00:00You're already seeing fences going up all over the place.
00:04This is a really fairly extraordinary level of security that's already in place, reminiscent
00:10perhaps of what we saw back more than a decade ago when President Obama came to Canberra
00:15as part of a visit to Australia.
00:17So you're already seeing some bollards going up, you're seeing essentially an enormous
00:21fence placed down Federation Mall in front of Parliament House where we anticipate there'll
00:27be two duelling groups, on one side protesters who will be protesting Li Qiang when he arrives,
00:34on the other side supporters of the Chinese Communist Party and of the Chinese government.
00:39So the police are already planning it seems to keep those two groups firmly separated.
00:44On top of that you've also got a lot of fencing going up near the hotel where the Premier
00:48is staying and if you look around a little bit you'll see as well roving bands of Chinese
00:53officials inspecting some of those slipways, causeways and roads around Parliament House
00:58where you'd expect the Premier's motorcade to be travelling.
01:02So plenty of activity inside and outside of Parliament House even a few days before the
01:06Premier actually lands here.
01:09And Premier Lee was in talks with New Zealand's Prime Minister yesterday.
01:12What came out of that?
01:14An interesting set of talks yesterday between Premier Lee and Christopher Luxon, New Zealand's
01:19Prime Minister.
01:20Today the Premier is in Auckland on a separate series of meetings.
01:24But worth going back quickly to some of those main outcomes.
01:27Most of the announcements were fairly minor, a couple of potentially significant announcements
01:32on new trade agreements or new trade and services, but typically we saw announcements that were
01:39fairly modest in scale.
01:41Interesting also to note some of the increasing tensions between New Zealand and China.
01:46Traditionally China and New Zealand have had a very comfortable relationship that hasn't
01:50typically been bedevilled by some of the tensions you've seen between China and Australia over
01:56security.
01:57But that does seem to be changing slightly, in particular the fact that New Zealand is
02:01thinking about joining the second pillar of the AUKUS agreement with the US, the UK and
02:05Australia to potentially collaborate on high-end military technology.
02:10That prospect is something that China regards with an awful lot of hostility and Christopher
02:15Luxon said that Premier Lee did raise that yesterday in their meetings to make it fairly
02:19clear that China regards AUKUS as an unfriendly grouping and that it would not like New Zealand
02:25to take part in it.
02:26Even on the trade front, Ruby, where things have been very cosy for a long time, there's
02:30also some signs of some things shifting, even as trade, particularly in commodities, is
02:35booming between the two countries.
02:37In particular, last year New Zealand said it would welcome China joining the so-called
02:42CPTPP.
02:43That's a sprawling trade pact taking in more than 11 countries across the region.
02:48Now it's saying instead that it simply notes China's interests in joining.
02:53So in some ways there are perhaps early signs the relationship could be cooling as New Zealand
02:59starts to confront some of the same dilemmas that Australia has been facing for quite some
03:03time now about how you maintain an amicable and easy relationship with your largest trading
03:12partner.
03:16It's a difficult balancing act and it's one that New Zealand in some ways is only now
03:20really beginning to regard with a lot of seriousness.
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