The first item I remember on RNZ news this morning was that Winston is threatening to cut all aid to Kiribati because they wouldn't meet with him. Of course, there's more to the story than that - Kiribati's president had a pre-planned and significant historical event - but clearly Winston thinks that he should drop everything to give him his vital "I visited every Pacific country" photo op. Meanwhile, Judith Collins makes the colonialism and white supremacy even more explicit when she says "we can't have a disrespectful relationship". Quite. But who's disrespecting who here?
Which also makes me think of yesterday's international mess over Trump threatening Colombia (a friendly nation and an American ally, which had asked that its people be treated respectfully when being deported, and was threatened with tarriffs and sanctions in response). There was some commentary on BlueSky from @Pwnallthethings about how such spats tend to have uncertain and long-term diplomatic consequences, and how they are felt and remembered very differently in the metropole than in the small nations they are bullying (the obvious local examples of this are how we kiwis still remember American bullying over nuclear ships, and French terrorism against Greenpeace, and this still influences our relationships with both countries).
To bring it back to Kiribati: regardless of whether aid is ultimately cut or not, the fact Winston made this threat, over something so small, will likely be felt and remembered there for a very long time. Winston's petty tantrum may have poisoned our relations with Kiribati for a decade, and (since Judith Collins seems to care) may help push them closer to China. Whoops. Maybe we shouldn't have a thin-skinned petty old colonialist with an outsized sense of victimhood running our foreign policy?