That was the assessment of Phan Minh Giang, Vietnamese Ambassador to New Zealand, regarding the significance of the official visit to Viet Nam by Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives Gerry Brownlee from August 27 to 31, 2025, at the invitation of Tran Thanh Man, Chairman of the National Assembly of Viet Nam.
According to Ambassador Phan Minh Giang, the official visit by Speaker Gerry Brownlee is especially significant, taking place as Viet Nam and New Zealand celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations (1975–2025). In particular, the visit comes at a time when Viet Nam–New Zealand relations were recently elevated to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, which continues to develop strongly across multiple areas of cooperation, based on a high degree of political trust and increasingly consolidated strategic confidence between the two countries.
“On the foundation of the excellent development of bilateral relations at present, the official visit to Viet Nam by the Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives further strengthens the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between the two countries, especially between their legislative bodies, while adding strong momentum to ensure the relationship develops in line with its new stature, bringing more practical benefits and meeting the aspirations of both peoples and businesses,” emphasised Ambassador Phan Minh Giang.
Assessing Viet Nam–New Zealand bilateral relations, Ambassador Phan Minh Giang said that ties between the two countries are entering their strongest stage of development ever. As two of each other’s leading partners in the region, Viet Nam and New Zealand share the determination and aspiration to fully harness and effectively use existing advantages and potential, thereby advancing bilateral relations to new heights towards a new era of higher-level cooperation.
At present, Viet Nam and New Zealand are urgently coordinating to finalise an action programme to implement the framework of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership framework between the two countries with practical and effective measures and cooperative projects.
According to Ambassador Phan Minh Giang, going forward, Viet Nam and New Zealand will continue to deepen political relations, promote more substantive defence and security cooperation, enhance exchanges and contacts at all levels, further improve the effectiveness of bilateral cooperation mechanisms, and strengthen coordination and mutual support at multilateral forums such as ASEAN-led mechanisms, the United Nations, and other platforms.
In the economic and trade areas, Viet Nam and New Zealand are striving to raise two-way trade to 3 billion USD by 2026. To this end, both sides will strengthen coordination to effectively leverage complementary strengths between their economies, promote closer economic linkages, and foster more effective trade and investment cooperation. At the same time, they enhancing cooperation in education, training, and human resource development will continue to be an important pillar of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, alongside expanding cooperation in potential areas such as science and technology, solutions for environmental protection, green transition, high-tech agriculture, renewable energy development, and climate change response.
In addition, the opening of more direct air routes between Viet Nam and New Zealand will further facilitate cooperation in economy, investment, education, culture, tourism, and people-to-people exchanges, thereby connecting the two countries more closely.
Stressing that the official visit to Viet Nam by the Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives further strengthens the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between the two countries, especially between their legislative bodies, Ambassador Phan Minh Giang said that cooperation between the legislatures of Viet Nam and New Zealand plays an important role in the overall bilateral relationship, helping effectively implement the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and create favourable conditions to vigorously promote socio-economic development in each country, meet the aspirations of their peoples, and make positive contributions to peace, stability, cooperation, and development in both countries, the region, and the world.
Accordingly, in the coming period, the National Assembly of Viet Nam and the Parliament of New Zealand will strengthen exchanges of delegations at all levels, promote cooperation between parliamentary committees, specialised agencies, and Parliamentary Friendship Groups of the two countries.
Through this, both sides will establish and enhance mechanisms for information exchange and sharing of experience in parliamentary organisation, legislative work, and consider strengthening cooperation in staff training, capacity building, and policy and law oversight.
Ambassador Phan Minh Giang noted that recent parliamentary delegation exchanges between the two countries – such as the delegation led by Nguyen Thi Thanh, Vice Chairwoman of the National Assembly of Viet Nam (September 2024), and the delegation led by Le Tan Toi, Chairman of the National Assembly’s Committee for National Defence, Security and External Relations of Viet Nam (August 2025), visiting and working in New Zealand, as well as the ongoing official visit to Viet Nam by Speaker Gerry Brownlee – have been actively contributing to these efforts.
At the same time, the two sides will continue to coordinate closely and support each other at multilateral inter-parliamentary forums in the region and the world, such as the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), the Asia–Pacific Parliamentary Forum (APPF), and the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA).
