Winston Peters and Judith Collins have spent the day in Melbourne on the charm offensive.
The Foreign Affairs and Defence Ministers were meeting with their Australian counterparts, as the coalition Government tries to strengthen its ties with our traditional western allies.
Although Peters and Collins did spend the day attempting to charm their Australian counterparts, the morning got off to a surprising start.
Collins almost took out the Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles with a hot pink Mars rover.
"That would've been bad," Collins joked.
She's in Australia as one half of the diplomatic duo alongside Peters.
They are there to sidle up to their Australian counterparts to strengthen ties with New Zealand's only defence ally.
"We often talk about the challenging strategic circumstances we face," Australia Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong said.
New Zealand's keen to dive into some details about Australia's submarine contract.
"We're here to find out much more about how we can understand it and potentially seriously be part of it," Peters told Sky News Australia.
AUKUS is a three-way pact between Australia, the UK and US.
The three powers form pillar 1, a pact to provide eight nuclear powered submarines which costs an estimated AU$368 billion.
It's also a pact to work together in the Indo Pacific - partly in response to China's military build up.
New Zealand has expressed interest in 'pillar 2', which is about developing and sharing advanced technology like articial intelligence and autonomy, and advanced cyber and electronic warfare.
"We are in the exploration phase because it's not defined as to what is in it or not in it," Luxon said of pillar 2. "And that is something we are interested in learning more about."
But there are concerns joining any part of the submarine pact could breach our nuclear free status and non-proliferation position.
"The only submarines that Kiwis like are the yellow ones. We've got no interest in the next generation of nuclear weaponry," international law expert Professor Al Gillespie said.
The first step has been sending in Peters and Collins to see if we can get on board the AUKUS alliance.
