KEY POINTS:
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer seems an unlikely candidate to help mount a political insurrection against the New Zealand Government.
Anyone who pays any attention to events in Australia would reckon Downer has enough on his plate defending the Howard Government's record as it heads towards an election
which all the polls suggest it will lose, rather than master-minding efforts to get the Clark Government out.
But extraordinarily enough, the Beehive spin machine put the word out that Downer's appearance at last week's National Party conference could be read as him lending his reputation to Opposition moves to get rid of the New Zealand Government.
It was the usual "no names, no fingerprints" drill coming off the back of suggestions that Prime Minister Helen Clark was concerned at the propriety of Australia's Foreign Minister speaking to an Opposition party conference.
It was a line that National's own spinmeisters - embarrassed at the potential fallout over their party's hamfisted role in the (so far) failed bid to get a transtasman therapeutics agency in place - were only too happy to play out as they went on to exclude news media from reporting the speech.
But the spinmeisters neglected one fact. Downer briefed Clark on the invitation well before the conference, going so far as to indicate the subject matter for what at that stage was supposed to be a public speech. He intended to affirm the importance of the bilateral relationship and focus on liberal values.
Clark was not opposed. Labour has, after all, extended invitations to high-ranking Labour politicians to attend its own mid-term annual conferences.
Then British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott gave a great speech to Labour's conference in December 2001, reaffirming the links between Britain and New Zealand in times of peace and war.
No one batted an eyelid either when Queensland Premier Peter Beattie spoke on environmental policies at last year's Labour Party conference.
Clark, as much as any other politician, is aware of the brotherhood between politicians of similar hues. She makes a practice of attending Progressive Governance conferences where political leaders with democratic or Labour values discuss the big issues facing the world from their perspective.
She has gone so far as to form an alliance with the British Labour Government on policy formation.
If Clark had raised opposition to the Downer visit, the Australian Foreign Minister would simply have found a reason not to accept National Party president Judy Kirk's invitation.
Kirk had not even told National Party leader John Key about the invitation at that stage. There would have been no suggestion of prime ministerial interference, just a polite refusal.
As it was, once the Beehive drum got beating National suggested it didn't want to make Clark more sniffy.
Neither did National want to upset our Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, who was supposedly riled his counterpart would speak directly to National about the state of the bilateral relationship rather than read his take on it.
In reality the only thing that has upset the bilateral relationship since Clark and Downer spoke is the shambles over the transtasman therapeutics agency.
Neither Labour's Annette King, who has been tasked with getting legislation together on this side of the Tasman, nor her National counterpart, Tony Ryall, have covered themselves with glory.
The proposal has won bipartisan support in Australia from Howard's Liberal-National coalition and Kevin Rudd's Labor Opposition.
But King and Ryall have not managed to get a bi-partisan consensus together here, enabling Peters to fill the gap by putting his own compromise proposal forward.
It doesn't really matter which party connived to scuttle the other; neither do the merits of what was on the table.
The fact that the two main parties could not even sit down and discuss the issue in a focused fashion just makes New Zealand seem mickey mouse. Perceptions do matter.
If Labor leader Kevin Rudd defeats John Howard at the upcoming election, the bilateral relationship will come under some pressure.
Howard has been a strong champion of New Zealand as Downer indicated in his after-dinner speech last Saturday, in which he also paid tribute to Clark's absolute professionalism in dealing with Australia.
But Rudd's focus is not directed towards New Zealand. If we register at all it's not in terms of moves to form a single Australasian economic market but as a junior partner for Australia in the Pacific.
Even if Labour and National can somehow reach an accord on the ambit for the transtasman agency the moment in time has probably been lost now. Any new deal is likely to have to be re-forged after the Australia election.
