If anyone else has the same problem - I finally got to the bottom of this.
it also looks like another release of the azure-mgmt-resource package came out yesterday, so I have updated to work with that.
A few changes needed:
imports:
from azure.identity import ClientSecretCredential
from azure.mgmt.resource import ResourceManagementClient
from azure.mgmt.resource.resources.models import Deployment, DeploymentProperties, DeploymentMode
credentials:
credentials = ClientSecretCredential(client_id=xxx,client_secret=yyy,tenant_id=zzz])
executing deployment template:
dprops = DeploymentProperties(mode=DeploymentMode.complete,template=aks_template,parameters=parameters)
deployment = Deployment(properties=dprops)
deployment_async = client.deployments.begin_create_or_update(resourcegroup,'azure-sample',deployment)
where aks_template is the aks deployment template, parameters are the template parameters,
A