Eventually, under the Aukus submarine pact, Australia will acquire nuclear propelled submarines, which would be banned from New Zealand waters \u2013 this could lead to friction as Australia is New Zealand\u2019s only formal ally. <\/p>\n
\u201cEssentially, we\u2019ve got a longstanding position. It\u2019s across the political spectrum. All New Zealanders feel very strongly about the nuclear free position,\u201d Luxon said. <\/p>\n
Asked by host Heather du Plessis\u2013Allan whether the position was \u201cone of the nuttiest\u201d things that New Zealand had done, Luxon disagreed, saying \u201cit\u2019s one of the best things\u201d the country had achieved. <\/p>\n
Also at the conference, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth accused New Zealand \u2013 among other nations \u2013 of \u201cfreeloading\u201d off the US in terms of defence spending. <\/p>\n
New Zealand will lift defence spending to 2% of GDP over eight years, by one measure, a benchmark once used by Nato countries, although the United States has now called for allied and like\u2013minded countries to target 3.5% of GDP.<\/p>\n
Luxon denied New Zealand was freeloading. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe choose our defence spending, no one else does that,\u201d Luxon said. <\/p>\n
Penk clarified his comments on Ryan Bridge TODAY. <\/p>\n
He said there was no \u201cofficial or unofficial conversation about changing\u201d the nuclear free policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe conversation I was saying we need to have is what defence looks like for us and our region in the wake of Australia acquiring nuclear submarines. It wasn\u2019t that our nuclear policy should change,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was very upfront about that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eventually, under the Aukus submarine pact, Australia will acquire nuclear propelled submarines, which would be banned from New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1443,232320,8991,3390,14229,16426,21335,2841,39172,8473,6097,4975,13490,13481,702,16427,6722,111,43,139,603,69,90,5270,7254,415,11227,6035,2963],"class_list":["post-457175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-about","tag-aint","tag-altering","tag-best","tag-changing","tag-christopher","tag-conversation","tag-country","tag-describing","tag-done","tag-down","tag-free","tag-hosed","tag-hoses","tag-it","tag-luxon","tag-minister","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nuclear","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-one","tag-policy","tag-prime","tag-talk","tag-things","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}