Surely if we wanted to make a lasting impression, selling our booming tourism potential, we could have ferried the lot of them up the gondola to the Skyline, perched on a clifftop overlooking the beauty. And while they were at it, what about a Trans Tasman leaders' race down the nearby luge that would give the cameras something to skite about and our tourism operators something to crow about?
The words of the Aussie Prime Minister at an impromptu chat to journalists at the beginning of the day were effusive.
"Our nations are so close, we're the closest of family and the ANZAC tradition of mateship, solidarity and selflessness is part of our DNA."
A few hours later Malcolm Turnbull uttered virtually the same epithet, so much for being a sincere, off the cuff comment.
In fact in reality we are a dysfunctional family where the Aussies call the shots and we take the bullets like their deportation of Kiwi criminals back to this country even though many of them have lived there virtually since birth. And their treatment of taxpaying kiwis living there but being denied certain welfare and health care is hardly a level playing field.
The best Bill English could so was to tell Turnbull we didn't like deportation of the crims and getting an assurance that costly appeals against it were becoming more successful. If that's the case then why not revisit the policy?
Perhaps it's time we treated Australians in this country the way they treat us there, showing us for what we really are, one big unhappy family.
