Fran O'Sullivan: Peters in debut as post box

Winston Peters' debut on the world stage this week - when he represented New Zealand as Foreign Minister at Apec - brought home vividly the absurdity of this country being represented by a politician whose role is now so circumscribed by his "colleagues" that he is little more than a post box through which his international counterparts must route their requests to where the real foreign policy decisions are made, the Clark Cabinet.

Peters' bravado and frequent counter-punches cannot disguise the fact that he was outclassed and undermined by former Foreign Minister Phil Goff, who revealed Australia had sought clarification of his role - and basic negotiating ambit - from first Peters, then Goff himself, who definitely wants Labour's "mother-in-law" outside the tent rather than in the Cabinet.

His only real diplomatic success - gaining a commitment by Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer to "put in a good word for New Zealand" in discussions with powerful United States figures Donald Rumsfeld (Defence) and Bob Zoellick (State Department) - was scuttled by "Acting Foreign Minister" Michael Cullen back home, who suggested he had not made the request. (He had.)

Instead of headlines trumpeting his successful introduction to some of Asia-Pacific's most powerful politicians, Peters was forced on to the defensive as the effect of Goff's verbal incontinence hit home.

His body language showed unease with his "Clayton's" role. Other foreign and trade ministers from the 21 Apec nations joined shoulder-to-shoulder for a group photograph. But anyone looking for Peters in the lineup would have been hard-pressed to find him.

It took a double-take to spot him standing 1m away from the rest of the high-powered ministers, staring into space - a mirror image of his formal photo at the Government House swearing-in ceremony for Clark's third Administration.

This recourse to staged photographs is hardly a credit to a New Zealand which prides itself as "punching above its weight" internationally, as witnessed by this week's successful pitch to host the rugby World Cup, and is more likely to lead foreigners to question his psychological makeup.

These subtleties - if indeed they can be called that - are not lost on foreign or domestic audiences.

Peters is not yet a fully fledged member of the foreign ministers' club and will face extraordinary hurdles if he is to be seen other than as the deliverer of relatively anodyne messages scripted for him by Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials.

Real foreign ministers bargain and cajole, take decisions and implement them, talk across portfolios - such as security, trade and immigration - and are considered powerful enough, as senior Government representatives, to be entrusted with other countries' security and intelligence requests.

They are present at the top table where decisions take place and in the engine room where policies are forged. They do not sit to one side like well-paid political eunuchs taking the "baubles of office" while their predecessor chairs the important insider forum in which any real decision in their portfolio takes place.

This is the subtext to Downer's embarrassing "please explain" request to Peters in their first bilateral meeting over his role and its intersection with the Cabinet.

Under NZ First's agreement with Labour, Peters must promote Government foreign policy but can criticise other areas, such as trade, defence, security and immigration.

That these areas go to the heart of our foreign policy in the first place has been conveniently overlooked by Peters, who resorts to browbeating when clarification on boundary issues is sought from journalists.

But the semantic distinction is not lost on Downer or, for that matter, on China's Li Zhaoxing and a dozen other experienced Apec foreign ministers - no matter the Peters propaganda that these experienced politicians understand aspects of the NZ First-Labour accommodation which are beyond New Zealand's domestic media.

Downer is far too experienced to say so publicly, but my soundings within Australia official circles suggest that the Australian Cabinet believes the accommodation Clark has had to make to retain political power is a frank absurdity.

It is yet another example of the fundamental "silliness" of an MMP electoral system which enables a politician from a minor party to demand the key role as foreign representative yet retain the right to spit all over that country's policies in key overlapping areas.

The Australian Foreign Minister was sharp enough to give Peters some public credence by saying he would be his main New Zealand point of contact.

But he is also sharp enough to have whittled out that the real power on issues closest to Australia's heart - Asia-Pacific security, relations with the US and China - still lies with Goff, who chairs the relevant Cabinet committee and holds the defence and trade portfolios, in effect making him the person who really pulls the foreign policy strings.

There are boundary issues that Australia will not want to share with a minister outside the Cabinet whose party could possibly use them to its own political advantage.

The Downer-Goff channels will remain as active as they ever were.