KEY POINTS:
Two principles underpin National's foreign, defence and trade discussion paper: independence abroad and broad agreement at home.
The first tells Americans the nuclear debate is over: don't hope for change from a new Government.
Now for the free-trade agreement, please.
The second tells voters the policy divisions between the major parties that have marked and at times marred this country's external relations since the Vietnam war days are ended.
Helen Clark's broad policy map is now also John Key's.
The differences will be in emphasis, implementation and some of the rhetoric.
In both National is belatedly accepting the obvious: that most New Zealanders are anti-nuclear, favour a peacekeeping defence focus, like the distinctiveness of a foreign policy that sets national interests in a multilateral framework and have become accustomed to free trade.
National has even come on board on climate change, which is a foreign policy matter more than a domestic one.
The defence shift is National's biggest. As foreshadowed by Murray McCully in August, wistful yearning for fighter planes is over.
Having had some Australian expert advice last year, an adaptive mobile ground force is now National's focus.
A white paper is promised: high among the questions will be whether to spend more to remedy the present parsimony with personnel.
Helen Clark has run a two-battalion military policy with around one and two-thirds battalions. And will National buy another frigate as its blue-water rhetoric implies?
Maybe, is the word behind-scenes.
Mr Key's National - or, rather, in this case, Bougainville peace architect John Hayes' National - says it will focus aid and political action more tightly on the South Pacific.
This is a smaller difference with Labour than it looks: Helen Clark has paid the near neighbourhood increasing political and aid attention and on defence the discussion paper endorses the need for a wider security commitment, which Helen Clark has maintained, not least in Afghanistan to impress the Americans.
Another difference is implied.
The Clark generation cut its political teeth in anti-American protests. Mr Key's generation is free of that.
The Pentagon might accordingly be less frosty.
Surprisingly, Australia, though "the most important" relationship, is barely mentioned.
There Mr Key has to earn his spurs.
His opportunism on the transtasman therapeutic goods agency is now costing drug exporters here heaps and costing goodwill in Canberra.
Oh, and National will work harder to lift exports from 30 to 40 per cent of GDP. Hard to disagree.
Hard to do. Anyway, that's mainly domestic economic policy.
The politics of this paper are the elimination of a downside which nobbled Don Brash at a crucial point in the run-up to the 2005 election campaign. Mr Key needs foreign relations parked safely because he is a novice on the topic - shown by his inclusion in the paper of a photograph of himself with Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, who faces a real prospect of defeat in Parliament later this month.
Not a winning image on top of last week's policy stumbles.
* ColinJames@synapsis.co.nz
