Press Conference | Prime Minister of Australia
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA: Before I talk about today’s events with Prime Minister Hipkins, can I just pay tribute to Barry Humphries, a great Australian, a comic genius, someone who entertained us through a galaxy of personas. Dame Edna, Sandy Stone, Sir Les Patterson, who can forget. Barry Humphries, through his 89 years, made an enormous contribution to Australia. And he also showcased that uniquely Australian sense of humour to the world. He will be missed by so many of his family, loved ones, and indeed he is one of the most loved of Australians. And I pay tribute to him today, to his enormous contribution to Australia.
It was a pleasure to preside over an Australian citizenship ceremony for New Zealanders and their families today. The ceremony was made all the more special by having the New Zealand Prime Minister Hipkins coming to Brisbane for this very special event. The Prime Minister and I have also had a very productive and constructive bilateral meeting, our second such occasion. And it was also my privilege to join the Prime Minister this morning at the Lutwyche Cemetery. We unveiled plaques of graves, previously unmarked, of ten New Zealand First World War veterans. And in the lead-up to Anzac Day, we paid tribute to those veterans and to the Australian First World War veterans that they lie beside. This bond is underscored by milestones in our bilateral relationship that Australia and New Zealand are celebrating this year: 40 years of our closer economic relationship trade agreement, 50 years of the Tran-Tasman Travel Arrangement, 80 years of reciprocal diplomatic representation. And, of course, in just a few months’ time, we’ll be co-hosting what is the third biggest event in the world that is held, the FIFA Women’s World Cup from 20 July to 20 August, where we will be co-hosts but also competitors, I’ve got to say, and I hope that the Prime Minister has been noticing how well the Matildas are going, including beating England at home very recently, their first loss in a very long period of time. I’ve also enjoyed having the opportunity to meet some of Australia’s newest citizens and giving the media who’ve travelled the opportunity to try and get a shot of myself and Prime Minister Hipkins eating a sausage sandwich, always something that contains a very high degree of difficulty going forward. From 1 July, New Zealand citizens living in Australia who hold a Special Category visa will be able to apply directly for Australian citizenship without going through the permanent residence provision first, provided that they meet the four year residence and other normal citizenship eligibility requirements. Any child born in Australia from 1 July 2022 to a parent who holds a special category visa and is a permanent resident at the time of the child’s birth, will automatically acquire Australian citizenship at birth. Now, we know that many New Zealanders are here on a Special Category visa while raising families, working and building their lives in Australia. So I am very pleased to provide provide the benefits that citizenship provides. Welcoming our new Australian citizens will just strengthen the bonds between our great nations, and they more normalise the relations that Australians have enjoyed, the opportunities, who are in New Zealand for many, many years. And I do want to pay tribute to those who, through their voluntary organisations, have worked for this change. Many of them have joined us here today. This has been a substantial lobbying effort that has been made, just saying that New Zealanders who are here in Australia paying taxes, contributing to the economy, should be treated with respect. And that’s what this provision will do. Strengthening our bonds, strengthening the relationship between our two great nations. Prime Minister.
CHRISTOPHER HIPKINS, PRIME MINISTER OF NEW ZEALAND: Thank you, Prime Minister. Can I also acknowledge the passing of Barry Humphries and say that Dame Edna is an institution in New Zealand as well as Australia. And I’m sure New Zealanders will also be feeling that loss. As we observed when I visited in February, Australia and New Zealand are more than friends. We’re family. People to people links are at the core of our relationship. Both of our governments have publicly acknowledged that the situation in Australia for many New Zealanders has been challenging. New Zealand has long sought a fair go for them and arrangements that are reciprocal to what is offered to Australians living in New Zealand. So I’m pleased to be here today to mark a significant step that Australia has taken to make the pathway to citizenship much easier for New Zealanders who choose to live and work permanently here. As I noted in my remarks at the ceremony, I do want to particularly acknowledge you, Prime Minister Albanese, and your leadership of these changes. I also want to acknowledge the members of your government who have supported our Oz Kiwi advocates here in Australia over a long period of time. These changes are historic. They’re the biggest in a generation and they will make an enormous difference to the lives of so many people making Australia home. Before the ceremony, the Prime Minister and I had a discussion on some of our other key common areas of interest. In particular, we discussed the geo-strategic challenges in our region and how, as allies, Australia and New Zealand can continue to work together to advance our common interests and values. We’re close friends who work together to defend these essential values in an increasingly complex world. The discussion did include Australia’s recent announcements on AUKUS and New Zealand, like Australia, is clear-eyed that there is a challenging strategic environment in the Indo-Pacific region. We both want a stable, secure and resilient region. And New Zealand agrees with the AUKUS partners that the collective objective needs to be the delivery of peace and stability and the preservation of an international rules-based system in our region. We have a long and positive history of working together on these matters, and I also acknowledge our ongoing joint commitment to the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons and I welcome your assurance that nothing in the AUKUS arrangement alters Australia’s commitment to that. We also discussed aspects of the bilateral relationship, especially this 40th year of the Closer Economic Relations Agreement. This year is an opportunity to acknowledge the transformational impact that CER has had on our economies, our integration and our economic resilience. From a New Zealand perspective, we want to continue to drive further integration of our economies. We talked about the possibility of new initiatives this year and, of course, we talked about arrangements for the annual leaders’ meeting later this year. And I look forward to meeting Prime Minister Albanese again in the coming months, both at upcoming international events such as the King’s Coronation, but also when you have an opportunity to visit New Zealand, where we will make you very, very welcome.
JOURNALIST: Do you see New Zealand playing a role in the AUKUS partnership? [INAUDIBLE]
PRIME MINISTER ALBANESE: We certainly have a very strong relationship and prior to the announcement in San Diego the Prime Minister was kept informed, as you would expect. And today we had another discussion about peace and security and stability in the region. The Pacific Islands Forum will be a particularly important one coming up as well. And I welcome, and I want to thank and pay tribute to the role that New Zealand plays there. When I came to office as Prime Minister, you had the potential, well not just a potential, you had had a diminution of participation at the Pacific Islands Forum. And we know that when you have a body made up of more than a dozen countries, once you have a withdrawal, that can very easily lead to a second withdrawal, a third, a fourth. And it is important that the Pacific Island family stay together. And so New Zealand has played a very important role there. New Zealand will continue to play a very important role at the Pacific Islands Forum that will be held in the Cook Islands later this year.
JOURNALIST: How much will this cost? And are you worried about border security or New Zealand being used as a back door?
PRIME MINISTER ALBANESE: No, what this does is normalise relations to where, in my view, they should always have been. The New Zealand citizens who have today made a contribution to becoming Australian citizens are ones who’ve gone through quite an extensive application process becoming permanent residents. That’s cost them money, in excess of $4000. But it’s also cost the Government money as well. When you establish multiple steps and processes it not only creates bureaucracy and delays, what it does is it costs money, there’s a fiscal cost to that. Now, New Zealanders who have been contributing through the tax system, who’ve been contributing to Australia, will, as a result of these changes, make citizenship easier, which will mean that they have entitlements sooner. But those entitlements would have come through, they were just very much a delayed process. So I see this as being a commonsense approach and also being consistent with the rules that are there in place already for Australians in New Zealand. It’s slightly different, it’s five years, but we might talk about a slight tweaking there over a period of time. But the truth is New Zealand has been ahead of Australia before today. And you know what true friends do and mates, as we like to use that term? They have equal relations. And that’s the partnership that Australia and New Zealand have.
JOURNALIST: Your Government is releasing the Defence Strategic Review tomorrow. Australia and New Zealand have been close allies for many years. Do you think both countries are still close allies, especially in responding strategically in our region, particularly on China?
PRIME MINISTER ALBANESE: We are absolutely close allies, and will remain that in perpetuity. I can’t imagine a circumstance where Australia and New Zealand aren’t the closest of friends. We were talking today in our bilateral meeting about the assistance that Australian Defence Force personnel and equipment have made, including aircraft, to the operations assisting the victims of flooding in New Zealand in just very much recent times. I might say as well, when Australia has had bushfires, floods, natural disasters, the people who are first there on the ground from international support are always the Kiwis. We work together closely in the Pacific Islands Forum. We work together as countries of the realm as well, as Commonwealth nations, and we continue to have common interests of ensuring peace, security and stability in the Pacific region. So I see this as a permanent feature of our relationship, which will continue into the future.
JOURNALIST: Like Australia, New Zealand is suffering its own workforce shortages. Is there a risk back home that this might lead to a ‘brain drain’ if we give New Zealanders citizenship over here? So is this basically a play to pinch some of our brightest workers? And Prime Minister Hipkins, what are you going to do about it?
PRIME MINISTER ALBANESE: Well on the first, we welcome all of your smartest and brightest, but I’ve never met a Kiwi who wasn’t smart and bright. The contribution that will be made, is being made already. That’s the truth. People are here now. And one of the things is that Australians like to claim Russell Crowe, the Finn brothers, and so many others as Australians. So we have attempted to claim as many people as possible over the years. It’s a pity that we haven’t been able to claim better rugby players from New Zealand, and we might be a bit more competitive than we’ve been over the last decade. But what this will do is, I don’t think it will lead to more people from New Zealand coming to Australia. It will just mean that they’re treated better when they’re here. Simple as that. And that’s the objective here.
PRIME MINISTER HIPKINS: I would echo many of the comments that the Prime Minister has just made. This is fundamentally a question of fairness. These New Zealanders are living in Australia, they’ve made their lives in Australia. By not being able to access the pathway to citizenship, they also haven’t been able to access many of the public services that they should be able to rely on. And so we see this as a question of fairness. In terms of whether it will lead to more New Zealand moving to Australia, I don’t believe it will. I believe it will lead to New Zealanders are in Australia being treated more fairly, and we welcome that. But I’m absolutely confident that New Zealanders living and making a life in New Zealand will want to continue to stay in the home of the All Blacks, the true home of the pavlova and the lamington. There is plenty of reasons for them to stay back home in New Zealand.
PRIME MINISTER ALBANESE: I must say, if you look at the figures, there’s been an increased number of Australians travelling to live in New Zealand in recent times as well. That’s what the figures show.
JOURNALIST: [INAUDIBLE]
PRIME MINISTER HIPKINS: With regard to the Olympics, can I say that Prime Minister Albanese and I, I’m sure, will both be there in the opening ceremony in about 10 years’ time to welcome everybody in our respective roles as we’re well into our our ongoing tenure. But we welcome events like this happening in New Zealand and in Australia. They’re great for both economies, great for tourism on both sides of the Tasman. So we are quite excited about that. Look, we absolutely welcome the announcements that have just been made. I think, from the New Zealand side, it resets the clock. It puts us back into the position we wanted to be all along. And so we’re very, very happy with the decisions made by the Government.
PRIME MINISTER ALBANESE: Could I just welcome Prime Minister Hipkins’ optimism there about us being both Prime Ministers in 2032.
JOURNALIST: Now that the corrosiveness has been sort of removed from the trans-Tasman relationship, what are the sort of regional issues that both countries can move forward together on? [INAUDIBLE]
PRIME MINISTER HIPKINS: There are a huge range of issues that New Zealand and Australia will continue to work together. Treasurer Chalmers and I discussed some of those last night. We have very intertwined economies where there are enormous opportunities for New Zealanders in Australia and enormous opportunities for Australians in New Zealand. We can continue to work together on those issues. In the areas of commerce, for example, there are some new and emerging opportunities and challenges which we can work together on including making sure we have common regulatory systems that make it easy to do business on both sides of the Tasman. In areas around climate change and energy efficiency, for example, are areas where New Zealand and Australia share common commitments, so we can work very closely together on those. We’ll continue to work together closely with our Pacific neighbours to make sure that we’ve got a strong and stable Pacific region. New Zealand and Australia have always worked closely together on those issues. And I’m sure we’ll continue to do that.
PRIME MINISTER ALBANESE: Thank very much, Prime Minister. Can I say that the difference between Australia and New Zealand and almost any other relationship, we have important neighbours to our north with Indonesia, PNG, we have important relationships in Pacific, in the Indian Ocean as well, but the thing about Australia and New Zealand and our relationship is that something that is positive in New Zealand is good for Australia and something that’s positive in Australia is good for New Zealand. So dealing with the challenge of climate change is an example where we’re working really closely together, both of our governments in alignment. When I talk about Australia becoming a renewable energy superpower, that should not be divorced from the work that will take place in Kiwi research institutions, along with our important institutions of universities, the CSIRO, etc. There is a common interest that we have going forward. And when an event occurs, like the Brisbane Olympics, guess what? People who come to Australia during that period will also drop into New Zealand before and afterwards as well. There’ll be common interests going forward there. So I see this relationship as being absolutely critical, as being one that is literally a win-win in all aspects. Which is why the announcement that we’ve made this weekend, that we’ve worked closely with the Prime Minister on during our first meeting just a couple of months ago, I set the target of, it’s always good to have an aim and a target, and the target was to get all this done prior to Anzac Day. Because Tuesday is about commemorating and honouring our forebears who fought for our democratic values and fought for our freedom. It’s a way in which as well we pay tribute to those men and women who serve in in our respective Defence Forces today. So I think it is a very productive relationship. I look forward to seeing the Prime Minister at the King’s Coronation, again part of the historic links that we have, in just a short period of time, and then seeing each other at NATO as well in Lithuania in July. But also, I look forward to visiting New Zealand, as well as to the work that we’ll all do through our leadership forum.
ENDS