Greg Ansley: If it's not sport then ignore it

Australia correspondent Greg Ansley reveals what our election looks like from the other side of the Tasman.

This has not been a bad couple of weeks to be a New Zealander in Australia, with the All Blacks winning the Tri-Nations and the Bledisloe Cup, and former captain David Kirk taking the helm as chief executive of media giant Fairfax.

If you looked hard enough, you could also have learned that New Zealand was about to go to the polls in an election poised on a razor's edge between incumbent Prime Minister Helen Clark and National Party leader Don Brash.

Sadly, you would have been hard-pressed to find any commentary on how either a Labour re-election or a National victory might affect Australia.

For most of the nation, New Zealand is simply not a player in the world beyond the rugby field or the netball court.

Yet perceptions are changing, with some surprising views on New Zealand's role in the world that undermine some of the gloomier opinions Kiwis hold about their status abroad, especially in Australia.

A decade ago, who would have believed that the national newspaper the Australian, which frequently has little time for New Zealand policies, foibles and quality of life, would promote a competition including New Zealand resorts among the best in the world?

Or, for that matter, would anyone have seriously considered a parliamentary defence committee suggesting Australia could perhaps learn from the direction New Zealand was taking in the way it managed its forces and tied security into broader economic, social and environmental issues?

Or even that a New Zealand Prime Minister could be applauded by leading corporate executives for a summary of her country's defence effort?

All have happened, with more besides.

None of this will leap out and slap you in the face. It is an incremental process, building on a generally more mature appreciation of New Zealand as a separate, sovereign state with its own priorities, strengths and weaknesses.

It has been enhanced by successes ranging from sauvignon blanc to The Lord of the Rings, Kiwi soldiers in East Timor and the Solomons, and the post-baby boomers who see New Zealand as an adrenalin-pumping place to visit.

None of this will end the sheep jokes or stubbornly resistant views of New Zealand as a land of rusting Morris Minors dumped at airports by refugees fleeing to Queensland.

We may do things a lot better than was previously suspected, but in this buoyant land of bubbling patriots we remain the country cousins.

This shows in the coverage of the election in the nation's leading newspapers (forget television and most radio: it doesn't happen).

In the good old days of raging reform, most big organisations based reporters in New Zealand, given the prospect of Australia following suit, as it generally did to one degree or another.

Not now. With a handful of exceptions, the Australia media apply little intellectual rigour to New Zealand, tending to focus on the quaint, quirky or sensational, and always ready with a cliche.

An example: a leading political commentator tells his audience that New Zealand is "doing it hard", despite economic growth at the time outpacing Australia's and lower unemployment.

The election is being covered, but from a limited perspective and with most stories reporting the parties' relative positions in the polls rather than the issues.

Analysis of coverage in three leading newspapers - the Australian, the Australian Financial Review and the Sydney Morning Herald - showed much greater interest in the New Zealand election than in concurrent polls in Germany and Egypt (as you would expect) but considerably less than in last weekend's election in Japan.

The three newspapers devoted 60 per cent more space to the Japanese poll in the five weeks after Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi called his election than they have to the seven weeks so far of the New Zealand campaign.

Apart from perceptions of relative importance, this can be explained in part by the fact that the transtasman political relationship - apart from the odd hiccup - works very well, largely through the smooth ministerial and bureaucratic machinery that enables the Governments of each country to take the other's elections in stride.

Canberra regards its relations with Wellington as "better developed and more extensive than with any other country", citing the vast range of bilateral linkages, co-operation in a range of important international forums, and the establishment of the new Australia-New Zealand leadership forum, bringing together political, business and community leaders from both sides of the Tasman.

But while this means there is rarely a decent public spat, the Australian media has by and large ignored rumblings from Canberra over banking and other business regulation, warnings that the relationship is now at a cusp that could see its future go either way, and a number of areas in which a change of government in Wellington could mean a change of tack in Canberra.At its most obvious, a National administration that ended or amended the non-nuclear policy could have significant defence and diplomatic implications.

Most Australian media attention in the election - other than on the state of the parties - has been given to campaign debates on, in order of precedence, New Zealanders moving to Australia, the economy, and non-nuclear and defence policies.

New Zealanders in Australia have been of abiding interest to Australians since the days of the Bondi bludger myth. National's warnings of an even greater exodus if transtasman wealth disparities are not addressed have given the subject new currency.

What tends to be overlooked is that the movement is much more fluid than it appears, with relatively similar proportions of New Zealanders and Australians in each other's country.

There is also a new twist: Australia has a skills shortage, and most of the Kiwis heading across the Ditch are now welcome.

Nor is much attention given to the increasing attraction of New Zealand to Australians. In the past decade our share of Australia's international travellers has risen from 15 per cent to 20 per cent, and New Zealand is now their most popular destination. In 2003 almost 663,000 Aussies headed our way, and last month twice as many visited New Zealand as went to Britain or the United States.

Again, not much thought has been given to what would happen to Australia's tourism industry if the next government mishandled the economy: New Zealand is Australia's biggest source of foreign visitors.

The most common perception of the New Zealand economy among Australian journalists is that it is permanently teetering on the brink, but that this somehow is of no real concern to Australia, regardless of the fact that New Zealand is Australia's fifth-largest market, with transtasman exports last year worth A$8.7 billion ($9.5 billion) and total two-way investment running at about A$57 billion.

If nothing else, the state of the New Zealand economy is of more than passing interest to Australia's major banks and a long list of large companies.

On defence, Australian reporters and commentators almost universally repeat the mantra that New Zealand is isolationist, is interested only in peacekeeping, and has cut military spending to the detriment of Australian - and regional - security. It makes easy, if inaccurate, copy.

Although Canberra would welcome an increase in our defence budget, some more big-item hardware and a return to the Anzus fold, there is now a far greater - and unreported - appreciation of New Zealand's position in the Australian defence establishment.

A recent paper by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute describing New Zealand and Canada as "strategic optimists", nevertheless noted that our contribution to Timor was larger than that of both the US and Britain.

There is also a feeling that while our forces may be small and lacking in striking power - notably through the loss of Air Force combat jets - what we now have (or will soon have) is available at short notice and is of a high standard.

Analysts have also noted that our focus on a highly mobile Army offers what Australia has greatest need of in a regional ally - well-trained infantry with good equipment.

Some have also suggested that New Zealand has merely done what Australia will eventually have to do: reduce a hugely expensive military to a more limited focus on the areas of greatest risk.

But why spoil a good story?