KEY POINTS:
Business leaders are expected to take a back seat to politicians at this weekend's Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum in Sydney.
Finance Minister Michael Cullen and Australian counterpart Peter Costello did not attend last year's Auckland forum, complaining it was hijacked by commercial interests at the expense of the big picture.
But with a change of forum leadership on both sides of the Tasman and an agenda that puts the politicians firmly in the box seat, the politicos are back in force.
Other ministers attending include Australian Foreign Minster Alexander Downer, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, Australian Environment and Water Resources Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Australian Trade Minister Warren Truss and Prime Minister John Howard attending for the first time as guest speaker.
New forum co-chairs John Allen (NZ Post) and James Strong (Insurance Australia) have been charged with ensuring business leaders don't get too far ahead of the political agenda. But National leader John Key has already done just that by re-floating the idea of a shared currency.
Cullen has made his annoyance clear. He argues a joint currency has never been on the table during single economic market discussions.
And he has pointed out that Australia has said that if New Zealand wants to adopt its currency, that's a matter for us. It would mean monetary policy was run from Australia - which would not reflect the interests of our primary producers who still earn most of our export income from a trade made in US dollars.
But Key's argument is not without force. He basically contends that a shared currency would get rid of the impost NZ business faces by paying a 1 per cent risk premium on money borrowed on the back of the New Zealand currency. The drop in interest rates would also help. As the Australian buy-up of the NZ economy continues apace the argument will increasingly be made.
A UMR poll commissioned for the forum will reveal there is apparently quite strong support from smaller NZ businesses for both currencies to be replaced by a joint Anzac dollar, but it is unclear whether there is wider public on both sides of the Tasman.
Key is also going head-to-head with Cullen by pushing for mutual recognition of imputation or franking credits to reduce the incentive for businesses to move to Australia.
If the forum is to retain its momentum politicians will just have to accommodate the tendencies of their rivals and business leaders to want to be agenda-setters.
Certainly many of the 80-strong politicians, business players, public servants, academics and media attending the two-day event would not be surprised at Key's outburst.
Fletcher Building chairman Roderick Deane argued two years ago that the leaders should be debating transformational issues instead of concentrating on the single business market agenda. He suggested the common currency, common third-party free-trade agreements, security and defence integration, visa-free reciprocal entry, immigration policy, Kyoto and tax were the issues where the real gains resided.
Though Deane argued that while some of the issues looked too hard the challenge was to make sure they stayed on the agenda.
Some of those items are on the agenda this weekend. Downer and Peters will talk about the regional strategic perspective. Climate change, if not Kyoto, is also on the agenda as is progress towards a single Australasian economic market. The Treasury has asked the Institute of Economic Research to examine the impact of a customs union.
Others would like to speed up streamlined travel across the Tasman in time for the 2011 Rugby World Cup. Among the initiatives: Getting NZ passport access holders to Australia's Smart Gate biometric screening and a single clearance point for transtasman travel.
