There’s something about New Zealand that plainly irks Julie Bishop. The Foreign Minister did her block on Twitter last night as she received snipes from all and sundry about the embarrassing reality that she’d have to deal with a New Zealand Labour government. 

Bishop is in this embarrassing mess because back in August, it looked for all the world like Bill English and the Nationals would coast to victory in the general election there, despite the Jacindamania that had greeted the elevation of new Labour leader Jacinda Ardern. “I would find it very hard to build trust with those involved in allegations designed to undermine the government of Australia,” she piously intoned on August 15, in an effort to blame NZ Labour for exposing the fact that Barnaby Joyce was a Kiwi (inconveniently, the relevant National minister said that it was inquiries from journalists that prompted it).

Plainly at that stage Bishop assumed that it was extremely unlikely she would ever have to deal with Ardern, so intervening so clumsily in the internal affairs of a close ally was fairly risk-free.

Turns out, not so much. Ardern is now PM. So Bishop is trying to pretend she never attacked New Zealand Labour. “Rubbish,” she angrily tweeted at Fairfax’s Peter Martin when he pointed out her attack. “Also rubbish,” she tweeted at ABC’s The Drum. “Why not refer to what I actually said?” she threw at the Courier-Mail’s Dennis Atkins. Presumably her staff wrestled the phone off her before she could start tweeting “fake news!” and “sad” at the rest of the press gallery.

Fighting with journalists on Twitter isn’t merely a bad look, it suggests that lingering, long-term sense that Bishop’s judgement isn’t all it should be is a valid one. That lack of judgement led her into picking a fight with New Zealand in an effort to distract from the debacle of Barnaby Joyce in the first place. For a minister whose mates in the press gallery like to suggest she shouldn’t be overlooked as a possible replacement for Malcolm Turnbull, it makes you wonder how she’d go handling serious domestic issues, rather than attending polo matches and international fashion shows.