By Dominic O'Sullivan*
Big policy ideas usually don’t come up in parliamentary valedictory speeches – they’re for saying goodbye and thank you. So departing Labour MP Jamie Strange was the exception last week when he made a case for New Zealand and Australia becoming one country.
The main problem, he joked, would be integrating the Australian cricket team. But he talked up the potential economic benefits, and the option does remain open under sections 6 and 121 of the Australian Constitution.
In fact, New Zealand did seriously consider joining the Australian federation in the 1890s. After all, it had been administered as part of the colony of New South Wales for about a year after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840.
And the relationship was already close. Maori traders began visiting Sydney from the 1790s. Settlers moved back and forth across the Tasman from the earliest contact.
Quite how such a union might be forged in the 21st century, however, raises some interesting questions about how similar – or dissimilar – the two countries have since become.
A simplified relationship
Political union would simplify the relationship: trade would be more efficient, social and cultural ties might be strengthened, passports wouldn’t be needed and banking would be easier.
Indeed, an Australian parliamentary committee recommended political union in 2006, but the Zealand prime minister at the time, Helen Clark, rejected the idea. The then opposition leader, Don Brash, said it should at least be considered, but found little support.
The committee’s second preference was for a common currency to make trans-Tasman business easier.
But close relationships don’t require political union. Australia and New Zealand hold regular ministerial meetings, share various regulatory standards, and there is military and intelligence cooperation.
There are also important policy differences – such as over the AUKUS security pact and New Zealand’s nuclear-free policy. Union wouldn’t mean the two countries coming together as equals. New Zealand members of an Australian government would influence those policies, but they wouldn’t determine them.
From nation to state
Current constitutional arrangements would mean New Zealand simply became a state of the existing Commonwealth of Australia. It would elect members to the federal parliament, but it would no longer have an independent voice in international forums.
Under the Australian Constitution, the New Zealand state parliament would be responsible for schooling, hospitals and transport, among the reserve powers of the Australian states.
Foreign policy, defence, monetary policy, higher education, pharmaceutical and GP funding would be among the responsibilities transferred to Canberra. A better cricket team might not be compensation enough.
But thinking seriously about the idea would also require both countries to consider how they might forge a different commonwealth together. And that would require an assessment of underlying national values that rarely troubles political discourse in either country.
The Voice and the Treaty
Nowhere would this be more evident than in the respective debates about whether democracy should be properly inclusive of Indigenous peoples.
In Australia, opinion polls are showing the proposed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament doesn’t have the support it needs to pass a referendum later this year. The tone of that debate also shows just how differently Australia and New Zealand think about such issues.
In my book Sharing the Sovereign, I argued that while the guaranteed Māori seats in parliament (introduced in 1867) and the role of the Treaty of Waitangi are sharply contested in New Zealand, their influence is gradually increasing.
Political resistance to the ACT Party’s policy of marginalising the Treaty in public life is likely to be intense if it forms part of the government after the election in October. But even then, the idea that Māori people have a voice in government is largely accepted.
Australia’s prime minister argues that the Voice is a matter of justice because “it is common courtesy to consult people when you’re taking a decision that affects them”. The inference being that while First Nations people can have “their” say, “we” are still in charge.
As Wiradjuri scholar Stan Grant observed about the country he grew up in: “we lived in Australia, and Australia was for other people”.
Culture and public life
Based on population, New Zealand would be entitled to about one-sixth of the seats in the Australian House of Representatives. Like the other states it would elect 12 senators. There is no guaranteed Indigenous representation in either house and Australia would no doubt struggle to accept Māori representation. At best, there might be two or three Māori seats in the lower house.
In reality, the Māori presence in public life gives New Zealand a cultural certainty and security that is not so evident in Australia.
And the Treaty of Waitangi extends that place to all migrants. Samoan, Tongan, Chinese and Dutch MPs (among others) occasionally speak their languages in parliament as statements of identity and belonging.
Meanwhile, section 44(1) of the Australian Constitution says people who hold dual or multiple citizenships are not eligible for election to parliament. Although more than half the Australian population was either born overseas or has a parent born elsewhere, this multicultural demographic is not represented in its parliament.
Indeed, then-deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce was forced to leave parliament in 2017 after it was discovered he held New Zealand citizenship. He was one of many forced out in similar circumstances – a citizen of a “foreign power” only by descent but apparently therefore a threat to national security.
Cultural insecurity seems the more likely explanation. In an article on the section 44 scandal, I pointed out the absurdity by describing myself as “a citizen of Australia, Ireland and New Zealand who supports the All Blacks, drinks Guinness and looks forward to fighting for Tamworth when Dunedin invades”.
Australia and New Zealand may well be similar enough for political union to be an idea worth considering, but rejecting – if only to help us each to understand ourselves better.
*Dominic O'Sullivan, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
78 Comments
Yes please. We’d be way better off, even if we did end up as a bit of a redheaded stepchild.
Treaty would be a pain to sort though. All it really says is that Maori cede sovereignty and we all have the same rights and responsibilities. So it shouldn’t be a problem, but it will because it has been intentionally misinterpreted.
Perhaps in a thousand years. By then the Treaty that is said to define and protect indigenous rights would no longer be an insurmountable barrier to any redefinition or redistribution of New Zealand’s sovereignty, regardless of how sensible or necessary it might be.
Yes, we should. They don't muck around with things like tax administration, they understand what a credible retirement scheme is and they have a far more sustainable approach to funding a country by not ruling out digging things up to sell in order to fund things.
Agreed. We are quickly turning into the virtue-signalling capital of the world with all talk but no real contribution to global clean tech advancement.
Japan burns a lot of coal and gas due to their poor renewable resource availability. However, the Japanese have their names on 37.1 per cent of global inventions in the fields of clean energy.
Our climate posturing has only led to local industries shutting down and stuff being shipped into the country from more polluting factories located thousands of kms away.
One way to get a higher NZ representation would be that both the main New Zealand islands became separate states within the Australasian Commonwealth. Then we would have a significant senate representation to argue our combined approach, as well as a higher representation in the lower house of representatives. Financially we would be significantly better off, with a much improved health system, a much better military system (although aligned more to the American system), a significantly better input into the G20 (and potentially the G7, would the combined financial totals put us into this grouping?)
But my heart, says no. But we should seriously look at it.
Australia has more public service wastage than we do. Every state has their own administration, from govenors to health systems to driver licensing agencies. The only things each state has in common is the colour of their passport and who's leading the country.
It will be a beaurocratical nightmare to merge with them. There's no downside for us but there's a lot of downsides for Australia.
Ah but would Aussie want us.
About every 10 or so yrs this gets brought up. Remeber 2007 or so the business sector wanting an ANZAC dollar etc. Would ve great straight away OCR would drop and we would be like the rest of the states bar WA and Qld have our hand out to the Federal govt. As the other two are in the black due to exporting all those resources imagine how the greens would feel then. I say yes just to see James Shaw face sucking on a lemon
I think we should split the South Island from the North, the North Island can be renamed Aotearoa, and the South Island can become part of Australia. New Zealanders shall have the choice as to which part of NZ they want to live in. Once decide, then we cut the cable.
I humbly suggest you may be drastically over-valuing the contribution the South Island makes. It's too sparsely populated to fund its own infrastructure and if you're not supplying power to North Island, your principle export becomes natural disasters.
I'm sure Auckland would be a wonderful place once we have all the money we're owed from the rebuild repaid to us though, so I'm open to it.
What does Auckland produce?.Nothing,it is a consumer.
I think if all the ev loving woke ,te triti types lived in the Aotearoa NI and those that "rich men north of Richmond" types live South and joined Australia as a state then things would be grand. Probably pop of 2-2.5 million max in the South and more densely populated than WA which gets on fine.
Plenty of spare power to build industry and limited mining constraints would make it the richest state of Australia.
Where do we sign?
"Woke" "EV Loving"? Is that the best you can do?
Muldoon's 'raising the average intelligence of both countries' springs to mind here. What it would bring to the South Island is enough of a significant boost in genetic diversity that they might be able to make a credible argument without resorting to lazy meaningless dribble.
The Australians already have one Deliverance-themed island. They probably don't have need for another one.
GDP Per Capita:
South Island data is updated yearly, averaging 44,374.000 NZD from Mar 2000 to 2022, with 23 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 65,875.000 NZD in 2022 and a record low of 25,768.000 NZD in 2000.
North Island data is updated yearly, averaging 47,181.000 NZD from Mar 2000 to 2022, with 23 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 72,068.000 NZD in 2022 and a record low of 30,583.000 NZD in 2000.
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/new-zealand/sna08-gdp-per-capita-by-region/…
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/new-zealand/sna08-gdp-per-capita-by-region/…
GDP is not the measure of living within your means. Now do the balance of payments for each island. I haven't been able to find that data myself, other than remembering it being presented on a slide by a prominent bank economist 15 years ago. Yeah I know, not that reliable.
They would still be the same distance apart. But the exchange rate between the two would drift apart in line with their import/export ratios.
It's occurred to me that a couple of old school friends of mine are a good analogy for our two islands. They got together at school so being a couple is all they have ever known. She has aged very well, earns far more than she spends and is reliable as a rock. He has always liked shiny bling and it's always interesting to catch up with him because of the dramas that he always seems to have "because of someone else".
Nice thought but how can we achieve that constitutionally or do we have to set up some sort of violent revolution?
How about setting up a South Island party then black mail which ever party wants our support to hold a binding referendum. There would need to be an awful lot of agitation and marketing to mobilize the SI population to achieve that. They are pretty stable and conservative and may not go along with that line of thought.
Kiwi pride stands in the way I'm afraid its never going to happen. Said it before, our currencies hit almost parity a couple of times over the years, we were at like $0.98 AUD to the NZD at times and we should have switched then. We would be better off financially I feel but psychologically Kiwis cannot take it. Just imagine the bureaucracy we could dump from Wellington, all the duplication would go and we would just be a another "State" of Australia.
45% top tax rate, and most states also have significant taxes on baches and secondary properties as well that are rising fast. Australia is a high tax country.
"A beach house owner in seaside Portsea Victoria, a summer retreat for the state’s rich and powerful where the median property price is $2.5 million, will potentially face annual tax increases from around $106,000 to about $204,000 (or around $4000 a week)"
It's actually not that big a leap. Australian States/Territories are already largely autonomous, they compete against each other, finance themselves and have most of their own agencies including health, education and law and order. We would share currency and passports but would retain our own State parliament.
It's not a crazy idea, a lot of duplication but we can fund it by digging holes in their desert.
Who really cares, but what's in it for us kiwi's, much higher salaries, higher taxation, better superannuation savings schemes, Superannuation means tested, better education, better health systems, more opportuntites, cheaper airfares to other states, more competition in supermarkets, and building supplies so cheaper goods. Positives, possibly outwieght the negatives.
You are overestimating our OG reserves and the economies of scale.
Also most of the benefits mentioned by people are federally managed in Aus, so we would move to their system, rather than them to ours.
- We would get their diabolical GST system.
- Federal and state taxes + local council stuff.
- Stamp duty
- Aussie Super and Minimum wages would cripple many NZ employers. Paying market rates would cripple the rest of them. We would also lose some business here (as the cost savings would no longer be there for the Aussie Paren
So yes, there are some real benefits, but the negatives are still substantial.
As for them, they will keep us at arms length.
'what's in it for Australia'
For one it would make for easier business dealings as currency transfers will not need to be 'international'. Most of our banks are already owned by Ausies anyway, so why have the 'international' barrier? Ausies do have investments/interests in NZ, it's not just the other way around.
Amalgamation of local territorial authorities in NZ comes to mind when thinking on this.
It is hotly contested and opposed with the dominant argument being loss of local voice.
Joining with Australia is like that TLA issue on steroids.
I haven't studied the amalgamation that created Auckland super city, yet I have read media articles that indicate the originally cited benefits that would accrue to citizens through scale efficiencies seem to have been ethereal.
Based on the comments above we’re generally buggered. Everyone’s given up - we might as well be tucked under Australia’s wing like a chick under a chook.
We made this mess- it’s no one’s responsibility but our own to clean it up. We don’t lack resources or wits - but maybe we lack the will, it seems we all got a shade fond of the idea that a government would look after us all - we’ve just given up on our government being the one to do it!
The Treaty is a non-issue. As the contract was with the crown - the very same crown that rules in Australia.
But that would not stop the gravy train folk from "creating" a mountain of reasons why the King of Australia is completely different from the King of NZ. The mental gymnastics, surrounding the treaty currently, is exhausting.
For what possible reason would Australia want to take on us as a State?
We have -
Vastly lower wealth: our retirement savings are worth around 92 billion, where Australia's are in excess of 3 trillion and it's being used to underpin the development of their infrastructure.
Disintegrating basic infrastructure coupled to apparently no will or ability to fix or develop it to meet a changing world.
Incompatible laws around things like capital gains that have underpinned the narrowing of our domestic productive economy: we are a property holding organisation with a bit of farming and an amusement park tacked on.
Large sectors of the economy, like grocery and building materials, largely controlled by a small set of companies.
Lesser productivity and no real government understanding or interest in improving it.
A difference in philosophy that leads a government minister here to say that some of the things they want to do are not strictly compatible with democracy and a bureaucratic technocracy that apparently see themselves as in charge.
As we are totally unable to run the country with even a modicum of sense, which ever political party is in power. I suspect that it is inevitable. Probably better to do it sooner on the best negotiated terms possible, rather than hold of until we totally collapse economically, morally and socially and have to accept what ever is offered.
What are the other choices? Snuggle up to China a la the other Pacific small nations in the hope that the USA and Australia flood us with largess? Or offer us very favorable terms for a union? Become a state of the USA? Yuk! Don't laugh, Alaska, Hawaii, at one stage they owned the Philippines?
There are times when I would like to subcontract our government services to the Australians, particularly the Commerce Commission.
There are other points to consider. State governments have upper and lower houses as do federal governments. North and South island as separate states
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