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Opinion: I feel a bit disloyal and almost nauseous as I write this. Or maybe treasonous might be a better word, but I feel it must be said.
It’s become overwhelmingly clear to me that New Zealand should become part of Australia. There, I said it: it’s out.
For more than a year, I’ve been writing a weekly column and several of them have focused on whether life is better on the other side of the ditch. It’s a theme I return to because the more I look around, the angrier I get about what’s going on in New Zealand.
Again and again, I come back to the view that if you want to get ahead, be paid properly for your work, buy a home and have more opportunities, you’re not ticking Luxon, Hipkins or Peters on the ballot paper. You need to go straight to the referendum question and choose to join Australia.
I’m thinking about it because we’re about to farewell another family member, my niece, Mum’s fourth granddaughter, who will be Australia-bound in a few weeks. Charlotte is wonderful, she’s 23, a real character, loves a night out, she’s no longer the quiet and shy youngest daughter of my eldest sister, Joanna.
She and her sister Georgia both got scholarships to Otago. Georgia graduated and worked in international finance; Charlotte was a rowing coach at King’s College in Auckland. This is not to boast about their lives. Their parents are humble – a police officer and early childhood teacher, who have worked hard and been amazing parents by putting in place rules and boundaries. The girls worked hard to get their degrees. but there’s nothing for them here.
Georgia left a few months back and is in London and Charlotte is next. At 77, their nana, my mum, is asking will she see them again? Their parents are now empty nesters and to see their girls will require more effort and huge money.
That’s the personal cost, but there’s also the question of what New Zealand loses after putting in thousands of dollars in subsidised education only to have Australia and the United Kingdom reap the rewards for doing nothing more than stamping their passports on arrival.
It feels as if we’ve become a recruitment ground for the Aussies, whose companies now host expos and open days here. For the cost of a flight and a hotel room for the night, they can sign up an entire workforce by dangling carrots local companies can only dream of. No years of expensive training and investment in workers is needed when we do it for them.
It’s not just in business.
I was at the Pasifika Youth Cup rugby league competition in Blockhouse Bay recently where I saw five Australian scouts and spoke to a number of boys who at just 15 years of age have already signed with Aussie clubs. Some are mates with my son.
Ask any of the Māori, Tongan, Samoan, Niuean or Cook Island boys what their ambition is and without fail every one of them said to get to Aussie for a league scholarship with one of the big clubs. Kiwi captain James Fisher-Harris did it from the Hokianga and has since won four premierships and now is set up for life.
What’s the other option? Stay here and play for Bay Roskill Vikings for $50 a week? Sorry, but that’s an overwhelming no from every single boy there.
So, at some point we have to ask ourselves some tough questions about merging with Australia. Around 700,000 Kiwis live there now, so why don’t we join them by sharing the currency, making flights domestic and streamlining the welfare system so Kiwis get treated the way Aussies do when they come here?
Banks should offer Kiwis the same deal as they offer in Australia – so cheaper mortgages and let’s have their access to building materials so we can build houses faster for less. We’d only need one Reserve Bank so our top dog Adrian Orr would have to go.
It feels as if we’ve become a recruitment ground for the Aussies
Cops, nurses and teachers will all notice big pay increases if we agree on pay parity for these frontline jobs across the jurisdictions. We’ll still keep the Warriors and we won’t give up the All Blacks (we do agree, however, to a best-of Anzac team that plays the Lions).
The NZ Parliament is sovereign but both sides can’t pass laws detrimental to the other. We get rid of 60 MPs because we don’t need them and keep our own Prime Minister as a regional governor.
We largely adopt the best bits of Australia and when they win so do we; when they lose, we are miles away from their problem. We’ll pay our way but upgrade to take benefits such as all the cancer drugs and treatments we don’t have and their more generous savings scheme.
We can piggyback on their ability to build infrastructure faster and better than us; our roads will improve overnight. We can use their navy if ours sinks, and we’ll have an air force again. We can put in joint bids for the Rugby and Football World Cups, the Olympics and Commonwealth Games. How good would a joint bid look?
We can jointly host the America’s Cup, too, or split the series across the two countries – have the final here, and the challenger series there. And Dalton still makes money. The Melbourne Cup is hosted in NZ every five years. The boost to tourism on both sides is massive.
501s can go between both countries as it’s inhumane to send people away from their families and expect them to be okay in isolation with nothing and no hope.
The Australian Constitution already gives New Zealand the option to join. Covering clause 6, it states New Zealand may be admitted into Australia as a state. The Treaty of Waitangi would stay as is.
Appoint John Key, Helen Clark, Rob Fyfe, Chris Finlayson and Ngāi Tahu’s Mark Solomon to a special transitional unit set up to make the changeover as smooth as possible.
With all our relative strengths and shared principles we would be world beaters on any given day on most things.
Former Aussie PM Julia Gillard once described our joint relationship as being like family. So let’s get this family operating under one roof – the benefits are numerous and what could possibly go wrong?
