Thoughts on Joining Australia

Although forfeiting New Zealand’s sovereignty and joining Australia seems like a very un-conservative idea, there are a number of strong arguments in its favour.

In the decades following Britain’s entry in the European Community, New Zealand has become an increasingly uncertain and directness nation. Successive governments have introduced stop-start reforms with inadequate forethought and foreign policy has lurched from unqualified support for the US to pretentious left wing sentimentality.

With a heavily centralised political system bewildered voters have witnessed a succession of incoherent governments seriously out of tune with the pragmatic instincts of the majority of the population.

The 1984 Labour government damaged the credibility of fiscal conservatism in NZ by associating it with Chardonnay socialist posturing and gun-ho yuppie recklessness.

In fairness to the politicians though, it was always going to be tough. The political and economic connection with Britain provided the country with a high standard of living and a strong cultural focus. For the country to sustain a strong economy and a high level of cultural self-confidence the nations politicians would have had to challenge a number of strong vested interests and fashionable assumptions.

In Waltzing with Matilda, Bob Catley points out that Australia has been able to steadily and thoughtfully introduce essential economic reforms which New Zealand governments have only been able to implement in a half-hearted or rushed manner.

For example, Australia introduced means testing for benefits in the 1980s, while in New Zealand means testing for pensions isn’t even on the agenda. The Lange government gave away a number of state assets at bargain prices in the 1980s while Australian governments have thought long and hard about how to get the best price for key public assets.

This is because in Australia’s federal political system government policies have to “sold” (Catley’s phrase) to the electorate before they can be implemented by central government. In contrast, New Zealand governments have hidden reforms behind misleading rhetoric and have subsequently lost public support at key times.

If New Zealand were a state of Australia, then it would benefit from being part of a well-established federal government that has a proven record of economic pragmatism. Australia is also New Zealand’s largest trading partner and economic amalgamation would significantly reduce transaction cost between the two countries.

In social terms New Zealand’s Labour government has pushed through changes at a faster pace than most of the electorate is comfortable with. This was particularly noticeable in the 2005 election where there was an unprecedented urban/rural split, with provincial centres overwhelmingly voting against Labour’s socially liberal policies.

In contrast, both of the two main political parties in Australia have a more socially conservative orientation. This can be seen in the Liberals support for tax incentives for having children and in Labour’s arguably more cautious immigration policy.

This greater social conservatism again stems from Australia’s more decentralised political system, which allows smaller towns and cities more influence over the political process than in New Zealand.

In New Zealand, the left has far too much influence over foreign policy. Unhinged from previous alliances with Australia and the US, New Zealand is now an isolated western country at the mercy of pro-UN internationalists with an anti-western agenda.

Labour’s vision of New Zealand as a nuclear free “Switzerland of the South Pacific” is both conceited and naive. While Australia may have been mistaken to support the poorly conceived war in Iraq, it has enough self-awareness to realise that it is a western power in a potentially hostile region and that it needs to cooperate with other western powers.

In a cultural sense, it is doubtful that many Australians adhere the fashionable view that Australia is an Asian nation. Whereas the case for European countries joining the European Union is purely a rational or economic one, the case for joining Australia also has a strong cultural component, since if New Zealand became a part of Australia then the anti-western agenda of the country’s liberal left would be dealt a heavy blow.

Perhaps the biggest argument of favour of amalgamation is immigration patterns. Although the non-western proportion of the population in both countries is increasing rapidly, the situation is much more acute in New Zealand. Within 30 years it is likely that most of New Zealand’s population will be of non-western origin. Hence, at that point it may well cease to exist as a western-style democratic state.

By joining with a more self-sufficient and economically vigorous country, it will have less reason to import so many people from non-western backgrounds, who are likely to want a more authoritarian form of government to protect them from rising crime and a real or imagined populist backlash.

Although there is no guarantee that Australia will not go the same way as New Zealand, its greater size, income and cultural self-confidence mean that it probably has a better chance of surviving as a western nation than a small, isolated country like New Zealand.

It reality a merger with Australia may prove to be politically impractical, however, an amlagation movement would at least force National and Labour to take a more hard headed look at the country’s long term interests.