GUYON Okay let's look at another area where the countries have been getting closer and that is Defence and Security.  We've talked about a common ANZAC defence force, or at least a contingent rather than a wholesale merger.  Now you've said that we won't lose our independence under this scenario, but what say we get into an Iraq sort of situation where they want to send troops and we don't, I mean who would decide on the deployment?

JOHN KEY Well in that case an ANZAC contingent wouldn't be deployed.  Now we haven't worked through with the Chief of Defence Forces, you know the personnel, how this would be structured, how long it will last.  My view is if you're gonna set it up it should be a long term commitment, not about one deployment to one particular location.  In some part it is largely symbolic.  I don't think there's any getting away from that, we have relatively speaking a large defence capability and Australia has an even much larger one, no one's arguing that this ANZAC contingent's gonna get anywhere near threatening in you know the size of those specific operations.

GUYON But do you worry that we will lose our independence?  I mean you said that we would maintain our foreign policy independence, and I know you're not talking about a wholesale merger, but isn't there a risk that the world will see it that way.  The world sees New Zealand very differently from it sees Australia, it sees us as independent and nuclear free.  There are advantages to that surely.  Don't you risk putting that at risk?

JOHN KEY Well I think there are advantages and we're absolutely maintaining the anti nuclear legislation, and we're maintaining an independent foreign policy, but we happen to work very collaboratively with Australia at the moment.  When I was in Canberra this week, you know just to lay a wreath at the New Zealand memorial there, 80 odd New Zealand military personnel who are operating here in Canberra at the moment, turned up to that particular display, and there were many many others working there, but the question is can we have a better relationship and a more effective relationship if you like, working together potentially and using an ANZAC contingent if you like, just to tie in that relationship even tighter.  Now let's take the Solomon Islands, we're both intimately involved with the Ramsay operation, East Timor the same thing, Tonga when we saw the Princess Ashika's sinking very recently, isn't there an argument there that we're playing a leadership roll together in the Pacific, again looking and saying where one has a strength and maybe another one can have a priority, using those combined strengths makes sense, I think it does.