Jamie Ensor: NZ Herald political reporter ahead of Chris Luxon's upcoming trip to the UK

The Prime Minister departs today for the United Kingdom, before travelling to Gallipoli in time for ANZAC Day. 

Trade, security and the current geopolitical climate are on the agenda, when Chris Luxon meets with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. 

Luxon says he'll discuss what more the pair can do to support the rules-based trading system, a chat coming off the back of phone calls to world leaders amid Donald Trump's tariffs.  

NZ Herald political reporter Jamie Ensor says the pair will likely discuss how to strengthen their trade partnership. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News talks'b.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
This is a Sunday Session and it's now time to
talk local politics and I'm joined by New Zealand Herald
political reporter Jamie Ensaw.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
Happy Easter, Jamie, happy to you too.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
We have an East eccunts it.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
I've been enough and things and work, but I would
love to have one though, if.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Anyone wants to stroy one for you.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Now, the Prime Minister is heading to the United Kingdom.
What is he pending on doing over there?

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Yeah, that's right. This will be Chris fh Luxen's first
official visit to the UK as Prime Minister and it
comes at this time of real significant global turbulence due
to the trade tariff supplied by US President Donald Trump
earlier this month. So you can expect trade is going
to be a major talking point when the Prime Minister
sits down with British Leader Sir Kia Starmer at ten

(00:58):
Downing Street. The Prime Minister's understood to be looking at
what ways the two countries can work together to ensure
there are minimal barriers to trade, and of course New
Zealand signed a free trade agreement with the UK in
twenty twenty two, and trade with the UK is now
worth about seven billion dollars. So the UK is also
part of the cp TPP and you'll remember that used

(01:19):
to be the TPP before it got changed around a
little bit. And Luxin has mooted the idea that the
nations that are part of that agreement could work more
closely with the European Union on trade, so he could
raise that with Sir KaiA Starmer, though of course the
UK now has its slightly complicated relationship with the EU
following Brexit. Now also on the agenda for Luxen is

(01:41):
a meeting with the King, as well as a visit
with New Zealand troops and the UK helping to train
Ukrainian soldiers. A reminder that while the focus might be
on the economic uncertainty at the moment, war still continues
to rage in Europe. And on the way back from
the UK, Luxin is also going to stop off in
Turkey to visit Gallipoli for one hundred and tenth anniversary
of the Anzac landings.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Okay, so there's going to be able to talk about trade,
security and geopolitical backdrop of what's happening in Europe. Does
the Prime Minister have permission from Winston Peters to have
these conversations.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
That's a very good conversation, very good question, Whiston. Peter's
only just got back from the Pacific, so it's unclear
if they've actually met up in person before Luxeon's gone off,
but I'm sure there's been some conversations to avoid any
issues like we've seen in the last week.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
And do we have any detail about what the Prime
Minister will be doing it Gallipoli for Anzac Day? Will
that be a morning service?

Speaker 3 (02:31):
Yeah, he'll head along to the usual services that happen
over there. Prime Minister hasn't been over in quite a
few years, and I know that it's been something that
has been a top priority for Chrystopher Luckxon.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Right, Jamie on Tomarequi has finally provided a bit of
an update on the boot camp program. Of course, we
were waiting to hear some more details about what was
sort of taking place at the end of last year.
There was some absconding and reoffending that was taking place.
Do we what do we know?

Speaker 3 (02:58):
Well, the short answer is not a lot. So as
you mentioned at the end of last year there was
some of the boot camp participants who allegedly reoffended, and
Auditing a Tamidiche said, for privacy reasons, we're not going
to give you any more information other than at certain
milestones while we've hit the midpoint of the community stage

(03:18):
of the program, and the update this week that came
out didn't really say much other than there's been some
instances of re offending, which we already knew, didn't provide
any details about how many or that what that looked like,
and that's been received with some criticism from the opposition
benches as you would expect. Labour's willow Jen Prime said,

(03:38):
the government made a whole song and dance about this
program when it first announced it, but now it's essentially
shut up shop when there's been some re offending. But
one interesting little bit of information that came out was,
as you mentioned, one of the participants absconded from a
tongey Now despite them escaping from two audung A Tamodiki
staff members and then allegedly committing more crime while on

(04:01):
the run, the review found no fundamental failures in the
management of that participant, which is a rather remarkable conclusion. Instead,
the agency just said that staff need a full understanding
of the legal framework they're working in, which one would
expect they should probably already know. Jamie.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Legislation making this program permanent remains before Parliament. Should we
be waiting until the pilot is completed? We've completed the
twelve months before we to assess it as to whether
we do continue.

Speaker 3 (04:31):
Well, that's the argument that's coming from the likes of
Labor and the Greens that we're seeing some issues with
this pilot program. We probably need to wait the full
twelve months to understand what impact it's having on these
ten young individuals before fully entrenching the legislation. The legislation
has already been written, So it raises a question of
what is the purpose of a pilot when you are

(04:53):
going ahead with the overall thing without learning from the
pilot in the first place.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
Okay, and finally to Party, Mari wants Mari to get
super annuation up to ten years before anyone else. How
have their potential coalition partners responded to this.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
Yeah, So this is a really interesting insight into the
dynamic between Labor the Greens into Party Moldy ahead of
the election next year. So to party Maldi have long
had this policy where Maldi would get access to superannuation
seven to ten years earlier than ever else because of
their lower life expectancy. Now, the policy came up during
a recent Select committee session and my colleague Jane Tribe

(05:30):
Cheney from The Heroes though it'd be interesting to know
where Labor and the Green stood on it. Now. The
Green said that they do support some flexibility with super,
while Labor essentially refused to rule it in or out, saying, look,
we're not going to be making announcements about policy this
far from an election. But soon after that story was
published by Jane and it started to get a bit

(05:51):
of heat online and got the I guess the talkback
callers ringing in. Labor rang up and reversed that position, saying, no,
we would not support targeting eligibility based on ethnicity. So
a really quick u turn from Labor, but one that
they probably shouldn't have need to do in the first place.
You know, regardless of whether you support targeting super by race,

(06:12):
this would cost four billion dollars a year to do,
and that's simply not money that's just lying around. So
that could have been a really easy get out of
jail free card for labor, but they failed to take it.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Jamie, really nice to catch up with you. Thank you
so much. Enjoy the rest of your Easter Sunday.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks THE'B from nine am Sunday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.