KEY POINTS:
CANBERRA - Beyond league, netball and the Bledisloe Cup, it has been a busy few months across the Tasman for officials from Australia and New Zealand.
Largely unremarked, they have been tightening the web that in the past three decades has steadily brought the two nations so close
together that hardly anyone notices any more.
Last month trade negotiators linked the transtasman closer economic relations agreement to the booming economies of southeast Asia, and in Melbourne celebrated the 25th anniversary of Cer itself, marked by the conclusion of several more steps towards a single economic market.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd popped into Auckland to reciprocate Helen Clark's visits to his country in February and April, and following the meeting of political and business glitterati at the Australian New Zealand Leadership Forum in Wellington in June.
Privacy Commissioner Marie Schroff and Australian counterpart Karen Curtis deepened an existing agreement between the two watchdogs, extending information-sharing and establishing a new programme of bilateral meetings
Elsewhere, New Zealand Film Commission chief executive Ruth Harley was packing her bags to become head of the new Screen Australia, a new film agency formed from the merger of the Australian Film Commission, Film Australia and Film Finance Corporation.
In Sydney, former All Black David Kirk was embroiled in a row with Australian journalists after announcing large staff cuts at media giant John Fairfax, of which he is chief executive.
So deep and embracing are the ties between the two countries that they rarely draw comment: in the past two decades the motorcades and artillery salutes that used to greet New Zealand prime ministers have given way to virtual anonymity.
It is a far cry from the first hundred years or so of transtasman relations.
Despite constant cross-migration, similar colonial histories that included an army of Australian mercenaries in the Land Wars, and the Anzacs, we barely talked to each other directly.
That began to change near the end of the Second World War when we signed the 1944 Anzac Pact promising consultation, cooperation and a common bid to forestall any American and British bid to carve up the Pacific at our cost.
We allowed each other's exports to enter our markets under the same preferences both extended to Britain, but it was not until the 1960s that the two nations negotiated the NZ Australia Free Trade Agreement, largely on Australia's initiative.
Nafta was anything but a free trade agreement, requiring Cabinet approval for the most minute of changes to a very restricted list of trade goods.
Mutual frustration led to Cer and its rapid expansion into what both governments take pride in declaring as "one of the world's most comprehensive, effective and multilaterally compatible free trade agreements".
Since its inception in 1983, Cer has fostered an average annual growth in two-way trade of 9 per cent, last reaching A$21.5 billion. Total transtasman investment stands at more than A$110 billion.
All this would suggest a super-glued relationship.
But there have been serious hitches and differences in perceptions and policy that not so long ago saw Australia warning New Zealand that relations were reaching a fulcrum that could tip either way - moving closer, or a slide that could see New Zealand becoming increasingly irrelevant to it larger neighbour.
The low points are well known: social welfare (now largely solved), Anzus and divergent defence and strategic perspectives, former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating's dummy spit on open skies and New Zealand "bludging", the collapse of Ansett under Air NZ ownership.
But the world has moved on.
While Wellington will never be able to relax in its efforts to keep its head above Canberra's much broader horizon, events in the near Pacific, Australia's fears for the "arc of instability" to its north, terrorism and transnational crime, climate change and other environmental concerns have made New Zealand more important to Australia.
Wellington is also a key partner for Australia in a range of international bodies and negotiations, and increasingly in the development of new technologies.
And the two nations are locked together by a myriad of bonds, high among them personal and family ties: 470,000 Kiwis live in Australia, and 60,000 Aussies in New Zealand, with full rights of travel, residence and work in each other's country.
Kiwis permeate league in Australia, Kiwi horses from Phar Lap on have been key players in Australian racing, transtasman tests in major codes have become part of both our cultures, and transtasman competitions are growing.
Film, television, theatre and music are fuelled by a cross-flow of talent. Beyond claims of ownership for New Zealand-born Russell Crowe or Australian-born Keisha Castle-Hughes are a rash of household names common to both countries.
Australian art directors Roger Ford and Kerrie Brown, and fellow Aussie cinematographer Donald McAlpine, were nominated for their work in Kiwi director Andrew Adamson's Chronicles of Narnia; likewise Australian soundman Gethin Creagh for Lord of the Rings.
The two defence forces work closely together through command and operational exchanges, policy and planning groups, exercises, and joint operations in such crises as East Timor and the Solomons.
Wellington has signed key science agreements with Australian federal and state governments, helping to widen cooperation in emerging technologies such as biotechnology. Universities benefit from a crossflow of academics and students.
And the two economies and enmeshed through both Cer and business ties: Australian banks dominate the New Zealand banking sector, major companies have large holdings in each other's markets, transtasman companies have emerged, and regulation, business law and taxation are increasingly being harmonised across the Tasman.
More is in store.
With the aim of creating a single economic market, the two countries already have a joint food standards authority, and government procurement and mutual recognition agreements.
New moves are planned to finally free all trade in services and to further ease transtasman investment, an agreement has been reached to open capital markets at lower cost to each other's companies, and further easing of transtasman taxation is being negotiated.
We may not be superglued, but some pretty serious solvent would be needed to tear us apart.
