The Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, and
New Zealand’s Christopher Luxon, met in Australia on June
6 for their annual leaders’ meeting.
The countries
are crucial allies of Washington in the Indo-Pacific and are
deeply involved in US-led imperialist wars in every part of
the globe—from the Middle East to the US-NATO proxy war
against Russia over Ukraine, and war preparations against
China. These are all fronts in a developing third world war,
which threatens a catastrophe far greater than the two world
wars of the last century.
Both ruling elites face
intractable economic and political crises at home.
Australia’s Labor government and NZ’s National Party-led
coalition are profoundly unpopular as the working classes
confront attacks on living standards, exacerbated by the
Iran quagmire and the Trump administration’s tariffs. Both
governments are massively increasing military
spending.
The meeting’s Joint Statement acknowledged
the 75th anniversary of the ANZUS Treaty, describing it as
the “foundation of our Alliance and our defence and
security partnership.” ANZUS, composed of Australia, New
Zealand and the US, was formed after World War II to enforce
Washington’s hegemony in the Asia-Pacific. It was the
formal basis of the allies’ involvement in imperialist
wars from Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan and
Iraq.
The leaders endorsed the “Anzac 2035:
Operationalising the Alliance Joint Statement,” issued
recently by their respective Defence Ministers. They
welcomed its “focus on force posture, combined operations
and exercises, force preparedness, resilience, defence
industry integration and Pacific security.” The two
countries are already building an integrated military force
aimed at China.
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In the face of popular opposition to
the AUKUS military pact between Australia, the US and UK,
under which Australia is acquiring nuclear-powered attack
submarines and providing basing arrangements for US forces,
the pair lauded AUKUS’ “capability and technology
sharing partnership.” Successive NZ governments, including
Labour, have for years been angling to join “Tier 2” of
AUKUS, which would involve sharing advanced technological
hardware.
AUKUS intensifies Australia’s role as a
regional attack dog for American imperialism. The total
cost, estimated at $A368 billion, will be extracted by
vastly ratcheting up the exploitation of the working class.
New Zealand’s similar trajectory saw the recent budget
commit a $NZ2 billion increase to the military alongside
sweeping attacks on public services, thousands of job cuts,
an increase in student fees and cuts to welfare
benefits.
Albanese and Luxon highlighted the
“closeness” of the countries’ security and
intelligence partnership amid “an increasingly uncertain
and contested geostrategic environment.” Australia and New
Zealand are members of the US-led Five Eyes alliance, which
also includes the UK and Canada. The global spy network
provides intelligence operations in the Middle East and
secret war plans targeting China.
A section of the
prime ministers’ statement is devoted to strengthening
Canberra and Wellington’s neo-colonial stranglehold over
the Pacific. The day before the leaders’ meeting, Luxon
visited the Pacific Policing Initiative (PPI) hub in
Brisbane. He praised the Pacific Islands police chiefs and
the PPI for “enhancing strategic collaboration and
policing capabilities in the region.”
The PPI
involves multi-country Pacific police units, with up to 200
officers, trained and led by the Australian Federal Police.
Primarily intended to counter China’s influence in the
region, the units can serve as rapid deployment forces for
police-military interventions against civil unrest.
Following the 2024 Kanak uprising in New Caledonia and riots
in Papua New Guinea, rebellions are anticipated across the
impoverished region, where local peoples are ground down by
inflation and deepening inequality.
The leaders also
commended the establishment of a new Pacific Response Group
(PRG), saying it brings together “regional militaries to
strengthen Pacific-led responses to Pacific humanitarian
crises and disasters.” Like the PPI, the integration of
Pacific militaries is aimed at developing operational
collaboration to deal with “security challenges,”
targeting China. New Zealand will host the PRG headquarters
from next month.
The anti-China thrust of the meeting
was highlighted by statements condemning so-called
“intensification of destabilising activities” in both
the South China and East China Seas, including “the
militarisation of disputed features and instances of unsafe
and unprofessional behaviour.” Albanese and Luxon opposed
“any unilateral action to change the status quo” at the
Taiwan Strait, purportedly “encouraging dialogue rather
than coercion or the use of force.”
The statements,
implicitly blaming China, turn reality on its head. They
repeat the propaganda deployed by Washington to demonise
Beijing and reinforce US imperialist positioning in the
region. It is not China, but the Trump administration that
is engaged in a vast buildup and expansion of its military
activities in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. US Secretary of
War Pete Hegseth recently demanded that local allies
increase their military budgets to at least 3.5 percent of
GDP, as part of US-led war preparations.
The meeting
coincided with a hyped-up anti-China campaign by both
governments after Beijing barred four New Zealand MPs from
entering China for a year, in retaliation for the
politicians’ visit to Taipei. China’s Foreign Ministry
stated that the MPs had “crossed the red line” by
undermining the One China principle.
China’s NZ
Embassy emphasized that “MPs are not ordinary citizens”
and they had met with high-ranking Taiwanese political
figures, thereby “sending the wrong signals.” China
consistently opposes such visits by members of other
countries’ legislatures and New Zealand “should not be
surprised,” a statement read.
Luxon told reporters
that he would raise the matter directly with China. New
Zealand MPs were “free to see who they want to see” and
China’s reaction was “entirely inappropriate,” he
declared. Luxon said New Zealand continued to observe the
One China policy, which acknowledges China’s claim to
Taiwan.
Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong
weighed in, saying her officials would also “make
representations” on the matter. “We agree with the
principle expressed by New Zealand that members of
parliament, including the Australian parliament, are free to
make their own decisions about travel,” Wong
declared.
Following similar provocations by prominent
US delegations, the visits are part of a conscious
escalation of tensions to undermine the One China policy and
signify unequivocal support for Taiwan in any conflict with
China. The NZ group—from the National Party, the far-right
ACT and NZ First and the opposition Labour Party—is
connected with the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, an
international initiative dedicated to “standing together
to demand accountability from China.”
IPAC’s
listed partners and contributors include the Taiwan
Foundation for Democracy, funded by the Taiwanese
government, a Japanese parliamentary grouping, and the US
National Endowment for Democracy, which carries out the type
of influence operations formerly conducted by the
CIA.
Attempts by the ruling classes to whip up
anti-China sentiment are, however, beginning to fall flat. A
survey released this month shows that, for the first time in
a decade, New Zealanders are more likely to see China as a
“friend” than the United States.
The
“Perceptions of Asia and Asian Peoples” survey, by the
Asia New Zealand Foundation, found that 43 percent of people
viewed China as a friend, up from 38 percent last year. The
percentage who regarded the US as a friend dropped
dramatically from 61 to 39 percent.
While this is
indicative of overwhelming public opposition to war,
experience has demonstrated that imperialist governments are
impervious to protests urging them to change course. The
urgent task is to build a socialist, anti-war movement to
unite workers and young people across Australia, NZ, Asia,
the Pacific and internationally to put an end to capitalism,
which is the root cause of war, social inequality and
dictatorship.
By John Braddock, Socialist Equality
Group
17 June 2026
Original url: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/06/17/dqjx-j17.html
