“I appreciate there are domestic Australian issues around that,” Luxon told travelling media yesterday.

“Australia’s free to make its own decisions but we want to make sure that we have a commonsense approach to that – that people who have very little affiliation with New Zealand shouldn’t be sent back to New Zealand, frankly.”

He said that was something he planned to “advocate very strongly” when he met Albanese this afternoon.

Luxon and a team of his ministers touched down in Canberra last night after an infrastructure “fact-finding” mission in Sydney.

The Prime Minister finished that leg of the trip with a major foreign policy speech to the Lowy Institute, saying New Zealand’s “strategic outlook is deteriorating more rapidly than at any time in our lifetimes”.

“In short, the world is getting more difficult and more complex, particularly so for those smaller states navigating increasingly stormy seas. However, we must engage with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.”

He touched on several geostrategic issues, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Luxon also made specific mention of China – New Zealand’s biggest trading partner.

“As I conveyed to Premier Li when he visited New Zealand, the difference in values and systems of government means there are issues on which we cannot and will not agree.

“Where we disagree, we will raise our concerns privately and also, when necessary, publicly in a consistent and predictable manner.”

That speech – particularly his focus on the New Zealand/Australia relationship – serves as a backdrop to Luxon’s meeting with Albanese today.

The issue of 501 deportees will also loom large over the meeting and subsequent joint press conference.

Earlier this year, the Australian Government unwound the “commonsense” approach to the way its foreign-born criminals were deported.

For years there has been political tension between New Zealand and Australia over the 501 programme.

Former Prime Ministers Sir John Key and Dame Jacinda Ardern argued against the deportation of criminals who were born in New Zealand but had no real connection to it.

In mid-2022, Ardern managed to get Albanese to agree to a “commonsense” approach, which she said would see few people with little to no connection with New Zealand deported here.

But after domestic pressure in Australia earlier this year, that policy was changed.

Meanwhile, New Zealand’s pipeline of infrastructure – and what can be learned from Australia – will also be high on Luxon’s agenda.

He spent most of yesterday rubbing shoulders with top-level infrastructure bosses and officials.

After meetings at Beca, he and his team of ministers made their way further downtown to meet New South Wales Premier Chris Minns.

“We want to make this relationship work and take it to the next level,” Minns said.

A theme among the infrastructure experts Luxon spoke to yesterday was bipartisanship.

Infrastructure New South Wales chairman Graham Bradley said as much after he met with the Prime Minister.

He said having an apolitical approach to building significant projects was key to Sydney’s success.

That’s a view Luxon’s taken on board.

“We want to take the politics out of infrastructure,” he said.

“With our short political cycles, and various bits of political intervention, we want to make sure that we can depoliticise it.”

Jason Walls is Newstalk ZB’s political editor and has years of experience in radio and print, including in the Parliamentary Press Gallery for the NZ Herald and Interest.co.nz.