Pressured PMs eye the bigger picture

By GREG ANSLEY Herald correspondent

CANBERRA - Prime Minister Helen Clark and her Australian counterpart, John Howard, yesterday set aside similar threats to their political futures to point New Zealand and Australia towards a deepening relationship.

Key issues to emerge from their annual meeting yesterday included initiatives in the Pacific, a growing push for a transtasman common market and a revitalised drive to force reform of world trading rules.

Developments in the South Pacific - among them Mr Howard's commitment to attend a summit of Pacific Islands Forum leaders in New Zealand - were also high on the agenda of separate talks between Helen Clark and Australia's new Labor leader, Mark Latham.

Mr Latham, who made his first overseas visit as Labor leader to troubled Papua New Guinea last week, recognised the region as a "primary focus" for New Zealand and told Helen Clark he believed Australia should be playing a large role there.

The Clark-Latham meeting could be significant, given the Australian Opposition's continuing surge in opinion polls.

The latest AC Neilsen poll, in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald, gave Labor a lead of 54 per cent to 46 per cent on a two-party preferred basis.

Australia will go to the polls before the end of the year.

Helen Clark's problems at home were also confirmed yesterday, a TV3 poll showing National up 10 per cent to 42 per cent and Labour slipping 4 per cent to 39 per cent.

Mr Howard declined to comment on the Australian results, but Helen Clark said polls had been driven by National leader Don Brash's comments on Maori policy - a "single issue timed in the run-up to the annual silly season around Waitangi".

"I've always felt that John Howard and myself have undergone a long apprenticeship to get to the positions we have got to and I think we identify in each other a characteristic of battling to get to the top, and then working hard to stay there," she said.

The Pacific was a key issue for both leaders, following the joint operation in the Solomons - discussed on Monday by Mr Howard and Solomons Prime Minister Sir Alan Kemakeza - and planned reforms for the Pacific Forum.

The report of the eminent persons group set up last August to review the forum is being finalised and will be discussed at a leader's summit in New Zealand within weeks.

Helen Clark said the review was "coming together very, very well" and that it would be important to bring island leaders together in New Zealand in the next few weeks to launch some important projects ahead of the next forum meeting in Apia in August.

Mr Howard said Pacific co-operation had entered a new era.

"That is evidenced by the tremendous progress we made in the Solomons," he said.

"It's not an example of Big Brother activity by Australia or New Zealand but of working together with our friends."

The two leaders discussed problems in Papua New Guinea, where threats were made this week against an Australian police contingent, but Mr Howard said he would not seek New Zealand assistance.

Both leaders pushed the idea of a single transtasman economic market and moves by Treasurer Michael Cullen and Australian counterpart Peter Costello to bring it closer.

"We are particularly keen, at a prime ministerial level, to maintain the momentum towards the development of a single economic market comprising Australia and New Zealand," Mr Howard said.

In a pragmatic exchange of goodwill, Mr Howard said he had offered help with recovery after New Zealand's floods and Helen Clark said New Zealand would continue to try to help with Australia's problems of asylum seekers on Nauru.