Of 'nose rubbing' and paua burgers

By GREG ANSLEY

CANBERRA - There may have been some warmth behind the official smiles, but a new biography of former Prime Minister Paul Keating confirms that Australian Labor's highest officials liked New Zealand about as much as a slap in the face with a cold hoki.

Keating's own vitriol during election campaigns and transtasman trade bombasts - and his sudden axing of a common aviation market - were as much for domestic political consumption as a reflection of real passion.

Behind the scenes, as reported in the Cabinet diaries of former Labor Minister Neal Blewett, Keating considered New Zealand a truant on defence but advised against further punishment by the United States, and was a strong advocate of closer economic relations.

In his 2000 book Engagement: Australia Faces the Asia-Pacific, Keating also expressed the view that while the transtasman relationship was so close it hardly seemed appropriate to think about it as foreign policy, Australia needed to devote more objective attention to New Zealand.

Surprisingly, given the all-too-frequent hostility of transtasman leaders, Keating said he admired former National Prime Minister Jim Bolger and valued his friendship.

But Recollections of a Bleeding Heart, a new biography by former Keating speechwriter Don Watson, paints a depressingly familiar picture of Australian perceptions during the then-Prime Minister's first official visit to New Zealand in May 1993.

"We had been to New Zealand," Watson writes, " watched as our Prime Minister endured a haka and nose rubbing in heavy drizzle at a marae, and stared down Jim Bolger, their Prime Minister, who did not want him to visit a memorial to the Labor Party founder of their welfare state, Michael Joseph Savage.

"There was nothing left of the welfare state in New Zealand - they were very modern, not to say global, now.

"You could get sushi where just a few years before they sold only oysters and paua burgers.

"It is difficult not to conclude that the New Zealanders do not like Australians much: they have long tended to think us uncivilised, too big for our boots and morally backward.

"Now we were also insufficiently deregulated."

Watson writes that Bolger stuck to Keating "like a paua burger sticks to the stomach" to grab as much media coverage as possible, in a tour notably devoid of news.

But Australia's notoriously ferocious media were mellowed by the scenery of Queenstown, a lake voyage on the Earnslaw, sauvignon blanc - and the circling Kiwis.

"It is a measure of the way New Zealanders bring Australians together that our press behaved delightfully [toward Keating] on this trip," Watson writes.