Geoffrey Miller: New Zealand’s relationship with India is in trouble

New Zealand’s relationship with India is not in good health.

That’s the underlying message from a rare visit to New Zealand by India’s external affairs minister, Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

Jaishankar met with his New Zealand counterpart, Nanaia Mahuta, last Thursday – but only for an hour.

At a press conference with Mahuta in Auckland, Jaishankar was publicly critical of New Zealand’s unwillingness to renew visas for Indian students who had left New Zealand during the Covid-19 pandemic and called for ‘fairer and more sympathetic treatment’.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive 7/10/22

Our post on pushing for a free trade deal must have influenced Mahuta’s meeting with Indian minister – or maybe not

Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta has welcomed what she hailed as “an historic visit to Aotearoa New Zealand by the Indian Foreign Minister”.

Your Point of Order team would like to think the invitation to her Indian counterpart was extended after Mahuta read our recent article which argued why Trade Minister Damien O’Connor should be quickening the pace in pushing for a free trade agreement with India

Australia has secured a free trade deal with the planet’s fifth-biggest economy, we pointed out. We should be pressing to do likewise.