Prime Minister Helen Clark has insisted that her deputy, Michael Cullen, mind the shop instead of joining Australian and New Zealand powerbrokers for a Melbourne forum to forge closer bilateral relations.
Organisers of the Australia NZ Leadership Forum made a concerted push to try to ensure Dr Cullen would join Australian Treasurer Peter Costello in leading discussions on a proposed transtasman single economic market.
A star-studded cast including Foreign Ministers Phil Goff and Alexander Downer, Australian Labor Party leader Kim Beazley and NZ National Party leader Don Brash will join top bureaucrats, chief executives, academics and opinion leaders for two days of intensive talks under "Chatham House" confidentiality rules (to encourage openness) at Victoria's state Government House on Friday and Saturday.
But Helen Clark has asked Dr Cullen to remain home as Acting Prime Minister while she continues her travels to Ankara and Berlin.
NZ forum co-chairman Kerry McDonald - who wrote to Dr Cullen four weeks ago - said he was "very disappointed at the outcome".
"It seemed to me that the minister made a very genuine effort to get there, including revisiting his arrangements," said Mr McDonald.
"At the end of the day it was my understanding he couldn't co-ordinate."
But Dr Cullen's office confirmed that while there was an attempt to rejig his schedule, the real reason he was staying home was that the Prime Minister wanted him here as Acting PM while she was out of the country.
Mr McDonald warned that Australian Prime Minister John Howard - who won control of both Houses of Parliament at his recent re-election - has a range of ambitions beyond his own country.
"If we are not proactive and positive then I think Australia's priorities will tend to be elsewhere. We're a small partner, and the younger brother or sister in any family often has to be a bit more proactive to get noticed and I think that's our case."
The forum comes at a critical time in the transtasman relationship.
At the inaugural forum in Wellington last May a well-prepared Australian contingent caught the New Zealand side off-guard with its preparedness to push for a single economic market complete with a common currency (theirs).
Considerable angst subsequently developed over proposals to harmonise transtasman banking prudential supervision - which some top bureaucrats and business people protested would infringe New Zealand's sovereignty.
But Mr Costello has stipulated that movement on banking is a "must" if Australia is to continue to make the single market agenda a policy priority - an ambition he shares with Dr Cullen.
Helen Clark has played down the weekend's furore over John Howard's apparent "snub" of New Zealand's Gallipoli commemoration service.
But Australian High Commissioner Allen Hawke has also warned that New Zealanders shouldn't assume that Mr Howard's successor will put as much political capital into the transtasman relationship as he has.
Cullen told to skip Melbourne to run show at home
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