Chris Luxon, the man the polls say will be be New Zealand’s next prime minister, will make Australia his first port of call should his centre-right National Party win next weekend’s election.

In his most wide-ranging interview on his foreign and trade priorities, Mr Luxon told AAP he was committed to three international engagements in 2023 should he win office.

The first would be a call-in on Anthony Albanese, followed by the Pacific Islands Forum in the Cook Islands, a pivotal gathering to New Zealand, and APEC in San Francisco.

National published a lengthy first “100 Day Action Plan” last week, but it left off any international priorities.

Mr Luxon was happy to add the three commitments when asked.

“Yes, I would,” he says when asked if Australia would be his first stop.

“I’d want to go see Prime Minister Albanese absolutely.”

The pair are a good working relationship already: Mr Albanese was infrastructure minister in the Rudd-Gillard years coinciding with Mr Luxon’s period as chief executive of Air New Zealand.

Mr Luxon has been making jokes at Australia’s expense during the campaign, last month telling a young man who wanted a higher-paying job and was thinking about moving across the Tasman not to move to Australia “because Australians live there”.

His wisecracks are light-hearted.

‘I’d be an Aussie’

He says he “loved” living in Sydney for five years in the late 1990s, when he began an executive career abroad with Unilever before moving back to NZ in 2011.

“If I couldn’t be a Kiwi, I’d be an Aussie,” he told AAP last year, noting his son was born in Australia.

The three visits would provide a perfect introduction to the key international realms New Zealand inhabits.

Australia is NZ’s most important relationship and its only ally, with an estimated 700,000 Kiwis living across the ditch.

The Pacific is its most significant sphere of influence, and APEC is home to its most important trading relationships.

US President Joe Biden is hosting the APEC summit and Chinese President Xi Jinping is reportedly considering attending, but Mr Luxon did not name out any leaders he would particularly seek to meet for bilateral engagement.

“I will think about that properly,” he told AAP from the campaign trail in New Zealand’s agricultural heartland of Taranaki this week.

“I’m not thinking about that part of the job yet. I’m thinking very much about how we how we win an election.”

Memories of COVID

One part of Nationals’ pitch is renewed engagement with the world, with Mr Luxon alleging Labour was “playing a very much more insular, inward-looking game” during its six years in office.

That attack line refers to a two-year stint when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and other key ministers stayed home during the closed borders of the pandemic.

While Labour points to huge achievement in trade – including new deals with the European Union, United Kingdom and an upgraded agreement with China – Mr Luxon wants more.

“I want us to do trade in the world big time,” he said, naming Indonesia, Singapore, Southeast Asia and his top priority, India.

“We’ve got some challenges around free trade agreements per se, but we want to build confidence and operating in those markets for our businesses,” he said.

“I want my foreign minister and I want my trade minister on those planes 365 days a year doing the business for New Zealand and hustling, creating opportunities for us, building and taking businesses with us to actually build their literacy.”

Earlier this year, Mr Luxon committed to flying commercially as prime minister, rather than use Defence Force planes, to save money.

It is not yet clear who would be foreign and or trade minister under a National-led government, an equation made more complicated by a likely three-party coalition.

National’s foreign spokesman is Gerry Brownlee, who previously held the job in government, though NZ First leader Winston Peters may return for a third stint, and former leader Judith Collins has also been touted.

Trade spokesman Todd McClay is considered likely to hold that role in government, with Mr Luxon suggesting he spend a lot of time in New Delhi.

Emphasis on trade

“I watched the Australians negotiate a free early harvest free trade deal with India through the COVID period … we haven’t really been present at all,” Mr Luxon said.

“Two-way trade has gone from $2.8 billion down to $2.3 billion … you think about it being the third biggest economy by 2030, we’ve really got to do business there especially when you put two-way trade with China at $40 billion.”

Mr Luxon is a fan and student of US politics, living in Chicago during Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency.

He considers a trade deal with Washington DC – a long-held Kiwi ambition which Mr Peters last attempted during Donald Trump’s presidency to no avail – a non-starter.

On the biggest foreign challenge facing the world – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – Mr Luxon favours more support, including financial support “if we’re asked”.

“What’s happened in Ukraine is unacceptable (and) we have a responsibility to our values that we stand up for; sovereignty of nations, the rule of law, basic human rights,” he said.

Foreign policy is hardly ever a major issue in Kiwi elections as the two sides of politics are usually largely aligned.

The major parties use the same diplomat-shaped language when discussing China and both are enthusiastic about growing trade ties despite Beijing’s assertiveness.

“We have a good relationship with China and want to continue to build that relationship out,” Mr Luxon said.

Mr Luxon points out National’s point of difference that it would seek to expel the Russian Ambassador for its illegal invasion.

“That has been our long held view,” he said, though he wouldn’t commit to doing so inside 100 days.

“We’re doing that on the basis of workload. It’s very easy to say what goes into a 100 day plan but you’ve actually got to sequence up the resources to be able to make sure you can execute.”

-AAP