As new Aussie citizenship rules kick in, the ‘fair go’ finally returns to trans-Tasman relations
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Monday, July 3, 2023
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Some 63 years later, my grandmother Mary also travelled to Australia to marry my grandfather Ted.
Key Points:
- Some 63 years later, my grandmother Mary also travelled to Australia to marry my grandfather Ted.
- He was a clerk with the Bank of New Zealand and had been posted to Melbourne in the 1920s.
- Ted and Mary lived in St Kilda and played cards in the evening with Australians, Mr and Mrs Shaw, who lived in Ivanhoe and barracked for Collingwood.
- My father was born there in 1929 and moved back to New Zealand with his family at the age of five.
Two-way traffic
- Historian Judith Binney writes that some Māori chiefs travelled to New South Wales to advance their tribes’ political and commercial interests and broader trans-Tasman trade in the early 1800s.
- At that time, New Zealand’s exports comprised flax, timber, whale products and foodstuffs, and were in high demand by Australia.
- The gentler New Zealand climate attracted Australians seeking a farming life, while journalists and artists went the other way to expand their horizons and careers.
Inextricably linked
- Premier Richard Seddon was born in Victoria, while six of the 13 members of the first Labour cabinet in 1935 were former Australians, including the prime minister, Michael Savage.
- New Zealand gave Australia Mike Rann, Joh Bjelke-Petersen and Barnaby Joyce.
- As well, there are numerous regular and routine links, from the Five Eyes security relationship and prime ministerial and ministerial meetings, to common food standards, policy coordination and information sharing.
Return to the ‘fair go’
- Australia remains New Zealand’s second-largest trading partner (we are their ninth-largest) and has a 30% stake in our total foreign investment.
- Traditional measures of the trans-Tasman relationship will always appear asymmetric due to differences in geographic, economic and population size, and our respective military alliances and capacities.
- At various times, political leaders on both sides of the Tasman have chosen to accentuate the differences in policy interests to suit their own agendas.