KEY POINTS:
Helen Clark's international legacy will not be as a champion of the earth but as the Prime Minister whose highly nuanced diplomacy ensured New Zealand a seat at the Asian table.
A prime minister who has done us proud on the international circuit by concentrating most of her diplomacy on cementing long-term economic linkages for our country rather than indulging in vainglorious "look at me" crusades to position New Zealand as the world's conscience.
After nearly nine years in the top job she's seen as a wise head on the international circuit. A leader whose seniority makes her a person of considerable consequence. Someone to be listened to - particularly in Asia where she has quickly followed up on her Government's ground-breaking free trade agreement with China by persuading Japan and Korea to move towards a similar path.
Journalists rarely get to sit-in on top level bilateral discussions. So I'm relying on the word of Clark's senior officials when they say the Prime Minister's own diplomacy with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda in Tokyo this week persuaded him of the necessity to examine the benefits of forming a partnership agreement with New Zealand.
I have no reason to doubt it was Clark's personal advocacy to Fukuda of the logic of using a free trade agreement to secure a valuable supply chain for that most essential commodity - high-quality, safe foods - that persuaded this rather nondescript leader to even consider an FTA with a developed nation possessing a strong agriculture sector.
This outcome was not foreshadowed in the manner that politicians and officials had stoked expectations that South Korea and New Zealand would make some very positive statements during Clark's subsequent visit to Seoul. In recounting her conversation to me later she was persuasive as she analysed the factors that persuaded Fukuda over the line.
In North Asia the debate is about the economic effects of what powerbrokers term the international 'food shock' - the spiralling prices caused by shortages of basic foods like rice and New Zealand's prime export, milk powder.
Japan has been rocked by escalating prices for basic foodstuffs leading to prime imported products like New Zealand butter being in such short supply that supermarkets have been posting apologies for the gaps on their shelves.
Its farmers are ageing (averaging near 70) but a consensus is building that it is time to start reforming its agriculture sector and to make pacts with food exporting nations like New Zealand.
In New Zealand - where we've been a little unsettled by statistics showing the domestic economy shrinking after nearly a decade of golden economic weather - it is probably somewhat difficult to see that the long-term future for New Zealand is actually very promising.
Even the Wall St Journal referred to our country as the "Saudi Arabia of milk" this week while taking issue with our farmers' perceived reluctance to capitalise Fonterra to the level where it can cement its leading position by undertaking major international expansion.
But the effects of water shortages, desertification in China and elsewhere, the loss of arable land to biofuels and the challenge in feeding a big increase in population in coming decades means food-producing nations will be able to sustain better prices for high quality food.
It would be easy to underrate Clark's role in positioning New Zealand for this food-constrained future. Stitching up what many see as purely trade deals even with countries as powerful and valuable to New Zealand like China, and now potentially Japan and South Korea, is not as headline making or as emotionally charged as former Labour Prime Minister David Lange's anti-nuclear campaigns.
Clark played a powerful backroom role in persuading Lange to hold to Labour's anti-nuclear stance during highly pressurised times. But while Clark opposed the Iraq invasion and has gained kudos from the United Nations for declaring an aim for New Zealand to be carbon neutral, she has not lost her head over the real costs to New Zealand when the political rhetoric does not meet reality.
Five years ago Clark said New Zealand couldn't afford to take its Asian links for granted and started a Seriously Asia initiative to deepen linkages with the world's fastest growing region. She had needed little convincing by Dryden Spring, the then head of what is now Asia New Zealand, that her Government needed to urgently broaden its trade diplomacy to stitch-up bilateral deals with its prime Asian export partners.
New Zealand has faced barely disguised hostility from many Asian powerbrokers over any pretensions to being part of Asia.
But Clark was persuaded by geo-strategic realities. Politicians of her generation remember how New Zealand's fortunes were seriously affected when Britain joined the European common market in the 1970s and we stopped being its farm.
Clark won't be around to pocket the political benefits of her painstaking diplomacy when the Asian economic partnership matures.
But the record of a politician who disciplined herself to concentrate on real gains - rather than cheap rhetoric - will be what distinguishes Clark when the history books are written.
