an exit sign with the heads of prominent resignees greg foran, adrian orr and phil goff over the top

PoliticsMarch 6, 2025

Tourism NZ slogan getting taken much too literally

an exit sign with the heads of prominent resignees greg foran, adrian orr and phil goff over the top

Must everyone really go? 

A contagion of big-name departures has swept New Zealand across 24 heady hours. It began with Adrian Orr, whose resignation as governor of the Reserve Bank came yesterday afternoon, and remains shrouded in mystery with a spooky soundtrack. Speculated reasons for the sudden farewell range from a dispute with senior ministers over the institution’s size and scope to Orr’s insistence that he change his signature on bank notes into an elaborate symbol and be referred to in meetings as the Governor Formerly Known As Adrian. 

The gubernatorial goodbye was still being processed when a diplomatic detonation echoed all the way from St James’s Square, London. Phil Goff, once the leader of the Labour Party and after that the mayor of Auckland, is the New Zealand high commissioner to the UK. But not for much longer. Video emerged in which Goff popped up from the audience at a Chatham House event with a question – in fact maybe it was more of a statement than a question – in which he more or less suggested to the Finnish foreign minister that Donald Trump (a stable genius) is more a Neville Chamberlain than he is a Winston Churchill. 

New Zealand’s foreign minister, Winston Peters, took swift action when the remarks were raised with him by a reporter. Analysts say that any suggestion the decision might be motivated by a popular new viral trend sweeping the world in which business titans and statespeople whimper at the feet of Donald Trump in prostrate desperation to win his favour and not his tariffs, or by not liking Phil Goff, are spurious and frankly irresponsible speculation. 

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It is possible that Goff was confused and he thought the event at the thinktank Chatham House took place under Chatham House rules, but it was not Chatham House rules, it was just at Chatham House. Either way, it is now a cruel truth of history that his diplomatic career has come to an end with the Finnish. 

The plague of big beast exit continued this afternoon with the announced resignation of Greg Foran as chief executive of Air New Zealand. According to fabricated sources, the decision was made owing to a combination of factors including heaps of the airline’s planes being broken, domestic airfares being a zillion dollars each and leaping at the chance to slip down the inflatable slide while everyone is freaking out about what happened with Orr and Goff.

While many expect that the logical next step after Air New Zealand for Foran is to become prime minister, other possibilities include becoming the high commissioner to the UK or Reserve Bank governor. 

Richard Prebble resigned, too, but from the Waitangi Tribunal where he’d not really even begun. The chief executive of the low-carbon milk company Karl Gradon has also resigned but he is only being mentioned to pad out this story. Oh, and the sphinx-like, Very Centrist Canadian billionaire who suddenly bought a shitload of shares in the company that runs the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB this afternoon roared from the clifftop that all the board directors of NZME should resign, so there’s that. Speculation that he is motivated entirely by a wish to see the Sideswipe column reinstated are unproven.

While some commentators are describing the wave of departures as an aftershock of the post-Covid Great Resignation or an unremarkable coincidence that it’s weird to froth over, sharper minds have attributed the spate of exits to the rise of digital nomads and the preternaturally powerful new Tourism NZ campaign slogan launched by the prime minister last month, “Everyone must go.” Bring back 100% Pure. 

Keep going!
Two men, Vololdymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump, are depicted in a heated discussion, separated by a torn paper effect through the centre, revealing an image of a map of New Zealand. Both appear engaged in animated conversation, in a grayscale colour scheme.
Trump and Zelenskyy’s meeting at the White House on February 28 (Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

OPINIONPoliticsMarch 6, 2025

America or Europe? Why Trump’s Ukraine U-turn is a fork in the road for New Zealand

Two men, Vololdymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump, are depicted in a heated discussion, separated by a torn paper effect through the centre, revealing an image of a map of New Zealand. Both appear engaged in animated conversation, in a grayscale colour scheme.
Trump and Zelenskyy’s meeting at the White House on February 28 (Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

If the US president decides to force Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the negotiating table against his will, and Europe continues urging and supporting him to fight on, New Zealand will have to take sides. It cannot take both.

The aftermath of one of the most undiplomatic – and notorious – White House meetings in recent history reveals a changed world.

Having berated Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for supposedly not wanting peace with Russia and failing to show sufficient gratitude to the United States, President Donald Trump has now paused all military aid to Ukraine.

This equates to about 40% of the beleaguered nation’s military support. If the gap is not quickly covered by other countries, Ukraine will be severely compromised in its defence against the Russian invasion.

This has happened while the Russian army is making slow but costly gains along the front in eastern Ukraine. Trump’s goal appears to be to force Zelenskyy to accept a deal he does not want, and which may be illegal under international law.

New Zealand is a long way from that front line, but the implications of Trump’s unilateral abandonment of Ukraine still create a serious foreign policy problem.

Aside from its unequivocal condemnation of Russia’s actions, New Zealand has provided Defence Force personnel for training, intelligence, logistics and liaison to the tune of nearly NZ$35 million. The government has also given an additional $32 million in humanitarian assistance.

At the same time, New Zealand has supported global legal efforts to hold Russia to account at both the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. With Trump undermining these collective actions, New Zealand faces some stark choices.

Allies at war

While a genuine ceasefire and eventual peace in Ukraine are the right aims, Trump’s one-sided proposal has involved direct talks between Russia and the US, excluding all other parties, including the actual victims of Russian aggression.

With eerie parallels to the Munich Agreement of 1938 between Nazi Germany, Britain, France and Italy, peace terms could be dictated to the innocent party. Ukraine may have to sacrifice part of its territory in the hope a wider peace prevails.

In exchange, Ukraine may be given some type of “security assurance”. But what that arrangement would look like, and what kind of peacekeeping force might be acceptable to Russia, remains unclear.

If the current UK and European ceasefire proposals fail, Europe could be pulled more directly into the conflict. Since the Trump rebuff, European leaders are embracing Zelenskyy more tightly, wary of an emboldened Russia threatening other states with substantial Russian populations such as in Estonia and Latvia.

European boots on the ground in Ukraine could escalate the existing war into a much larger and more dangerous conflict. The complexities of this new reality are now spilling over in the United Nations.

A Ukrainian soldier looks out from a tank as he holds his position near the town of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region on December 13, 2023 (Photo: Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images)

A fork in the road

While the Security Council finally agreed on a broad statement in favour of a lasting peace, just what that might look like has seen opposing resolutions in the General Assembly.

On February 18, 53 countries, including New Zealand, voted in favour of a resolution condemning Russian aggression and calling for the return of Ukrainian territory. The resolution passed, but the US, Russia, Belarus and North Korea voted against it.

The US then put up its own resolution calling for peace, without recognising Russian aggression or the illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory. New Zealand supported this, too.

Those two votes clearly signal a fork-in-the-road moment for New Zealand.

As well as the wider consequences and potential precedents of any Ukraine peace settlement for security in Europe and the Pacific region, there is the immediate problem of supporting Ukraine.

With the US and Europe – both traditional allies of New Zealand – now deeply divided, whatever path the government chooses will directly affect present and future security arrangements – including any possible “pillar two” membership of Aukus.

Potentially complicating matters further, Trump’s civilian lieutenant Elon Musk has publicly advocated for the US leaving the UN and Nato. Whether or not that happens, the threat alone underscores the gravity of the current situation.

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No option without risk

Ultimately, if Trump decides to force Zelenskyy to the negotiating table against his will, and Europe continues urging and supporting him to fight on, New Zealand will have to take sides. It cannot take both.

The National-led coalition government will either have to abandon the stance New Zealand has taken on the Russian invasion over the past three years, or wait for Europe’s response and align with efforts to support a rules-based international order.

The first option would mean stepping back from that traditional foreign policy position, cutting military support for Ukraine (and trusting the Trump process), and probably ending sanctions against Russia and diplomatic efforts for legal accountability.

The other path would mean spending more on military aid, and possibly deploying more defence personnel to help fill the gap Trump has created.

No option is without risk. But, on balance, the European approach to international affairs seems closer to New Zealand’s worldview than the one currently articulated by the Trump administration.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.