Fiji prime minister Sitiveni Rabuka shakes hands with NZ deputy prime minister Winston Peters ahead of their bilateral meeting in Suva on 15 December, 2023. Photo: RNZ / Koroi Hawkins
New Zealand's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has set the tone for the coalition government's Pacific engagement making his first overseas trip to Fiji over the weekend.
Peters said New Zealand had an important role to play in keeping the region on a peaceful pathway.
"The coalition government is deeply committed to the Pacific and to ensuring New Zealand has the connections and relationships to help the region succeed," he said.
In Suva on Friday and Saturday, he met with Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, the Pacific Islands Forum secretary-general Henry Puna and also held an informal breakfast meeting with Tuvalu's Prime Minister Kausea Natano, who was staying at the same hotel as him.
Talks with Fiji covered economic resilience, climate action, trade and tourism, labour mobility and people to people links.
Despite a busy domestic schedule. Peters said as foreign minister he wanted to get out into the region as quickly as possible.
"It was one of the most important things that we need to be dealing with going forward," he said.
"First of all co-operating with Fiji as a critical country and where the Pacific Islands Forum is placed and looking forward to some of the things we have to work on going into the future.
"The most important thing of course being the peaceful future of the Blue Continent and the key role of New Zealand and Fiji in that."
Rabuka said Peters' return as deputy prime minister and foreign minister of New Zealand is good news for the Pacific.
The pair held their bilateral meeting at the Grand Pacific Hotel, the first for Peters and for the coalition government since its formation.
Rabuka said it was good to have someone who knew the Pacific sitting in Wellington.
"Over the years with our association you understand where we are and where we are trying to get to and it has been very good news for us in the Pacific to know that a friend of the Pacific and a person of the Pacific has been appointed deputy prime minister and minister for foreign affairs," Rabuka said.
On Saturday, Peters held an informal breakfast meeting with Natano before visiting the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat.
Puna said the deputy prime minister has signalled the new government's seriousness about its Pacific engagement in prioritising a visit to Suva so early in his tenure.
"Your presence… sends a very clear message to all that your government will continue to prioritise the Pacific," he said.
"And as a founding member of this esteemed institution, New Zealand holds a special place in Pacific regionalism and continues to play an important and instrumental role in driving Pacific priorities within and beyond the oceanic borders of our Blue Pacific."
NZ DPM and Foreign Minister Winston Peters shares a moment of levity with Fiji DPM and Minister of Finance Biman Prasad at a cocktail function in Suva. Photo: RNZ Pacific / Koroi Hawkins
Visa-free travel
For all the pomp and ceremony, this was very much an introductory visit. No new announcements or commitments were made.
In fact, the only real certainty came from Peters effectively shelving a request from the Fiji prime minister for consideration of visa-free-travel to New Zealand.
"It's something that we have listened to. But we are also a country in New Zealand that has inherited an immigration record in the last 12 months of 128, 000 people that was never forecast, never predicted for the new government to handle," he said.
"And so, I tried to make it very clear that we have got a clear and present problem that we are trying to fix or work on now."
But Fiji's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Biman Prasad said a visa free Pacific would strengthen regional economies and improve security.
Prasad said there was growing consensus among Pacific Islands leaders that this was the way forward for the region.
"There is a lot more to gain out of a free movement of people, capital, investments - there is this huge economic potential. Apart from that I think a much more united, much more deeply integrated Pacific is good for the security of the Pacific," he said.
On the aid front, Peters would not be drawn on whether or not there would be changes to the focus of New Zealand's official development assistance to the Pacific under his watch.
"Well, it's in the good book, any man that puts his hand to the plough and looks backwards is not fit for the kingdom of heaven. Now foreign aid is not heaven, but we're not going out to lose," he said.
"We're going out to be a better citizen."
He said he wanted bi-annual performance checks on Pacific cooperation arrangements to make sure things were getting done.
"That [is how] we get understanding and cooperation, that we don't have the disparity that arose in recent times.
"I think that there are a lot of things that we need to do, particularly experienced politicians, to get far more out of the Pacific islands cooperation and ensure that we have performance checks on probably a six-monthly basis to ensure that what we set out to do is actually happening and not just drifting and drifting and nothing changes."
Peters is now back in Wellington for the final week of Parliament for the year with the main event being the new government's mini-budget on Wednesday.