Has there ever been a visit from a New Zealand dignitary more anticipated or fraught than this one? And has there ever been a prime minister more in need of the reflected glow of Jacindamania than Malcolm Turnbull?

Bundled into the tight confines of Kirribilli House on a wet November morning in Sydney, a largish press pack tried not to catch cold while Australian PM Turnbull did his best to warm a relationship that has recently turned chilly.



Australia and New Zealand, Turnbull said after his first “candid” meeting with his new counterpart Jacinda Ardern, have been “partners in freedom’s cause forever”. The two countries “trust each other totally”, and their two leaders get on “very well”.

“We’re family,” he insisted.

“Quite literally,” Ardern agreed.



They are not, quite literally, family, but the metaphor still seems apt. Just as you can’t choose your family, Turnbull has precious little say over who gets elected on the other side of the ditch. Barnaby Joyce might argue that it’s less clear the arrangement works both ways – but, as Ardern seemed to intimate, when it comes to family it’s often best to say nothing at all. In any event, those halcyon days kayaking in Sydney Harbour with John Key seemed particularly far away as the rain fell on Sunday.

Asked whether she had raised with Turnbull Julie Bishop’s comments before the New Zealand election – that Australia would find it “very hard to build trust” with NZ Labour if it won government after it involved itself in the issue of Barnaby Joyce’s citizenship – Ardern spoke like someone determined to avoid another punch-up at Christmas lunch. “They weren’t raised,” she told the press. “I think that speaks to the strength of the relationship. I don’t see those events of the past being relevant to our current relationship, which I see as being strong.”

And on that whole citizenship thing? “I would contend that it actually has absolutely nothing to do with New Zealand and nor has it ever had anything to do with New Zealand,” Ardern said. Indeed.

It’s hard to find quite the right way to describe the Turnbull government’s relationship with chaos, but the low-key sense of anticipation that seemed to hang around Kirribilli House as puddles formed on the presumably important floorboards seems to come close. From the Manus Island refugee calamity, into which Kevin Andrews saw fit to insert himself on Sunday, to New Zealand’s hand-wringing over investor state dispute settlement clauses in the gaffer-taped Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the aforementioned (but unmentionable) diplomatic snafu over citizenship, the Tasman seems all of a sudden to be filled with underwater mines.

Of course Ardern didn’t so much win her election as wrangle the result into something resembling a government – which in today’s electoral politics seems about the best anyone can hope for. And in lieu of kayaking, it was perhaps something the two of them could genuinely bond over.