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Speaker 1: To the world of geopolitics, where the Lowy Institute is

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Speaker 1: suggesting a new intelligent sharing agreement between Australia, New Zealand

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Speaker 1: and the Pacific Nations, essentially calling it Pacific Eyes, which

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Speaker 1: is essentially a lot of I suppose the local version

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Speaker 1: of five Eyes. It is to counter China's growing influence.

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Speaker 1: Wayne map form a defense Minister is whether it's Wayne

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Speaker 1: morning to you, if you were still in charge of

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Speaker 1: the portfolio, would you look at this and go that's

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Speaker 1: a damn good idea or not.

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Speaker 2: It seems a good idea. The key point will be

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Speaker 2: getting trust between the four partners, so they think of

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Speaker 2: themselves as equals. So it's a fundamental and that's our

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Speaker 2: New Zealand thinks about five Eyes. We might be the smallest,

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Speaker 2: but we consider ourselves an equal and if you can

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Speaker 2: achieve that work.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that was one of several questions I had around that,

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Speaker 1: given the Pacific and the complex makeup of their view

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Speaker 1: of China and their relationship with us and all of

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Speaker 1: that sort of stuff, could you round up a couple

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Speaker 1: of Pacific nations that would be I don't know, on

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Speaker 1: the right side of a Pacific Eyes arrangement.

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Speaker 2: The proposal is initially Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Australia and

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Speaker 2: New Zone and Papua New Guinea and Fiji are the

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Speaker 2: two largest you know what, we would regard a specific

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Speaker 2: nations and they all have capable of militaries, so it

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Speaker 2: makes sense to start there. Australia has done its deal,

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Speaker 2: it's a military alliance with Papua New Guinea, so this

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Speaker 2: kind of is a springboard of that and extending it Fiji.

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Speaker 2: I think that would be possible. It won't be easy

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Speaker 2: to achieve. Is a building trust will be the critical

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Speaker 2: part of it.

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Speaker 1: But do you think if you can do that, it's

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Speaker 1: real or is this just a think tank doing what

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Speaker 1: think tanks do.

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Speaker 2: It could be real because what you'd be doing is

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Speaker 2: sharing a higher level of intelligence cooperation than currently occurs.

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Speaker 2: That's clearly what the defense alliance with Papua New Guinea

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Speaker 2: between Australia and PNG is about. This is kind of

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Speaker 2: building off that, using that as the first sort of

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Speaker 2: building block to a wider security apparatus within the region.

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Speaker 1: All right, let's say if it goes and we appreciate it,

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Speaker 1: won't have a good week informat Defense Minister Wayne Matt

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