Climate change has been the centre of conversation for leaders at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
Chris Luxon has announced the Government will contribute $20 million for the Pacific Resilience Facility while in Samoa for the meeting.
The money will be used to encourage spending to prepare the Pacific for natural disasters - and resilience against climate change.
Newstalk ZB political editor Jason Walls says the Government is committed to reducing the impact of disasters - including hurricanes and cyclones.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks edb Right.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
The Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting wrapped up yesterday in Apia.
News talk ZDB political editor Jason Woolves was at the
meeting with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Winston Peters and
he is with me now.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Good morning, Jason, Oh, good morning, how are you doing.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Good. Good to talk to you now. You have been
with the Prime minister in Samma. Talk us through what
the Prime Minister has been up to in Apia.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
Yeah, Well, as is usually the case with these trips
with the Prime Minister, he has quite a full agenda
and there's not really bunch of downtime for reporters of
the world. We're not actually focused on downtime.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
We're out of work.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
We're there to report the news. So it was a
lot of diplomatic meetings. Of course, he met with Sir
Kia Stama, which is probably the highlight of the diplomatic
sort of side of things, and they talked about the
two countries, various different relationships and many aspects such as
the trade relationship, various different people to people connections, which
is a peace that only really comes up in these
(01:09):
bilateral conversations because what kind of other connections could you
possibly have. And of course one of the big things
here was the chat with the King. The Prime Minister
sat down with King Charles, and there is a bit
of a royal protocol around not repeating what was said
in those conversations. It's sort of the ultimate Chatham House rules.
But the Prime Minister did say that he was very
(01:30):
charming and the pair head a very lovely chat which
he was very hospitable, and King Charles essentially, you know,
the day before, had been throwing down the climate gauntlet
to a lot of the leaders here, the fifty six leaders,
basically telling them to get their a into g when
it comes to climate change and do more to come
up with various different initiatives. So you would have thought
(01:53):
that the government stand and ran with it, but they
the day afterwards they announced a twenty million dollar Climate
Pacific Resilience Fund, which is sort of a way of
building private and private and equity in bringing it into
the Pacific Islands.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
But they said that there wasn't because of the King
that said that.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
They said that they've been working on this for a
long time, and Winston Peter said that they weren't going
to come to this form empty handed.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
So quite a lot on their agenda over the last
couple of days.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Okay, so talk to us. Tell us about New Zealand's
commitment to the Specific Resilience Climate Fund.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Yeah, so it's twenty million dollars and it's essentially there
to set up the fund because they want to attract
some public and private capital to come in and build
various different climate change mitigation efforts within the Pacific.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
So the US is a part of it as well.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
They've spent roughly one hundred and ten New Zealand dollars
helping to set it up. Saudi Arabia are also a part,
as are Australia. So there's quite a few various different nations. Sorry,
that's my mistake. The US is only about forty one
million rather than one hundred million.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
One hundred million was Australia, So.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
There are a couple of nations involved in the Prime
Minister and Winston Peters are actually already calling on other
countries to get involved and stomp up some cash for
that fund as well.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Okay, so it's getting some backing. Look this message on climate.
Do you think it's getting through? Will it result in
meaningful change?
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I probably not.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
I mean every single time you go to one of
these forums, it's pretty much the same message. It doesn't
matter if it's from the King or if it's from
any other sort of keynote speaker.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
They all sort of say the same thing.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
And I think, you know, the government should be commended
for doing something anyway. I mean, this Resilience Fund isn't
just the government throwing money at a problem. It's actually
setting it up to attract private and public money for
other players, so it actually builds into something a little
bit greater. So I think it's probably a good initiative.
And it's not a huge amount of money for the government.
Twenty millions in the big twenty million in the big
(03:50):
scheme of things isn't actually huge from the government coffers.
But yeah, you know, King Charles was always going to
talk about this. I mean nothing that he said was
particularly surprising.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I would say, Whinston Peter's met with the Smon Deputy
Prime Minister, and I'm sure that the Manawanui was on
the Ginda there, Jason, it was indeed.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
I mean it's been interesting because there's been a bit
of a.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Divergence in opinion between the Prime Minister and the Deputy
Prime Minister on the perception around whether we need to
say sorry or not. The Prime Minister said quite categorically
that he's said sorry many many times to the Samoan
government about this unfortunate accident. But Winston Peter says that
you know, New Zealand doesn't owe Samoa an apology over this.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
They were here for the purpose.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
Of aid with the Manawanui and the vessel that ran
aground was doing surveying for Chogham for the Commonwealth Heads
of Government Forum, so no apology necessary. So there's a
little bit of a divergence between the two of them
on this one. But nevertheless, of course the Prime Minister
is the Prime Minister and he's won out on this one.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Jason, have there been any other key issues discussed over
the last few days.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Well, well, there's I mean, in terms of other conversations
as other leaders were having, there's been a lot of
talk about reparations for the past essentially, I mean, you
can't really talk about the the Commonwealth without it's sort
of doc pasted in a lot of colonizations and part
of the world.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Of course, that was always going to come up.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
And the King did mention briefly mention it in his speech,
and there's been some talks from Serkuistana as well, so
that was sort of on the British side of things.
And of course as this was all bubbling away, there
was some scandal happening in New Zealand around first of
all Andrew Bailey and then later in the week eischeverril In,
a relative in the Ministry of Health that was working
(05:38):
on smoking and regulation policy. However, the Ministry of Health
didn't tell Minister Costello's office, so there has been Winston's
been very very unhappy about that. But Winston Peters also
just said the name of the public, so that was
in question, and you're not supposed to do that as
a minister.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
There's a power.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Dynamic between a public servant and the deputy Prime minister.
They can't really defend themselves as well as the Prime
Minister or the Deputy Prime Minister can. However, I tried
a number of times over the course weekend to ask
the Prime Minister is this acceptable from Winston Peters, And
every single time he just refused to answer and just
started talking about something else.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Yeah, a little bit to sort out there. On their return,
Christopher Luxen sat next to Queen Camilla at a dinner
hosted by the King.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Indeed he did.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
He said that, I mean, basically he had the same
things to say about her as he did about King Charles.
He said that she was very warm, very hospitable, had
a deep edge of New Zealand and really enjoyed New
Zealand and knew a lot about us.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
And so, I mean, you really get.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
The sense that if they could, they would come to
New Zealand King Charles's health obviously as a factory only really,
I mean, there was big question marks raised about this trip,
especially going to Australia as well, So you kind of
get the sense that if they could come, they would
have come. But unfortunately that doesn't seem like it's going
to happen with the King's health. Other than that, you know,
(07:00):
Chris Luxon said his table manners were great. He was
using the right knives and forks. His elbows were off
the table. So good for him because Mum would be
so pleased.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
My mother always said to me, as long as you
know how to behave if you have dinner with the
King and Queen, you've got you also got to go
to the market with First Lady Amanda Luxen do any
shopping Jason.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
Well, it was a really novel experience because Amanda Luxon
isn't really seen like all. I mean, you might see
her in an Instagram post with the Prime Minister. You
might see her sort of wandering.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
Can you hear me there?
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Dan?
Speaker 5 (07:32):
Hello, how are you good? We've just got a minute
and a half to go on this ad break. Then
we're going to sorry on this interview. Then we're going
to take an air break. We'll come back and you
know when we're two minutes away.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Cool.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Thank you, Ladies and first Gentlemen have been really more
behind the scenes, which is why it was so curious
to see on the media program that we could go
and join miss Luxon for an afternoon or a morning
at the market. And it was a soggy, it was
downpowards sort of day, and it was all undercover, and
then she came in and she looked at a few
things and she tried everything. It's funny everywhere she went
(08:07):
they would try to give it to her for free,
and she said no, no, no, I'll pay for it
until the one man stepped away. She was at a
carving shop and made a call and then came back
and said, I've just talked to our commissioner. Because it
was a carving shop that was run by the Samoan
prison and it was in a bit to rehabilitate prisoners.
They would carve very beautiful, intricate pieces of art and
(08:28):
seldom and the commissioner said, oh, we'd like to give
you this, and she couldn't, really, she couldn't refuse that one.
So she got a beautiful carved wooden hook and that
she said she was going.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
To leave at home.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
She was going to put it in a bookshelf at
home so people can ask her about the story behind it.
So it was really interesting to see her out in public.
And I thought that, you know, obviously you're a bit
nervous when you're in these sort of situations and these
cameras and microphones everywhere. But I thought she did quite
a good job. I think they should probably utilize her
a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I thought the same thing. Thought she asked some really
seemed very interested in some great questions, And yeah, nice
to see her out and about Jason. Thank you so
much for ping up the trip to someone appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Don't no problem at all.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it Be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks edb Right.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
The Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting wrapped up yesterday in Apia.
News talk ZDB political editor Jason Woolves was at the
meeting with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Winston Peters and
he is with me now.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Good morning, Jason, Oh, good morning, how are you doing.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Good. Good to talk to you now. You have been
with the Prime minister in Samma. Talk us through what
the Prime Minister has been up to in Apia.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
Yeah, Well, as is usually the case with these trips
with the Prime Minister, he has quite a full agenda
and there's not really bunch of downtime for reporters of
the world. We're not actually focused on downtime.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
We're out of work.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
We're there to report the news. So it was a
lot of diplomatic meetings. Of course, he met with Sir
Kia Stama, which is probably the highlight of the diplomatic
sort of side of things, and they talked about the
two countries, various different relationships and many aspects such as
the trade relationship, various different people to people connections, which
is a peace that only really comes up in these
(01:09):
bilateral conversations because what kind of other connections could you
possibly have. And of course one of the big things
here was the chat with the King. The Prime Minister
sat down with King Charles, and there is a bit
of a royal protocol around not repeating what was said
in those conversations. It's sort of the ultimate Chatham House rules.
But the Prime Minister did say that he was very
(01:30):
charming and the pair head a very lovely chat which
he was very hospitable, and King Charles essentially, you know,
the day before, had been throwing down the climate gauntlet
to a lot of the leaders here, the fifty six leaders,
basically telling them to get their a into g when
it comes to climate change and do more to come
up with various different initiatives. So you would have thought
(01:53):
that the government stand and ran with it, but they
the day afterwards they announced a twenty million dollar Climate
Pacific Resilience Fund, which is sort of a way of
building private and private and equity in bringing it into
the Pacific Islands.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
But they said that there wasn't because of the King
that said that.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
They said that they've been working on this for a
long time, and Winston Peter said that they weren't going
to come to this form empty handed.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
So quite a lot on their agenda over the last
couple of days.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Okay, so talk to us. Tell us about New Zealand's
commitment to the Specific Resilience Climate Fund.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Yeah, so it's twenty million dollars and it's essentially there
to set up the fund because they want to attract
some public and private capital to come in and build
various different climate change mitigation efforts within the Pacific.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
So the US is a part of it as well.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
They've spent roughly one hundred and ten New Zealand dollars
helping to set it up. Saudi Arabia are also a part,
as are Australia. So there's quite a few various different nations. Sorry,
that's my mistake. The US is only about forty one
million rather than one hundred million.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
One hundred million was Australia, So.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
There are a couple of nations involved in the Prime
Minister and Winston Peters are actually already calling on other
countries to get involved and stomp up some cash for
that fund as well.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Okay, so it's getting some backing. Look this message on climate.
Do you think it's getting through? Will it result in
meaningful change?
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I probably not.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
I mean every single time you go to one of
these forums, it's pretty much the same message. It doesn't
matter if it's from the King or if it's from
any other sort of keynote speaker.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
They all sort of say the same thing.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
And I think, you know, the government should be commended
for doing something anyway. I mean, this Resilience Fund isn't
just the government throwing money at a problem. It's actually
setting it up to attract private and public money for
other players, so it actually builds into something a little
bit greater. So I think it's probably a good initiative.
And it's not a huge amount of money for the government.
Twenty millions in the big twenty million in the big
(03:50):
scheme of things isn't actually huge from the government coffers.
But yeah, you know, King Charles was always going to
talk about this. I mean nothing that he said was
particularly surprising.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I would say, Whinston Peter's met with the Smon Deputy
Prime Minister, and I'm sure that the Manawanui was on
the Ginda there, Jason, it was indeed.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
I mean it's been interesting because there's been a bit
of a.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Divergence in opinion between the Prime Minister and the Deputy
Prime Minister on the perception around whether we need to
say sorry or not. The Prime Minister said quite categorically
that he's said sorry many many times to the Samoan
government about this unfortunate accident. But Winston Peter says that
you know, New Zealand doesn't owe Samoa an apology over this.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
They were here for the purpose.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
Of aid with the Manawanui and the vessel that ran
aground was doing surveying for Chogham for the Commonwealth Heads
of Government Forum, so no apology necessary. So there's a
little bit of a divergence between the two of them
on this one. But nevertheless, of course the Prime Minister
is the Prime Minister and he's won out on this one.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Jason, have there been any other key issues discussed over
the last few days.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Well, well, there's I mean, in terms of other conversations
as other leaders were having, there's been a lot of
talk about reparations for the past essentially, I mean, you
can't really talk about the the Commonwealth without it's sort
of doc pasted in a lot of colonizations and part
of the world.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Of course, that was always going to come up.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
And the King did mention briefly mention it in his speech,
and there's been some talks from Serkuistana as well, so
that was sort of on the British side of things.
And of course as this was all bubbling away, there
was some scandal happening in New Zealand around first of
all Andrew Bailey and then later in the week eischeverril In,
a relative in the Ministry of Health that was working
(05:38):
on smoking and regulation policy. However, the Ministry of Health
didn't tell Minister Costello's office, so there has been Winston's
been very very unhappy about that. But Winston Peters also
just said the name of the public, so that was
in question, and you're not supposed to do that as
a minister.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
There's a power.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Dynamic between a public servant and the deputy Prime minister.
They can't really defend themselves as well as the Prime
Minister or the Deputy Prime Minister can. However, I tried
a number of times over the course weekend to ask
the Prime Minister is this acceptable from Winston Peters, And
every single time he just refused to answer and just
started talking about something else.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Yeah, a little bit to sort out there. On their return,
Christopher Luxen sat next to Queen Camilla at a dinner
hosted by the King.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Indeed he did.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
He said that, I mean, basically he had the same
things to say about her as he did about King Charles.
He said that she was very warm, very hospitable, had
a deep edge of New Zealand and really enjoyed New
Zealand and knew a lot about us.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
And so, I mean, you really get.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
The sense that if they could, they would come to
New Zealand King Charles's health obviously as a factory only really,
I mean, there was big question marks raised about this trip,
especially going to Australia as well, So you kind of
get the sense that if they could come, they would
have come. But unfortunately that doesn't seem like it's going
to happen with the King's health. Other than that, you know,
(07:00):
Chris Luxon said his table manners were great. He was
using the right knives and forks. His elbows were off
the table. So good for him because Mum would be
so pleased.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
My mother always said to me, as long as you
know how to behave if you have dinner with the
King and Queen, you've got you also got to go
to the market with First Lady Amanda Luxen do any
shopping Jason.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
Well, it was a really novel experience because Amanda Luxon
isn't really seen like all. I mean, you might see
her in an Instagram post with the Prime Minister. You
might see her sort of wandering.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
Can you hear me there?
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Dan?
Speaker 5 (07:32):
Hello, how are you good? We've just got a minute
and a half to go on this ad break. Then
we're going to sorry on this interview. Then we're going
to take an air break. We'll come back and you
know when we're two minutes away.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Cool.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Thank you, Ladies and first Gentlemen have been really more
behind the scenes, which is why it was so curious
to see on the media program that we could go
and join miss Luxon for an afternoon or a morning
at the market. And it was a soggy, it was
downpowards sort of day, and it was all undercover, and
then she came in and she looked at a few
things and she tried everything. It's funny everywhere she went
(08:07):
they would try to give it to her for free,
and she said no, no, no, I'll pay for it
until the one man stepped away. She was at a
carving shop and made a call and then came back
and said, I've just talked to our commissioner. Because it
was a carving shop that was run by the Samoan
prison and it was in a bit to rehabilitate prisoners.
They would carve very beautiful, intricate pieces of art and
(08:28):
seldom and the commissioner said, oh, we'd like to give
you this, and she couldn't, really, she couldn't refuse that one.
So she got a beautiful carved wooden hook and that
she said she was going.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
To leave at home.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
She was going to put it in a bookshelf at
home so people can ask her about the story behind it.
So it was really interesting to see her out in public.
And I thought that, you know, obviously you're a bit
nervous when you're in these sort of situations and these
cameras and microphones everywhere. But I thought she did quite
a good job. I think they should probably utilize her
a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I thought the same thing. Thought she asked some really
seemed very interested in some great questions, And yeah, nice
to see her out and about Jason. Thank you so
much for ping up the trip to someone appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Don't no problem at all.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it Be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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