KEY POINTS:
Australia's Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has arrived in New Zealand in a fascinating week of transtasman relations.
Helen Clark's conversation with her at Government House tonight will be the most interesting part of the transtasman dialogue this weekend.
It could be 'Trevor can recommend a good counsellor
for Belinda.'
It is more likely to be: 'What on earth is Kevin up to?'
Clark knows what it is like to attract criticism as a new Prime Minister.
She had been Prime Minister for just six months when in March 2000 The Australian newspaper's foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, called her the flakiest PM since David Lange.
It was over Labour's new defence policy (no more fighter jets, more peace-keepers etc though I think Sheridan later recanted).
Clark like Rudd was in her honeymoon as Prime Minister and I remember Sheridan trying to defend himself on Holmes as Aussie Public Enemy No 1 in one of those transtasman spats that are cultivated on this side of the Tasman.
It seems in hindsight Clark got off very lightly.
Sheridan has written an excoriating column this week against Kevin Rudd's recent forays into foreign policy - after just six months in office. Rudd is just completing a visit to Japan.
It is a column with which Clark may have some sympathy.
'KEVIN Rudd is in danger of turning what should be his greatest strength into a serious weakness,' writes Sheridan.
'I refer to his weird and increasingly ratty habit of announcing foreign policy initiatives of soaring ambition and utterly amorphous content on the run, half baked, with no detail and no credible prospect of success.
'In the past week alone we've had Rudd threaten to "take the blowtorch" to the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to produce more oil and lower prices, nominate [former diplomat] Dick Woolcott to reform Asian security and trade structures, and now appoint Gareth Evans to head a commission to end nuclear proliferation and secure nuclear disarmament.
'If you announce twice a week that you're going to save the world and you manifestly lack the means to give the slightest effect to your pronouncements, the world soon loses interest. The chief casualty is your credibility.'
It compares Rudd to Malaysia's former PM Mahathir.
Sheridan's reference to Rudd's 'greatest strength' is that he used to be a diplomat in Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (the equivalent of MFAT). Foreign Affairs is supposed to be his strong point or at least it was.
Foreign affairs and regional relationships is arguably Helen Clark's strongest point and after eight and a half years she is now a senior leader among Asia Pacific leaders, not to mention a well known figure on the global circuit.
But despite being the closest of neighbours, in sister parties, and with DFAT and MFAT working closely, no reference was made to her by Rudd about his grand idea for an EU-style expansion of the region and dispatching an envoy to capitals to push idea.
Either he consulted other countries, but not her, or he consulted no one, which is plain stupid.
According to the tipsheet Transman Clark was not consulted and has been talking about the Rudd Plan through 'gritted teeth.'
It is not hard to see why. Rudd is six months into his job and hasn't attended a single big regional meeting (East Asia Summit, Apec) and he is offering everyone else his 'vision' about where to go.
He was apparently pushing the same idea when he was a DFAT officer.
Leadership for Kevin in 08 is not about being able to recognise a good idea or a good policy - anyone can do that - it is knowing how to turn it into reality - of knowing who your friends are.
