Jacinda Ardern has handled her first overseas mission as Prime Minister with considerable skill. Fittingly, she made Australia her first port of call and managed to steer adroitly between the reefs of needless foreign offence and disappointed domestic supporters that lurked beneath the surface of Australia's refugee problem. Having offered to take 150 of the refugees from Manus Island and Nauru she acknowledged New Zealand was not in the same "circumstances", but added, "we can also not ignore the human face of what Australia is dealing with".
Some of her supporters need to be careful about urging her to mount a high horse of moral superiority on issues such as this. New Zealand does not lie within reach of illegal immigration by sea on the scale Australia has known. While it is easy to sympathise with people so desperate to escape poverty and perhaps personal danger, it is not as easy to suggest solutions that would not compromise Australia's immigration control and encourage many more people to risk their lives with people smugglers in overloaded boats.
Offshore detentions centres are obviously not a good solution from the refugees' point of view or Australia's. They are a blight on the country's reputation and self-image. But it obviously is no solution for prospective "boat people" to discover that if they are blocked by Australia their consolation prize might be admission to New Zealand.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull gently declined Ardern's offer "at this time", saying he was giving priority to the resettlement of 1250 people in the United States under the deal he did with former President Barrack Obama.
The world knows what Donald Trump thinks of that deal and the US is taking its time to vet the refugees. If Ardern's offer has done nothing else, it has signalled New Zealand's new Government is not in step with Trump on these concerns. While several years of record immigration was an underlying issue in the election campaign, it did not feature strongly in debates and the New Zealand First vote went down.