OPINION
How about it, BFDers? Fancy becoming the seventh state of Australia?
No, I don’t think so, either.
But that hasn’t stopped the yammering idiot chorus we call our “leaders” from bringing it up again, like a particularly cretinous mongrel dog bringing up its lunch so it can have another go.
Opposition frontbencher Barnaby Joyce has backed New Zealand becoming a state of Australia, as suggested by an outgoing member of the Labour government across the Tasman […]
New Zealand Labour MP Jamie Strange this month used his valedictory speech to suggest the nation of five million people should reconsider joining Australia, as first proposed ahead of Federation and still allowed for in Australia’s Constitution.
Of course, the Barney the Beetrooter would say that, having been caught up in the Section 44 scandal in 2017, and forced to resign as deputy prime minister owing to dual NZ citizenship. It’s clearly a dear goal, too, of the antipodean left: besides Strange, socialist besties Anthony Albanese and Jacinda Ardern only paused from practically humping on the tarmac like stray dogs, to yap the same, stupid idea. Australian Labor is still holding out the idea of allowing Kiwi country-shoppers to vote in Australian elections.
The Albanese government has sought to increase ties with New Zealand, including offering Kiwis a path to Australian citizenship if they have been living in Australia for more than four years. The government is also considering giving voting rights to New Zealand residents who live in Australia.
But Joyce is going one further, pointing to the often-forgotten clause in the Australian Constitution which provisionally allows New Zealand to be counted as one of “The States” of Australia.
“Historically, (New Zealand being a part of Australia) was what was supposed to happen. In a perfect world, it is what should happen. In reality, it won’t happen,” he said.
“But what would be possible and should be seriously considered is where unnecessarily duplications between two countries … can be removed by having a unitary purpose, and the obvious place to start would be defence.”
“What there has to be is a lot closer working together on common policies such as agricultural policy, trade policy, definitely defence policy.”
The Australian
What, exactly, would New Zealand have to offer Australia, in terms of defence? Apart from being a handy spot for a base or two? As I’ve written before, New Zealand’s defence force is to Australia’s what Australia’s is to the United States’. A clapped-out old Cessna with a gaffer-taped gunport isn’t exactly going to boost our force projection capabilities.
All right, yes, that was a cheap joke. But one could be forgiven for thinking that the only reason to unite our countries on defence would be to keep dangerously flaky NZ Labour governments in line.
As for agricultural policy, Joyce, of all people, should know that Australia has strict quarantine rules for a reason. When NZ fireblight was just totally coincidentally discovered in a Tasmanian orchard by an NZ scientist, during a legal fight over banning NZ apple imports, it could have devastated the apple industry. It certainly set back years of negotiations to export Tasmanian Fuji apples to Japan.
If NZ was an Australian state, how soon before the case was revived?
And New Zealanders know only too well the consequences of bringing Australian animals into their country.
Most importantly, and fundamentally, as I wrote some time ago: I am not a New Zealander. New Zealanders aren’t Australians. These things matter.
125 years ago, when the Australian Constitution was adopted, our two nations clearly saw themselves as twinned British colonies in the South Pacific. Ever since, though, despite the clear commonalities, we have each developed our own national identities and cultures. Clearly alike, for certain, but, however strikingly similar siblings may be, they remain each an individual.
Make no mistake, an Australian and a New Zealander understand each other far better than even, say, Australians and Canadians (often cited as our nearest socio-political cousins), or New Zealanders and Britons. Certainly much better than our Western hemisphere or Commonwealth cousins such as the United States or South Africa. But Australia and New Zealand have nearly 200 years of divergent evolution behind us (not forgetting the drastically different initial conditions of a palaeolithic Australian indigenous culture patiently living out 60,000 years, versus an almost-yesterday Polynesian colonisation).
But we are not the same. Nor, I think, do we want to be.