Welcome to our world, New Zealand, you’re running late

Julia Gillard and Bob Brown celebrate after Labor reached a deal with the Greens following the deadlocked 2010 election. Wayne Swan, Rachel Siewert, Christine Milne, Sarah Hanson-Young and Adam Bandt watch on.

We’ve always known it. We are miles ahead of the New Zealanders.

Last night in tortured reminiscence of our own political events post the 2010 election, NZ king/queen maker, Winston Peters announced he would support Labour and the Greens in loose coalition and allow Labour to form minority government. Thus Jacinda Ardern became NZ’s fourth prime minister in the last 18 years.

We have proven we can manage that feat in the space of about 18 months.

Bill Shorten got so excited he forgot how to spell or at least forgot how to spell the name of the freshly anointed political big wig of New Zealand, omitting the second ‘r’ from Ardern.

A correctly spelled missive was quickly dispatched but it did make me wonder. For the last 50 years the Americans have been having fun with our prime ministers’ names. From the simple misunderstanding over Malcolm Fraser’s preference for using his middle name as the more familiar to his first, all the way to our current PM who is known in Washington DC as Marlon Tumblington at last check.

I am almost certain it’s deliberate. This is the way diplomatic power works. The stronger nation pretends not to care much about dotting the diplomatic i’s and crossing the t’s. The weaker one meekly, almost apologetically points out the error and is immediately on the back foot.

God only knows how the Americans would butcher Shorten’s name if and or when he becomes prime minister but it is bound not to be complimentary.

Rather than issuing patronising pats on the head to Ardern, our Foreign Minister Julie Bishop was reported as having to chow down on the ordure baguette. The dung damper, the crap crumpet, the excrement eclair — call it what you will. Incidentally, I thought cutting the crusts off before giving it to the Foreign Minister was over the line and the height of rudeness.

Bishop spent an angry hour or so on social media last night denying any rift with New Zealand’s shiny new PM. The fuss has its genesis in August when the Turnbull government and Bishop in particular reached deep into the hyperbole drawer in the midst of the joint citizenship furore.

Back then the Foreign Minister huffed away, “I would find it very difficult to build trust with members of a political party that had been used by the Australian Labor Party to undermine the Australian Government.”

Clearly she didn’t mean Ardern but dark forces within the Kiwi version of our own left wing major party.

The PM went a step further, attaching eerie powers of manipulation if not outright criminality to New Zealand.

“The Australian people elected the government. Bill Shorten wants to steal government by entering into a conspiracy with a foreign power,” the PM said.

The words New Zealand and power simply don’t belong in the same sentence but the Turnbull government had done the near impossible, depicting the tiny nation as a player, a conspirator, a puppeteer pulling the strings in Canberra.

Labour leader Jacinda Ardern will become PM with the backing of kingmaker Winston Peters.

The federal parliament lapsed into this pointless banter for two days with the Foreign Minister subject to howls of derision from the opposition benches.

The claims of high treason and calls for firing squads to be hastily assembled were eventually scotched when Barnaby Joyce conceded he had discovered he was in fact a double secret New Zealander and everyone fell about the place laughing. The High Court is wading through it all now.

Certainly Bishop had gilded the political lily somewhat to stretch a dubious point. But it was not so much her remarks, or indeed the PM’s but those of the then NZ opposition leader, and now NZ Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, which are worth contemplating.

Ardern said it was “highly regrettable that the Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has chosen to make false claims about the New Zealand Labour Party”.

“I greatly value New Zealand’s relationship with the Australian Government. I will not let false claims stand in the way of that relationship,” Ardern said.

“I have also contacted the Australian High Commission to register my disappointment and will be meeting with the High Commissioner later today.”

She invited Ms Bishop to call her to “clarify matters”.

Fight, fight, fight.

They are a feisty lot across the ditch, no doubt. If we even show the slightest sign of weakness, they will trample us under their thongs which inexplicably they call jandals.

While Australians make tiresome jokes about our neighbours and their supposed intimate dealings with sheep, really it is cattle and most particularly dairy that has been driving their economy.

Four years ago, 65 per cent of all China’s dairy imports came from New Zealand. While our boom came from iron ore and coal, New Zealand’s came from milk.

The New Zealand economy boomed on the back of dairy, the rebuilding of earthquake shattered Christchurch and if my household spending is anything to go by, skyrocketing sales of Marlborough sauvignon blanc.

Chinese demand for NZ forestry products (10 per cent of all China’s timber and forestry imports) and meat (six per cent of total imports) contributed to accelerating economic growth.

If it all sounds familiar in terms of a reliance on China, it’s because it is. In fact while the export goods differ, there is every reason to believe that economically, New Zealand exists in a parallel universe to that of our own albeit five years behind us.

As is their wont, the Chinese are not happy with such a heavy reliance on one trading partner and has diversified in the supply of products and the heavy reliance on NZ dairy products has dissipated with supplies coming from Europe, Canada and Brazil.

Just like Australia 10 years ago, New Zealand is now coming off a period of rapid economic growth. Boom, bust. Sunrise, sunset.

In the wake of the economics, the politics is following our course, too. New Zealand has cobbled together a government that is largely unworkable and might not last beyond Christmas. With it there is the prospect of political uncertainty, legislative gridlock and a rolling series of national elections that eventually crush the spirit.

Welcome to our world, New Zealand. You’re running late.