Australia and NZ have real parallels in approaches to China

Chris Hipkins really had that tricky diplomatic line to walk during these recent talks notably a couple of days ago Hipkins refused to label she as a as a dictator as we saw Joe Biden do last week well there are some real parallels between our approach here in Australia and the New Zealand approach and I I would think it's a general strategy to reduce the temperature to

to avoid kind of provocative issues and try to find some new normal in terms of the relationship in the case of New Zealand there was particular anxiety because the the foreign minister mahuta received what was reported to have been a haranguing or a dressing down in March and I think the new prime minister of New Zealand was Keen to make sure the same thing didn't happen

this time and by all accounts he was successful it was very much a trade focused uh Mission um and uh and he said some things I think the Chinese would quite like so it's not quite surprising that the Chinese leader Xi Jinping would have praised the New Zealand prime minister yeah the pmo here in Australia might be taking notes after that one Gordon while we've got

you I'm Ken also to hear your thoughts on that near Uprising in Russia over the weekend I think in the US today the new South Politico it's reporting that the US made sure that it reached out to Russia during this while it was all happening to make sure that there was no confusion about the US's lack of involvement in terms of what was going on that

must have been pretty crucial for the US ISM to ensure that it wasn't dragged into it or or wrongly blamed for that matter for for what it clearly saw as an internal Russian situation well there's an old saying by Napoleon that says do not interrupt your enemy when he's making mistakes on the one hand the last thing the United States or NATO anybody else wanted to

do was make this a story about them but on the other hand uh there's real concerns about Russian stability Russia's perception of the world uh Russian nuclear weapons Etc and so I think the fact that the U.S President Joe Biden and his administration was very quick to reach out through normal diplomatic channels to assure the Russian leadership that they had no part in this uh was

designed to emphasize the importance of that stability uh in that very very volatile weekend that we just experienced yeah how damaged do you think Putin's emerged from all of that well this is an open open question uh the initial reactions obviously were a lot of people hoping that this was going to you know lead to real instability within Russia itself without thinking through some of the

longer term ramifications for that uh it is clear that his his International reputation at least has taken a bit of a hit but much depends on what happens in the coming days further actions to take it against other members of his Defense Forces or not uh how they proceed to kind of carve up the remains of the Wagner group and what the consequences there are uh

so again I think it's still very much too early to tell at least for someone like myself viewing it from the farther corner of the world here um looking at them Mr Trump again surprise surprise making more headlines more audio out yesterday of him well really not leaving much wiggle room does it when it comes to those charges that he's facing over over those classified documents

yeah the fact that that CNN had a leaked copy of the transcript uh and actually the actual recording of the conversation itself where the president is pretty explicitly not just admitting but admitting what he did and why he did it uh it makes it really difficult I I think or any prosecutor to avoid going forward on that and it begins to frame the discussion particularly since

this is just one of many ongoing legal Avenues at this point so uh but obviously as you pointed out it hasn't seemed to impact his popularity among his base uh at the same time as I've said on this program before I see little evidence that it's doing anything to increase the size of his base or win over Independence and other voters absolutely no nothing changing on

that front at least Gordon's like always appreciate your time thank you my pleasure thank you