Malcolm Turnbull said it time and time again, he sees us as family. He couldn't emphasise it enough, we're kindred spirits, the two closest nations on earth, we're equals.
It's a big brother charm that seems to work. John Key went all gooey when the Aussie laid it on, so
much so that he once had a sleepover at Turnbull's multimillion dollar Pt Piper mansion in Sydney.
Unfortunately for Bill English he never experienced an at home with the Turnbulls. They had their annual get together last year when it was New Zealand's turn and they met in the hellhole of Queenstown. It may as well have been a hellhole because when they had their media scrum it was in a blacked out room in a hotel, forget about the view of The Remarkables and the lake when they pulled the drapes.
In stark contrast the Turnbull scrum with Jacinda Ardern was held on the front lawn of the Prime Minister's official Sydney residence, which is grand enough, although by comparison to his next door neighbour the Governor-General's Admiralty House, it's a bit of a state house.
Still the views are magnificent, across the busy waterway from the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. A better backdrop for a media scrum you'd be hard pressed to find, although Queenstown would come close if only the boffins realised it.
