Sunshine Coast beckons new PM Jacinda Ardern for 2018 holiday

Diplomatic ties with Australia have already created dramas in the first two months of Jacinda Ardern's reign as Prime Minister - but a spot across the Tasman is where the PM and her partner Clarke Gayford will be spending part of their summer holiday.

The pair will relax on the Sunshine Coast in the New Year - after a well deserved break in Gayford's hometown of Gisborne.

Ardern, a self-confessed lover of everything Christmas, said she was looking forward to spending the upcoming holiday with her family and in-laws.

"I'll be heading to Gisborne for Christmas with Clarke's family - including five nieces and nephews under 6 years," she said. "My parents will join us there too."

And Ardern was not letting harsh words from Australia's deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce affect her New Year holiday plans.

This week Joyce sent a message to Ardern about the offer to take Manus Island refugees, telling Newstalk ZB: "I think it's best if you stay away from another country's business."

Despite this Ardern and Gayford plan to head across the ditch. "We're taking a bit of time out on the Sunshine Coast after that," she said.

The pair were not expected to attend the Rhythm & Vines Music Festival in Gisborne where Gayford has previously played host. And Ardern was not expected to spin any records at any music festivals either.

As a Labour MP Ardern, also an amateur DJ, wowed the crowds at the Laneway Auckland music festival but she has no immediate plans to spin records as Prime Minister.

"No she won't be DJing. She will be taking a well-deserved break," a spokesman for the PM said.

However relaxing the Ardern/Gayford family holiday might be, it will be a little different from the ones enjoyed by former Prime Ministers Sir John Key and Bill English.

Key bought a two-level, three-bedroom Maui holiday home for $5.6 million in 2008 and spends most Christmas holidays there.

In 2014 Key and son Max played golf with then President Barack Obama on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.

In contrast, outgoing Prime Minister Bill English spent his 2016 summer holiday as Prime Minister on his family farm in Dipton, about 60km north of Invercargill.

Ardern probably won't be enjoying a long break - her new Government has set itself a heavy workload for the first 100 days in office, and that time is up in late January.