Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully says the relationship between New Zealand and the United States has become stronger and fundamentally different, thanks to the outgoing Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.
Mr McCully says Hillary Clinton is a great friend of New Zealand and a powerful advocate for the NZ-US relationship.
He says after 30 fairly ordinary years in the relationship following the nuclear ship visits row, the link has become a fundamentally different one and Mrs Clinton has overseen a period of significant transformation.
Mr McCully has also congratulated John Kerry on being sworn in as the new Secretary of State.
In her farewell address to state department staff, Mrs Clinton said the world is now a safer place.
Mrs Clinton, 65, leaves the post after four years, visits to 112 countries and nearly a million air miles. She will be replaced by Democratic Senator John Kerry.
Mrs Clinton said leading the agency as the 67th US Secretary of State had been a "unique and singular, exciting and challenging" experience.
She also acknowledged the attack on the US embassy in Turkey.
"I am very proud of the work we have done together," she told her staff on Friday. "Of course, we live in very complex and dangerous times, as we saw again just today at our embassy in Ankara, where we were attacked."
But she said she was "more optimistic" now than when she took up her post in 2009.
"I am so grateful that we've had a chance to contribute in each of our ways to making our country and our world stronger, safer, fairer and better," she told staff.
The BBC reports Mrs Clinton is now being discussed as a possible candidate for the 2016 presidential election. However, she has said she has no specific plans for the future.
