The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade - and seemingly now also the Government Communications Security Bureau in the case of Trade Minister Tim Groser's unsuccessful bid to be the director-general of the World Trade Organisation - always throw their weight behind New Zealand politicians seeking high international office.
Politicians such as Sir Don McKinnon, who successfully ran for the top Commonwealth job; Mike Moore with his own home run to be the director-general of the WTO; and latterly Helen Clark, who had National Government support for her successful application to be head of the UN's Development Programme.
In each of these cases, New Zealand's foreign affairs officials - and diplomats based in our embassies around the world - have been integrally involved in the international campaigns to build support for the New Zealand candidate. Such campaigns are costly and time-intensive.
But successive Governments have believed it to be in the national interest to support their candidates.
There is some academic research that tends to confirm this economic proposition - notably out of the Harvard Business School - that it's not all about the personal aggrandisement of the candidates as mean-spirited critics allege.
But in the light of the Herald's revelations that the GCSB appears to have helped track Groser's rivals as they also sought sufficient international support (read votes) to build a consensus around them as most suitable for the top WTO role, it's pertinent to ask: Why?
It's difficult to get a sensible readout to that question.
But it is an area that the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Cheryl Gwyn, should canvas in her investigation into complaints sparked by the overall Herald revelations. Gwyn has said those revelations raise wider questions regarding the collection, retention and sharing of communications data.
Opposition politicians - including Labour leader Andrew Little - have been particularly incensed at the allegations that the GCSB mapped Groser's rivals. But it is unclear whether Gwyn's probe will go into this area. And it may not be unlawful - despite what opposition politicians claim.
The reality is that big players who have the wherewithal to influence the decisions of major multilateral institutions do indulge in vote buying. In the domestic arena such actions can be seen as bribery. But as Charles Maynes wrote in Foreign Policy magazine, they are a routine feature of relations between countries - the second of a realist's "three tools of the statesman", namely "logic, bribe and threats".
A Harvard University paper - How much is a seat on the Security Council worth? Foreign aid and bribery at the United Nations - pointed to clear evidence that countries might be motivated to fight for a spot on the council "because rotating members could extract economic rents".
In other words, they could trade their votes for political or financial favours during the two years in which they enjoy a boost to their diplomatic importance.
The Harvard paper cites the "promises of rich rewards" made to rotating council members in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion.
It also used country-level panel data to confirm a large positive effect of council membership with (on average) a non-permanent member enjoying a 59 per cent increase in total aid from the US and an 8 per cent increase in total UN development aid.
The aid receipts sharply increased when they were elected and fell to earlier levels almost immediately after their two-year terms were finalised.
In an environment where economic interests are traded in this fashion it probably makes sense that New Zealand - with less budget than others for a full-scale campaign - uses first-class information instead.
Groser lost out to the Brazilian candidate, Roberto Azevedo.
Forbes magazine has written about a very clever game that Brazil (not Azevedo himself) is said to have played to shoehorn their candidate into the top job.
The business magazine wrote that part of Brazil's manoeuvring to get the votes included committing to giving China an important position inside the WTO.
This is the kind of intelligence that would have been gold to the officials running Groser's campaign.
We still don't know exactly what the GCSB did on behalf of the New Zealand-led campaign for Groser to get the top WTO role. But in this arena - where the big boys can and do trade influence - he probably needed all the help he could get.
What's yet to be decided is was that a legitimate use of the GCSB.
The realist would say yes. Brazil says no.
