Trade, security and Pacific issues top agenda for Australia-NZ leaders’ talks
Friday, 5 June 2026
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon will make a whirlwind two-day trip to Australia today hoping to strengthen economic and security ties across the Tasman.
Luxon and his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese will meet in Queensland for the annual Australia-New Zealand Leaders’ Meeting on Friday and Saturday.
The New Zealand prime minister will also meet Queensland Premier David Crisafulli and the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Committee.
Luxon told The Post the relationship between the two countries was “better than ever before”.
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Luxon said he wanted to focus on strengthening economic advantages for New Zealand and Australia, security and the role the two nations played in the Pacific.
“There's a lot for us in a very challenged world at the moment to work out what more we can do together.”
He said in a more volatile world, there was a “massive opportunity” to work with “like-minded friends and partners in a much more bold way”.
An example of this was New Zealand and Australia’s response to fuel crisis, Luxon said.
“We aligned the fuel specification standards, they adopted essentially our four-phase model, our timely targeted temporary support. We've done a very similar approach with similar partners around getting additional fuel supplies into our respective countries.”
Luxon said the fuel specification changes in March which aligned both trans-Tasman markets helped by making it easier to supply both Australia and New Zealand.
“It's just getting rid of dumb things that actually can slow it down or put that supply at risk.”
In March the Australian Government allowed higher sulphur content in its fuel to increase supply.
The Post asked if New Zealand would be open to changing its standards.
“If we need to, we can do that, but, that's not what we feel at this point. What we've been focussed on in the fuel crisis is making sure we secure our supply.”
Luxon said the Government was not open to following Australia’s lead in reducing fuel taxes.
“There are times I’ve heard anecdotally that you can actually buy fuel in Australia now cheaper than what it was pre-conflict because of those subsidies.
“That broad approach of offering that subsidies is not something we are up for at this point for the reason we don’t think it is targeted enough to low and middle income workers.”
The two country’s economic agendas were also likely to be a topic of conversation.
“Both Australia and New Zealand have struggled over the last 30 years on economic productivity, we’ve both been probably in the bottom third, bottom quartile of productivity gains of any country.”
In recent weeks the Australian Government announced reforms to its capital gain tax.
Luxon said he did not comment on Australia’s domestic polices but believed in New Zealand a capital gain tax would be a “wrecking ball”.
With regard to modernising a single economic agenda for both countries it was a challenge as “very big gains” had been made in recent decades, he said.
“You think about the regulation of financial institutions, you could think about the regulation of AI, the growth of data centres.”