Nuclear debate's a long way from the sale yards

At the Wellsford sale pens, the livestock auctioneer is shouting like a racing commentator as skittish sheep jostle at his feet. "Nowwe'vegot20ofthosegoodwoollylambs, niney, niney, nineytostart me ... "

The farmers, their jeans tucked into gumboots, stand with deliberate poker faces, lifting a finger now and then to keep the verbal car crash going. The odd one leans over the fence and plunges a hand into a woolly back to gauge the meat underneath.

In the crowd, dapper Rodney MP Lockwood Smith, wearing a sports shirt bearing the word Woodleigh, the name of his Belgian Blue cattle stud, is talking shop. "I flushed three heifers the other day and didn't get a single embryo!" he complains to Warkworth Hereford breeders Dean and Marjorie Blythen.

Dr Smith, 57, is well-known and well-liked here. An MP for 21 years and National's foreign affairs spokesman, he is one of the party's few active farmers - his doctorate is in animal science. He is also one of those rare people who smiles quite genuinely while he speaks, fixing his narrow blue eyes on yours, without looking like a shark on the make.

The previous day, National had put its foreign policy on the internet without fanfare. It said the nuclear ships ban would stay unless a referendum decided otherwise. Labour screeched that supporting the ban while opening a door to change was "hypocrisy".

National, it said, gave no undertaking that Kiwi troops would be spared service in Iraq, using phrases like "utterly lacks credibility".

Such barbs o dim Dr Smith's smile a few watts, but he has a confession: really, National's foreign policy "would not be a lot different from Labour's, and that's in New Zealand's interest. You don't want foreign policy flip-flopping with a change of government.

"The only difference is that we would not change any aspect of the nuclear-free legislation without a referendum, and we're not planning one at the moment."

This should be digested while recalling last month's stoush when Labour leaked notes of a meeting in which, it said, Dr Smith asked whether it would be worthwhile for a United States think-tank to help sway public opinion.

Serenaded by bleating, Dr Smith says the policy didn't restate a nuclear ban "because it didn't even enter our heads that anyone would think that we'd ever change that". Ah.

Suggest that some see silence as a loud shout, and his response is swift: "It was not intended at all. The [National] policy focuses on building closeness with Australia and work [with Pacific nations] in a bipartisan way. That's why there was no great launch.

And as for troops in Iraq: "With hindsight", he says, New Zealand was right not to join the so-called coalition of the willing. "Better we didn't go."