KEY POINTS:
Stephen Smith has held the job of Australian Foreign Minister for less than four months so with no track record, first impressions count a lot.
And he left a refreshing impression yesterday after his first meeting in Auckland with Foreign Minister Winston Peters and a half-hour press conference
to follow.
Refreshing compared with both Mr Peters and with Mr Smith's predecessor, Alexander Downer.
With 10 years under his belt, Mr Downer was Australia's longest serving Foreign Minister and by the end had developed a deafening, megaphone style of diplomacy, not least in the Pacific.
Mr Smith is less the deputy sheriff, more the face of a new Government that wants to negotiate new relationships with Pacific states and have those relationship monitored by bilateral commissions.
That was the theory when Kevin Rudd called last year for a fundamental strategic rethink of the way Australia delivered its development assistance in the region and spelled out his ideas in detail.
Some of that has begun already with its most critical Pacific partner, Papua New Guinea, but some of that will begin on a personal level today when Mr Smith meets other Pacific Islands Forum ministers in Auckland for talks on Fiji's return to democracy.
On first impressions he seems a better fit for such a task than the silver-spooned Mr Downer.
Mr Smith, an urbane former lawyer, appears more patient, is more gently spoken, more modest, and with so little experience, understandably more contained in what he says. But not as contained as Mr Peters.
A weary-looking Mr Peters offered the briefest introduction to the Foreign Minister of our closest neighbours, the briefest summary of their bilateral talks, and less focused in answering questions.
After two and a half years in his job, Mr Peters could be expected to have a better command of his brief on the Pacific than Mr Smith with less than four months.
It was left to Mr Smith to set out some of the tangible expectations the forum ministers might expect in order for Fiji's military installed Government to honour its commitment to hold elections.
Australia did not want to reward "bad behaviour" he said, the latest being the deportation of a newspaper publisher who was holding the Government to account.
"Equally we do want to make it clear there is potential for a dialogue, for a constructive conversation."
