Media on Tasman hostilities

A couple of editorials on the fighting between Clark/Goff and the Australian Government.

The Dom Post today notes:

Australia is New Zealand’s nearest neighbour, its closest ally and biggest trading partner.

For those reasons it beggars belief that any New Zealand government would allow a trivial domestic issue to damage the relationship.

Yet that is exactly what Prime Minister Helen Clark and her Labour colleagues have allowed to occur with their hysterical reaction to the news that Air New Zealand ferried about 600 Australian troops to the Middle East in June.

Miss Clark has accused Mr Downer of breaking an unspoken convention by addressing a National Party conference earlier this month. (The convention apparently does not exist between New Zealand and Britain. John Prescott twice addressed Labour conferences as Britain’s deputy prime minister.)

Today, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the public servant being pilloried for the troops debacle, the Foreign Affairs and Trade Ministry chief executive, and former high commissioner to Canberra, Simon Murdoch, Australia’s prime minister and his senior ministers meet at least annually with their New Zealand counterparts.

The Government should also consider the wisdom of publicly berating a public servant of Mr Murdoch’s standing. Mr Murdoch made a mistake, for which he has apologised, when he failed to alert ministers to the flights. But it was not the sort of mistake that warranted Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen’s veiled threat that it would be “taken into account at his next performance review”.

Mr Murdoch, a proud and, on occasions, prickly individual, is widely regarded as the outstanding public servant of his generation. If even he is going to be thrown to the wolves at the first hint of trouble, the future recruitment of high-quality public servants is only going to become more difficult.

And the Press also today:

 This mess was triggered a week ago, when it emerged that Air New Zealand had flown Australian troops to the Middle East, en route to Iraq. If it seemed of little consequence, the Government decided to treat it as a monumental scandal. As a result, it brought itself a squabble with the Australians, as well as damaging both Air New Zealand and the civil service.

That Clark is not managing this test of her temper well is illustrated by how, just as she complained about Australian interference in New Zealand’s politics, she ventured an opinion on the wisdom of Australian Labor leader Kevin Rudd’s drunken visit to a strip club.

There are other difficulties for Labour in the fallout of the troop-flights saga. Its heavy-handed treatment of Air New Zealand, a listed company, is cause for concern among investors. More alarming is the kicking it has given senior civil servants.

Labour seems to think it should treat the public service as a political wing, directing ministries over staff appointments and publicly berating chief executives if they fail to read the PM’s mind. It is laying the ground for a crisis in confidence between the public service and the Beehive. If it is allowed to take hold, it will only feed the sense of a Government which keeps finding corners to back itself into, and which is flailing as it looks for the way out.

You know I generally now believe that on current boundaries, National can’t win Wellington Central.  But if Labour keeps up its jihads against a neutral public service, then maybe on a good day the right candidate could win it.