Oz Columnist: NZ Should Join Oz Federation

Oz Columnist: NZ Should Join Oz Federation

You blokes are going to kill me, but a (former) Sydney-based NZ-citizen has written this in the Sydney and Melbourne papers. Don't shoot the messanger!

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/contributors/join-oz-new-zealand--its-for-the-best-20091112-ib8r.html?comments=60#comments
Join Oz, New Zealand - it's for the best <!-- 'push-0' just right-aligns the element so that the main content comes first. --> <!-- cT-storyDetails --> BERNARD LAGAN November 12, 2009 - 12:58PM

There's a lively part of Canberra - at least at night - just a trot from Parliament House.

It is Manuka, ringed by restaurants, bars and cafes.

Many Australians may well think the suburb's name has Aboriginal origins. No. It's named after a small New Zealand shrub that gives a clue as to why Canberra Avenue, which leads to it, is the only one of the national capital's radial roads not named after an Australian state capital.

It was to be Wellington Avenue, named after New Zealand's capital city � when Australia confidently anticipated that New Zealand would join the Australian Federation when it was formed in 1901.

Of course, the Kiwis decided against it and Canberra was the stand in name given to the avenue.

It's a slot still open to be renamed Wellington - and the Australian Constitution still holds open the door for New Zealand to join up and become an Australian state.

Perhaps New Zealand should now, seriously, think about it.

When the senior Rudd Government MP, Kelvin Thomson, made his controversial call last night for Australia to bang the door shut on Kiwi migration to Australia, he was thinking of the long-term effects on Australia of a rapidly rising population, Kiwis included.

But the truth is that Australia does enormously well out of Kiwi migration.

New Zealand's loss is Australia's gain.

New Zealand is a source of professionals and other skilled workers that Australia sorely needs but doesn't have to train. What's more, despite the old image of unemployed Kiwis lazing on Bondi beach, Kiwis make a serious economic contribution here; their work force participation rate is 79 per cent. That's more than 10 per cent higher than the employment rate for other English-speaking workers in Australia � including Australians. (The difference is explained because the 400,000 Kiwis already in Australia are younger and therefore more employable.)

But what is good for Australia is really a disaster for New Zealand.

First an admission; I am a Kiwi who lived very happily in Australia for 20 years and I plan on returning to my Sydney home after this stint in New York.

Kelvin Thomson's suggestion is wiser than he knows but mostly, for the wrong reasons.

New Zealand can't afford to carry on haemorrhaging its smartest exports - people - at very high rates, about 47,000 a year in recent times.

Within that number are many of its best and brightest, its highest earners (and therefore highest taxpayers) and it's future - young people.

The effect in New Zealand is to cut the mass of people and the economic growth that any foreign investor in an economy - and New Zealand needs them - looks for.

As well the New Zealand tax base is narrowed and consequently government services slowed or cut.

If the outflows continue at this rate to Australia, New Zealand risks becoming a land with too many unskilled and semi-skilled people and with a ratio of more elderly people. What, then becomes of it? Like Ireland once was: a resting place for a generation of retired?

New Zealand will argue that it replaces those who leave with migrants from others elsewhere - notably Asia and the Pacific.

But as Kelvin Thomson points out, too many stay the requisite three years to gain New Zealand citizenship, and then they flit off to Australia and have to be admitted as any other Kiwi.

Australia's politicians and public servants have long known their country is the winner in this.

Australia's leading authority on migration, the Monash University-based Centre for Population and Urban Research, released a detailed study in 2001 of New Zealand migration to Australia - after the rules were tightened so that Australian benefits were restricted for many New Zealand migrants.

It concluded: "In other words Australia is cherry picking New Zealand's skills. This is hardly calculated to enhance trans-Tasman relations."

And this article won't enhance my relationships with my countrymen back in New Zealand.

It's probably too late now to put a wall up across the Tasman Sea.

And there would be an invasion once Kiwis still at home got wind it was coming.

That leaves one sensible choice for New Zealand; join the Federation, become an Australian state and Canberra can finally have Wellington Avenue.

Bernard Lagan, a contributor to the National Times, lives in New York.

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that article is ridiculous, his only argument is that NZ is already losing many of it's brightest to aussie so therefore we shuld join aussie.  Firstly, his analysis of NZ migration is completely flawed (our points based immigration system means that outgoing are not being replaced with pacific islanders as he states) and NZers have a free right to immigrate to Australia so how is Australia cherry picking NZ's best talents?  Many of the people who immigrate to Australia are low skilled or skill trade workeers who can get better rates working there.  It's not as if the only people who are heading to australia are people with degrees.

Like I said, mate, I was just posting the article as is. Up to you boys how it's interpreted! 3am here, one more sleep for you guys and it's game on.
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unfortunately I'm in London bored as hell and checking here every ten minutes because I'm so nervous!

I did my bit for New Zild, by getting my unskilled ass out of there.

And I brought my qualified, but also unskilled, ass back from there (the long way, via other places) and discovered it wasn't quite as bad as I recalled.

What Smithy said... tho it is colder than I recall

So here's the dilemma:  secure the nix a place in the A-League vs having to sing Waltzing Matilda at the next international football match.

Doesn't happen, I think it happened vs Uruguay in 2005, but that was it.