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The Soap Box: A history of Aus NZ Prime Minister meetings

Author
Barry Soper,
Publish Date
Fri, 17 Feb 2017, 7:00AM
Helen Clark and Kevin Rudd (Supplied).
Helen Clark and Kevin Rudd (Supplied).

The Soap Box: A history of Aus NZ Prime Minister meetings

Author
Barry Soper,
Publish Date
Fri, 17 Feb 2017, 7:00AM

The last time there was a Malcolm in The Lodge in Canberra relations between our two countries were caustic.

The towering Malcolm Fraser used to look down on the portly Rob Muldoon, literally and figuratively. The pair got on like a house burnt down.

In Fraser’s view, Muldoon, or Piggy Muldoon as the Aussies loved to call him, was too big for his britches, which again was pretty much on the mark.

Things didn’t improve greatly when Bob Hawke came along and when David Lange took over the sty, and it was a pigsty economically when Labour took office after Muldoon reluctantly stood aside.

Hawke saw the then tee-totalling Lange as little more than a Methodist lay preacher and paid him scant attention. When the hapless Geoffrey Palmer took over by default, relations warmed a bit, probably because the former law professor had form in Canberra as an apparatchik with the Whitlam Government years earlier.

Things went downhill again when Jim Bolger squared off against a fellow left footer in Paul Keating, a thoroughly disagreeable snake oil salesman who once called me a blowfly, an appropriate description in a way considering blowflies are attracted to dead meat.

The saving grace for Prime Ministerial relations between our two countries came when John Howard took office. He was almost tearful when Jenny Shipley did to Bolger when Bolger did to Jim McLay years earlier. Howard also got on famously with Helen Clark.

And ever since, disregarding the Kevin Rudd hiccup, relations at Prime Ministerial level have been pretty good.

Malcolm Turnbull, who’s in Queenstown for the annual leaders’ get together, liked John Key, encouraged to follow his example by none other than Key’s golfing buddy Barak Obama. Turnbull, worth about four times as much as Key, had a background money markets in common with our man.

So today it’s the Dipton drawler Bill English who’ll be trying to impress the Aussie leader and what better place to do than the picturesque Queenstown.

Golf’s off the agenda with English saying he wouldn’t subject himself, or anyone else for that matter, to his lack of eye ball coordination. Our new PM says they may go for a walk together, or perhaps a tandem bungy jump would be in order.

Even though the pair will no doubt get along, English would do well to keep his eye on the ball though and again push for a better deal for Kiwis living in Australia where they’re treated as second class citizens. And while he’s at it, revisit the thorny topic of Kiwi crims, who’ve learnt their bad habits across the ditch, being deported from their penal colony to the one this country’s becoming.

If there’s movement there, which is highly unlikely, then in return English could offer Turnbull advice on how to get along with Donald Trump!

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