Fran O'Sullivan: Australia's new man has big boots to fill

It's not often that you meet a diplomat who decides to "take as read" his role as a plenipotentiary for his Government.

But Allan Hawke - the congenial yet strongly focused Australian High Commissioner who has just "two sleeps to go" before heading back to Canberra - made great use (rather too much at times for the well-honed sensitivities of Prime Minister Helen Clark) of his "full power of independent action".

Hawke inadvertently stepped on toes - Clark's toes - when, in a speech on the Anzac relationship delivered within a week of arriving in New Zealand, he said the two countries were "finely poised on the fulcrum".

The relationship could "go one way or the other - in defence, in trade, in every way . That assessment will underpin my three-year term as High Commissioner".

Hawke was making the point that as the current generation of Aussies and Kiwis pass on the mantle of leadership, power and influence to the next generation, "the relationship we have taken so much for granted is at risk".

Clark's feathers were ruffled.

Hawke used the standard diplomatic fallback position - the media misinterpreted me - when it was asserted that he was "delivering a message to the Government".

He later ruffled feathers again when he tabled an ambition for a transtasman single economic market to be in place by June 2006 - the date he was originally expected to retire.

After the mild-mannered Bob Cotton, a High Commissioner who spoke his mind in public, this was a shock to the careful control that the Clark regime still exerts over bottomline discussions on foreign relations.

His face - and voice - were ubiquitous as he continued to promote these messages in a round of farewell interviews this week.

But Clark's focus was already on the new guy, John Dauth, Australia's permanent representative at the United Nations in New York since 2001.

New Zealand was "extraordinarily lucky" with the appointment and Dauth's "depth of experience" meant he could do a very good job, she enthused.

The subtleties of Clark's over-enthusiastic welcoming of Hawke's successor were not lost on some of the huge bunch of New Zealand's "great and good" who gathered at the Australian High Commission on Thursday evening to celebrate Australia Day.

The turnout was driven by two factors. First, the function was also Hawke's farewell. Second, the greater esteem (overlaid with some wariness) with which Australia is held after Hawke's 30 months in the job.

As one senior public servant observed - it would take a bit more than a Beehive "crop-dusting" exercise -to eradicate the effect Hawke has had in Wellington.

For his part, Hawke does not want to leave on a sour note. He has paid tribute to Clark's early recognition of the importance of Asia - "she was ahead of Australia".

I suspect Clark probably made her appreciation known privately when she met Hawke to discuss how the two nations could work together to leverage the new opportunities in the rapidly emerging East Asian regional architecture.

Hawke has managed to raise consciousness within New Zealand elites of the importance Canberra places on the relationship and to push the single market agenda along at machinery level.

He (rightly) laments the lack of business feedback on the economic agenda which has been undermined by local monopolies.

But what he has not managed to do is break the Beehive stranglehold against open discussion of the "non-discussables".

Issues such as the bilateral defence ties - which are still a thorn in Australia's paw, notwithstanding the diplomatic niceties which cloak the clear differences; the potential for reinventing a trilateral relationship between New Zealand, Australia and the United States; and the potential for New Zealand to join the US and Australian-dominated Partnership for Climate Change.

These are still ducked.

The recent concerted efforts of Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters to at least triangulate the New Zealand/United States/Australian relationship have yet to gel.

As a former Australian Defence Secretary, Hawke could be forgiven his alleged "obsessions".

But in truth his views line up with those of Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

Hawke lost his defence job after a tussle with his boss, Senator Robert Hill, and was posted to New Zealand - at his request - in a well-orchestrated kiss-off.

What is not well known is that Hawke was asked last year by the former head of Australia's foreign affairs to stand down early.

He maintains there was a clause in his contract that enabled Ashton Calvert to pull the plug if Australia wanted to make a shuffle.

The full importance of Calvert's request was not obvious until Hill was himself pushed out of the Howard ministry this week and shuffled off to New York to take Dauth's place.

But the departing High Commissioner is not bowing out of the brains trust that helps drive Australia's strategic focus.

He's now a member of Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer's Foreign Relations Council and will ensure more academic focus on the transtasman bilateral relationship when he takes up his new role as Chancellor of the Australian National University.

Where Hawke also scored was in providing his ministers with the "inside story and guidance on how issues are likely to play out" when they met their counterparts.

On that score Dauth has big shoes to fill.