New Zealand's representative in Canberra says Kiwi leaders and diplomats can learn from Australia's harder-nosed approach, citing negotiating breakthroughs from former prime minister Jacinda Ardern.
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High Commissioner to Australia Dame Annette King, who retires at the year's end, has also revealed the depth of feeling behind trans-Tasman stoushes during her five-year term, particularly on deportations.
Despite those lows she finishes her tenure with Australia-New Zealand relations on a high, buoyed by Anthony Albanese's offer of citizenship to Kiwi residents.
From Saturday, hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders living in Australia become eligible for citizenship, ending a two-decade dispute over the treatment of Kiwis.
Dame Annette says New Zealand was surprised and grateful by the Australian decision.
"For years and years, New Zealand has complained about the way New Zealanders have been treated in Australia," she told AAP.
"We got more than we hoped for in that announcement."
The changes, announced on Anzac Day, allow Kiwis who have spent four years in Australia to gain citizenship.
Citizenship brings important benefits, including access to welfare, student loans, disability support, public housing, work in the federal public service or armed forces, and voting rights.
New Zealand officials were confident they would see a policy change from Labor after it won the 2022 federal election, and Dame Jacinda's hastily organised trip across the ditch sealed the deal.
"Just after Albanese became the prime minister, she came straight over and had dinner with him at Kirribilli House," Dame Annette said.
"He reaffirmed to her what he was going to do. He was incredibly enamoured with her advocacy."
New Zealand has won other concessions from the Albanese government, including a reduction in the number of "501" deportees shipped across the Tasman.
That issue plunged relations to a low in 2020, when Dame Ardern confronted then Australian prime minister Scott Morrison at a joint press conference, telling him "do not deport your people and your problems".
"It certainly upset the Morrison government ... the previous government was angry with her for raising it (even though) she had already warned that she would," Dame Annette said.
The spat was soon overshadowed by the growing COVID-19 pandemic, but the high commissioner said it was cheered by Kiwis and noticed by those in power.
"She berated ScoMo on his treatment of New Zealanders. It was a really important signal back home to New Zealand," Dame Annette recalls.
"It was very public and the Labor opposition were very aware of it."
Mr Morrison disputes there was pushback against the New Zealand prime minister for her speech.
A spokesperson for Mr Morrison said he enjoyed a "positive, productive and professional relationship with Ms Ardern" and while he didn't change the policy, he worked to manage the disagreement "sensitively".
On coming to office, Mr Albanese has applied a "common sense" approach, with fewer deportations of Kiwis living in Australia if they do not have genuine ties to New Zealand.
According to NZ Police data, deportations across the Tasman roughly halved from August 2022 to April 2023.
"To be fair on the previous government, apart from that irritant on the people-to-people stuff, a lot of the relationship was very good," Dame Annette says.
"But the deportations really escalated in the last two, three years.
"There was no way there was going to be any change under the previous government."
The high commissioner said just before the 2022 election the Morrison government reintroduced the strengthening of character bill.
"They did it as an election time wedge ... an indication that (change) was not going to happen for New Zealanders."
Another flashpoint arrived in February 2021 when Mr Morrison's government stripped the citizenship of a dual Australian-NZ national living in Syria under Islamic State.
Australia's move, which Dame Jacinda angrily labelled an "abrogation of responsibility", left New Zealand solely responsible for the woman, who had been detained on the Syria-Turkey border with two young children.
"(Ardern) was brilliant on that issue because it was a surprise to us. The way it was presented to her, it left her really angry," Dame Annette said.
"Friends don't do that to each other. I don't think you'll ever see that happen again."
Dame Annette said the Australian changes on deportations and citizenship left her with the impression that New Zealand should stand up to its only formal ally more often.
"New Zealanders are known to be polite. And Australians are seen to be straightforward. You're never left in doubt what Australia thinks," she said.
"We could take a leaf out of Australia's book actually and be polite with purpose.
"If Australia is thinking something, at an officials level or a political level, they will tell you, where we will listen politely.
"But you saw from Jacinda Ardern's response to the deportations, the 501s, and to the stripping of citizenship, a public rebuke of Australia that you would not have seen often in the past."
Dame Jacinda is not entertaining media requests following her departure from parliament in April, but a spokesman in the prime minister's office said the closeness of the relationship between New Zealand and Australia allowed for robust debate.
"We are like family, and sometimes that means we are direct with each other," he said.
"The aim was to shift debate on the policy. Ultimately Australia did amend their deportation settings."
Dame Annette was appointed by Dame Jacinda to the coveted Canberra post in 2018 after a two-decade career in politics.
The former Wellington-based MP was a cabinet minister in Helen Clark's government and twice deputy Labour leader in opposition, before standing down in the leadership team for Dame Jacinda in 2017.
Come December, the former dental nurse will be pulling the curtain down on her second career, in public service.
Australian Associated Press
