Author    Robert Ayson

​Speculation was rife earlier this year that Peeni Henare was about to announce his defence policy principles in a stand-alone speech. If that mode of delivery had eventuated, observers would have pounced. Nothing says New Zealand’s external security environment is fine and dandy quite like a Defence Minister choosing People and Infrastructure as the big ideas alongside New Zealand’s interests in the Pacific.
 
But in a change of plans Henare’s trio of principles and a matching set of underwhelming priorities were rolled into the release of New Zealand’s 2021 Defence Assessment. As was evident in the pre-Christmas launch and the limited media comment which has followed, the picture painted by that new document is bleak.
 
While the Assessment begins with climate change and strategic competition as the top two problem generators, it’s the second of these which does most of the work. And “strategic competition” is a euphemism. A one sentence summary of the 36-page public version of the Assessment could easily read: China is threatening New Zealand’s interests in the South Pacific.

Author   Jon Fraenkel

​Despite the many years of New Zealand participation in the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI), understanding of the politics of that country remains minimal. The recent disturbances in Honiara, culminating in the burning down of much of the city’s Chinatown district, brought the affairs of the Solomon Islands back into the New Zealand headlines. So too did the deployment of New Zealand police and troops. But listening to the TVNZ One News last night (Friday 10th December) sounded like a faint echo of the weak interpretations of the historic conflict in that country that were circulating two decades ago:
 
TVNZ Pacific Correspondent Barbara Dreaver: ‘Beneath the surface, the real issues that caused this unrest are still bubbling along. It’s the difference between Malaita and Guadalcanal. These two are at loggerheads and these issues are still there. So when New Zealand and the other international peacekeepers leave, it's a little bit like taking a plaster off. The wounds are still very much there. New Zealand was there for 14 years after a civil war as part of a peacekeeping force. I remember in 2017 Solomon Islanders said to me “we are so worried about the mission ending because we think that there will be more trouble” and they were right’.

Interviewer: ‘Where is this heading?’.
 
Dreaver: ‘I feel like many that the situation is deteriorating. And that’s because the deep divisions between Malaita and Guadalcanal are just so stark at the moment. There’s a real power tussle going on between the two’.
 
One can only just count the errors in that coverage on the fingers of one hand.