president Emmanuel Macron, justifying the three-way partnership with the UK and the US as better for Australia’s national security.
The deal was also seen as disruptive to the long-standing Five Eyes intelligence relationship, as it excluded New Zealand and Canada.
“This was very much focused on the Indo-Pacific, therefore it was not unreasonable that New Zealand thought, ‘Well, what about us?’,” Morrison said.
“And in New Zealand’s case, you’ve got to have something to bring to the table. This was the top-level room at the casino - you’ve got to buy your way into the game... and we massively upped our investment in our security agencies and activities and our operations.
The new addition of The Secret History of Five Eyes has an extra chapter delving into the AUKUS deal.
“So we bought our way in. Now, that’s not to disrespect New Zealand, but they’re a country with a different capability... And in many ways they obviously benefit from Australia’s investment in these things - from geography and from the relationships.”
After the deal was announced, Ardern was asked if New Zealand had been involved in discussions. She said: “No, we weren’t approached but nor would I expect us to be.”
Referencing New Zealand’s nuclear-free law, she said: “The anchor of this arrangement are nuclear-powered submarines and it will be very clear to all New Zealanders and to Australia why New Zealand would not wish to be a part of that project.”
Morrison said “it was not unreasonable” that Ardern wanted to know why it had been left out of the new security alliance, given Australia and New Zealand were two of the countries that made up the Five Eyes.
“But this wasn’t a Five Eyes thing. We are allowed to have relationships outside the Five Eyes with each other.”
Rather than being “left out”, Morrison said there was never any discussion about Canada and New Zealand being included.
It’s a position Kerbaj contrasted with New Zealand’s historical closeness with Australia, including the Anzac legacy and the recent contributions of firefighters and military personnel to help battle the 2019 bushfires - about the same time Morrison started sounding out the UK and US on the deal.
Richard Kerbaj, author of The Secret History of Five Eyes, spent months talking to Scott Morrison.
The book also highlights the oddity of Canada and New Zealand being kept in the dark over the briefing given the closeness of the Five Eyes intelligence relationship.
“There was no need,” said Morrison, “and, given how tight this thing was, there was no value or advantage to me in doing that, or the other partners.”
In contrast, Kerbaj reported Ardern’s view that “on matters affecting their nations they could and should confide in one another”.
Morrison said Ardern believed she should have “been brought into the discussion earlier”.
Victoria University professor of strategic studies Robert Ayson said Morrison was correct in his bluntly-phrased assessment.
He said if New Zealand had been asked if it wanted to join the three larger nations in a nuclear submarine programme, the response would have been “absolutely not” because of this country’s nuclear-free stance - and because it was a significant step beyond New Zealand’s capabilities.
“He’s got a point that New Zealand is just not in the same league.”
Estimates of how much the submarine programme will cost Australian taxpayers sit at A$58 billion ($63.6b) for the next 10 years and between $268b and $368b ($294b-$404b) until the mid-2050s.
The submarine deal is one of two “pillars” in the Aukus agreement, with “Pillar 2″ being the sharing of knowledge around artificial intelligence and quantum computing, among a suite of high-tech intelligence and warfare advances.
The Australian Collins-class submarines will be replaced by nuclear-powered subs with technology provided by the US under Aukus. Photo / Australian Defence Force
Ayson said it was this area in which some in Wellington’s security establishment would be hoping to join a conversation with Canberra, London and Washington.
The potential crossover with areas in which Five Eyes co-operated and the potential advances forced by the Aukus partners “might not be an easy pill to swallow” for those left behind, he said.
Ayson said there was a “reality check” aspect in how the Aukus deal described Australia’s position and ambitions on the world stage and it illustrated how different those were to New Zealand’s.
“New Zealand still has this very close alliance with Australia but Australia is thinking about bigger fields.”
In that context, Aukus was not the only new relationship Australia had forged and those new alliances were now part of New Zealand’s foreign policy outlook, he said.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has been approached for comment.
David Fisher has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge.
