KEY POINTS:
Cabinet ministers should take a sharp look at how their hyperbolic behaviour over the Air New Zealand charter flights imbroglio is being read in Canberra and elsewhere.
The flights carrying Australian troops to the Middle East did not breach any United Nations sanctions, nor did they infringe on Government policy. That was the judgment call made by the country's top diplomat six months ago when he effectively approved the flights as falling within Government policy parameters.
Now, Ministry of Foreign Affairs boss Simon Murdoch is being castigated by senior cabinet ministers for what the Stalinists would recognise as a political crime: failing to pre-judge six months ago that senior cabinet ministers like Phil Goff (and others) would decide to use New Zealand's position on the Iraq war as a wedge against their National opponents - particularly leader John Key - with a damn-the-consequences approach.
That approach extends to Australia. Neither Defence Minister Phil Goff nor Foreign Minister Winston Peters had the good grace to pick up the phone and alert Canberra to the highly nuanced situation.
This failure of manners has angered Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. Australia has now issued a formal sanction forbidding its 50,000 strong defence force to use Air New Zealand under any circumstances, including scheduled commercial flight travel.
In Canberra, Downer dressed down New Zealand Ambassador John Larkindale and requested High Commissioner John Dauth to express Australia's "extreme displeasure" to Murdoch in New Zealand. Downer also pointed out the Kiwis had sent troops to Iraq after the fall of Baghdad.
Hardly the "relaxed" view that has been portrayed in news reports and a signal that Australia is no longer prepared to maintain the political figleaf that the Clark Government has not contributed to the post-war stabilisation effort.
But the red faces don't stop there. Murdoch has taken the fall over the acute political embarrassment senior cabinet ministers feel after the way the charter flights story - to Kuwait, not Iraq - was spun. But he's not out of step on the facts.
For those ministers who may have failed to read their briefing papers, Iraq has a democratically elected government which wants external forces to help in the stabilisation effort.
Again, for those ministers, Iraq has already been the recipient of 60 New Zealand troops ("contributing forces", as former United States official Paul Wolfowitz describes our engineers) in the post-invasion stabilisation.
And New Zealand was put on the United States' list for commercial contracts to rebuild Iraq after it contributed forces, a recognised tit-for-tat that did not cause senior cabinet ministers any moral qualms in 2003.
It would be a travesty of justice and common sense to kill Murdoch's career for his self-admitted failure to give Foreign Minister Winston Peters a heads-up on the issue. As Murdoch points out, he did not recognise at the time he gave his informal steer to Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe that the contract, if concluded, could become a matter of sensitivity for ministers, sensitive in so far as the charter to Kuwait might be associating New Zealand with stabilisation operations in Iraq to an inappropriate degree.
What is also clear from the masterfully understated explanation that Murdoch tendered to Peters, is that he advised Air New Zealand there were no diplomatic/policy constraints on the proposed charter flights to Kuwait.
Murdoch clearly did his homework after getting the call from Fyfe, who wanted an informal steer on whether there were any possible constraints that might affect a tender the airline was submitting. Fyfe said the aircraft would not carry Air New Zealand livery.
The Australian troops would be uplifted by military transport in Kuwait and taken to end destinations in a variety of areas.
Murdoch, as is his practice, told Fyfe he would think about the diplomatic/policy issues, one of which was whether there were any United Nations or other sanctions that Air New Zealand might be infringing, and would get back to him.
Murdoch rang Fyfe back the next day and said there were "no diplomatic/policy constraints that I could see" based on what the airline boss had told him.
That was also the judgment call made by the senior officials from police, defence, the Security Intelligence Service, the Government Communications Security Bureau, Foreign Affairs and the Office of Prime Minister and Cabinet, who were also told the airline was taking Australian troops to Kuwait, and assessed whether that posed a security threat to New Zealand.
Not one of them (or so we are told) decided the issue warranted attention by their political masters. It's a pity those political masters did not take the same approach and laugh it off as the "latest conspiracy story" instead of making themselves - and New Zealand - a laughing stock.
