In Delhi and D.C., Christopher Luxon and Winston Peters in their elements

Christopher Luxon and Winston Peters have returned home after successful meetings in Delhi and D.C. Whether those meetings will amount to anything remains to be seen.

It was a tough landing back in New Zealand for Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters, who have returned home high on successful trips to India and the US.

But Kiwis have given the National-led coalition a rating of 4.2 out of 10 in the latest Ipsos Issues Monitor survey, the lowest on record since it started measuring in 2017.

It is not the news they would have wanted or expected after Luxon led a delegation to Delhi and Mumbai, successfully launching negotiations on a Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement, after a decade-long pause.

Meanwhile, Peters secured a longer-than-expected face-to-face meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to put New Zealand's position on the table with the new administration. This followed a series of other high-level engagements to strengthen our ties with the US.

The Detail spoke to Newsroom political editor Laura Walters who was in India with the Prime Minister, and RNZ political reporter Lillian Hanly who joined the foreign minister in Washington DC.

Both labelled the trips a success, with both politicians thriving on the world stage.

"The feedback from the people on this trip has been incredibly positive," Walters tells The Detail from Delhi, where Luxon's face was plastered on posters lining the 10 kilometre stretch from the airport to his hotel.

"I think people came into it with high hopes but low expectations. But now they are impressed, they are happy, they know it's right to lean into it with India.

"Luxon is in his element when he does this. Travelling - especially with a business delegation - he loves this.

"He is good at building leader-to-leader relationships. He's very engaged when he meets world leaders, he will lean in for the hug, shake their hands, you will see him patting them on the back... and this plays well with a lot of leaders, especially in Asia, and we saw this with Modi."

The prime minister was in India for five days and he focused on enhancing New Zealand's presence in key sectors, including education, technology, tourism, investment, manufacturing, food, and primary industries.

The region, Walters says, is a massive market for New Zealand and holds a lot of potential and opportunity.

"It's quite untapped for us. Initially, from a pure market size and economic sense, it's a huge opportunity for New Zealand that really hasn't been progressed or tapped into to the extent that Christopher Luxon thinks it could be.

"India is very important in our region, it's a massive growing superpower and from this government's perspective, they say we have undercooked the relationship so far and they really need to step it up."

But the trip was not all business and politics. The prime minister visited temples and played cricket between hugs, handshakes and smiles.

"These trips are a whirlwind, and the prime minister is a self-described energizer bunny, so the programmes are jam packed," Walters says.

"The security is incredibly tight here in India - but between this tight security and the prime minister's desire sometimes to keep some of his colourful content exclusively for social media, there isn't the same kind of access we have seen on some previous trips and with other prime ministers."

Some 12,000 kilometres away, in Washington DC, Peters was meeting Marco Rubio, the secretary of state under the new administration.

"It was an opportunity for Winston Peters, as foreign minister, to get a better sense of just where their policy direction is going and how that is going to impact on New Zealand," Lillian Hanly tells The Detail from Washington D.C.

"Peters said he was preparing for this for a long time, well before the U.S. election even, given Trump's policies were well-signalled.

"So, in some respects, Winston Peters does know what the new administration is planning to do but what they wanted to be able to do with his trip is get face-to-face, get on the ground, get a better indication, better context - all that information you can get firsthand in order to really understand how that will impact New Zealand."

She says Peters "does have the experience, he came well-equipped and he wore his foreign minister's hat very well".

Peters swapped out that hat for his minister of rail cap, taking the train from New York to Washington DC - not a traditional move for a high-ranking minister ahead of a high-level political meeting.

"I think it's potentially quite unusual, the travel is normally always very careful, controlled and secure but I think in this instance they saw an opportunity for the minister of rail," Hanly says.

But she points out that security was tight for journalists, with passports and press passes having to be shown and equipment handed in before an official escort to a room near the meeting. They were not allowed to film any part of the talks, which included a broad range of issues, focusing on global affairs, regional security, and trade.

But Peters gave no indication whether the talks were enough to secure New Zealand an exemption from agricultural tariffs the Trump administration has promised to impose on imports to the US from 2 April.

"In terms of more specific details [for all topics], Winston Peters was not willing to report on this immediately afterwards," Hanly says. "He wanted to take that information that he had gathered and share it with his cabinet colleagues first."

Overall, the trip, she says, was a success.

"It was pretty phenomenal that he got a meeting with Marco Rubio at all - he's one of the busiest people in the Trump administration.

"Mr Peters was seriously pleased with the outcome. When he came out [of the meeting], he looked pretty chuffed.

"He did a lot of prep for this trip, he did his research, he did his due diligence, and he was able to gather the information required to make better decisions, better analysis, in terms of how to respond to what is seemingly a huge departure in U.S. foreign and trade policy.

"So, yes, in some respects it would definitely be classed as a success."

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