Albanese, Luxon wrap up Queenstown meeting
Katie Todd, RNZ Otago/Southland reporter
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has laid out his vision for "frictionless" business and travel between Australia and New Zealand, as he wraps the annual bilateral leaders' meeting in Queenstown.
Luxon and Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese paid tribute to Anzac soldiers in Arrowtown and took a scenic helicopter flight, before Albanese departed on Sunday afternoon.
The previous evening, the leaders met with the heads of major Australasian businesses, including Qantas, ASB Bank and Genesis Energy, after a one-on-one discussion at tech entrepreneur Rod Drury's new private retreat.
In a media debrief at Queenstown Airport on Sunday afternoon, Luxon described how the countries could do more to remove the "barnacles from the boat" for businesses straddling the Tasman.
"There's a lot that we could actually do to simplify some of the standards across both markets," he said. "There are a challenge within the domestic Australia, between the states, where there's often different regulatory requirements within the states and the point is we want it to be as frictionless as possible."
Luxon pointed to recent progress, including harmonising building-product standards and trialling visa-free entry for Chinese nationals arriving from Australia.
He said there were further opportunities to explore - like synchronising both countries' approaches to AI and environmental issues, and advancing work on digital IDs and drivers licences, which would be recognised on both sides of the Tasman.
Luxon said it was all about getting rid of small "irritants" for travellers, such as Australians having to use their passports for ID at New Zealand bars.
"It's those things... that make it frictioned in terms of trying to move between countries," he said.
Luxon said previous efforts to achieve entirely seamless cross-border movement - such as trials of passport-less travel - had faltered, due to what he called genuine "nationhood" considerations, but that did not preclude other measures to streamline trans-Tasman travel.
Defence was also high on the agenda during his meetings with Albanese, with both countries committed to intensifying defence co-operation and moving towards an increasingly integrated ANZAC force.
Asked if New Zealand could join Australia's deal with Japan to build buy 11 Navy frigates, Luxon said "harmonisation in procurement" could benefit both countries.
"We want to make sure that we have optionality to join the procurement process. For example, we're in the market for new helicopters - we want to make sure that they're as interoperable as possible with the Australians.
"When we go to market, we want to present joint procurement bids for those things that we can tack on the New Zealand requirement and, as a result, lower the cost for each of those individual items for each country," he said.
When it came to economic challenges, Luxon said Australia and New Zealand were both trying to improve their productivity.
"We both have huge desires to improve economic productivity in our respective countries. It's been a problem for 30 years and both countries actually, under successive governments.
"Everyone's working hard, but we haven't able to lift everyone's collective living standards sufficiently."
As he bid goodbye to his "good mate" Albanese, Luxon hailed the leaders' meeting as a very successful trip altogether.
"We're good friends and that helps a lot, when you have good chemistry with the leader," he said. "It's actually quite nice having a peer support group at times with fellow leaders you can actually talk to."
The relationship was in "good heart", he said, although he conceded Albanese's decision to wear a Wallabies scarf on the final stretch of the trip may have been a bit of "trolling."
