Ticking off works for both PMs

Scott Morrison stood with a smirk on his face as the feisty Jacinda Ardern confronted him over the criminal deportation issue.

Rarely have Australian prime ministers in recent years had to confront finger wagging from New Zealand which was once commonplace when Rob Muldoon ruled the roost, confronting Malcolm Fraser, and David Lange doing the same with Bob Hawke.

The line that resonated was her telling Morrison not to deport Australia’s problems. What she meant was don’t send an Australian back to this country which is what Kiwis are after a lifetime there. It’s where they learnt their bad habits.

Morrison was cynically smirking probably not because he was embarrassed but because he was being given a tongue lashing by a young Prime Minister, knowing full well his constituents would like his hardline stance on criminals being turfed out.

What they don’t see is the mother-of-three Ardern talked about, having lived in Australia for 28 years, arriving there as a baby, being deported and living in a shelter because she has nowhere else to go.

There’s little doubt Ardern knows that taking it to the Aussies won’t lose her any brownie points, with the election months away and with organised crime gangs like the Comancheros creating havoc. They were unheard of in this country before the deportation jackboot was imposed.

Morrison is unmoved by the protestations New Zealand can’t be held responsible for the criminal behaviour that may have been learnt in his country, that’s not his worry.

His worry is wining elections, and so is Ardern’s.

That’s most likely why the smirk was a permanent fixture throughout his ticking off. For him it was self-satisfying, knowing it’d make the news, and for her it was self-serving, knowing nothing was going to change but at least showing she wasn’t going to be pushed around by the Aussies, which always plays out well for the voting public.