So the Australians have their free trade carrot from the Yanks as a thank you for playing war games in Iraq. But it's not really free trade is it? Seems more like mutually agreeable protectionism to me.

The thing about free trade (and political freedom generally) is that it isn't something that really works all that well under segmentation. It's hard to deal with somethings being more free than others. The effect of true free trade should be such that market forces will determine the most efficient productive outputs from given resources- in this case countries.

Of course the 'Land of the Free' has been anything but over the last 20 years of my life at least. We've had steel, lamb and recent bleating over lost technology jobs to India. American 'Freedom' is not even limited to economic areas- just how free are religious minorities, gays and drug users in the good ol' USA?

But I digress. The Aus/US free trade agreement is nothing more than pork barrel horse trading and the worst thing for New Zealand is that the Australians capitulated. If anything it has set back Free Trade opportunities for agriculture dependant countries for many years to come.