Robert Muldoon might have had a gift for the quip, when he smirked about Kiwis moving to Australia, but that couldn’t disguise the harsh truth. New Zealand is and always was the net beneficiary of the trans-Tasman relationship.
New Zealand might be last, loneliest, loveliest and exquisite, but it’s hardly ever been apart since the Europeans brought their big wakas (the Aborigines can probably be thankful that, unlike the Chatham Islands, the Maori never made it to Australia).
Instead, it’s been dangling off Australia’s teat, on and off. Especially when there’s an incompetent Labour government in charge. Sure, the trans-Tasman deal sort of works both ways, but we all know who gets the sharp end of the stick.
Jacinda Ardern wants to shove the stick in harder yet.
As announced last week, Labor is considering granting [voting] privilege to New Zealanders living in Australia, who number around 670,000. Notwithstanding that country is our closest ally (so we are told), it would mean allowing foreigners to determine who governs us.
As I wrote for Insight last week, I wouldn’t presume to vote in a NZ election. Voting is supposed to be an exclusive right for citizens. New Zealand regards it as so exclusive that its citizens have to be residents for at least the last three years.
But in fairness to Albanese, perhaps in return he secured a commitment from Ardern that will benefit us. Who knows, maybe she has sworn that every fighter aircraft in her country’s air force will be at our disposal should we be attacked. Never mind they haven’t got any. Or perhaps she has promised New Zealand’s navy will one day venture outside New Zealand.
If nothing else, look at how each of our countries vote with our feet.
Less than 0.5 per cent of Australians – only 70,000 – live in New Zealand. Conversely, around 670,000 New Zealand citizens live in Australia. That’s around 15 per cent of the entire Kiwi population.
Impressively though Ardern skews this privilege as discrimination.
Ardern whinged that New Zealanders in Australia translate into citizens at half the rate of nationalities. By what measure she concludes that is “discrimination” is anyone’s guess — because, with so much on offer without citizenship, why would Kiwi Australians bother?
Of course, the goodies on offer to Kiwi freeloaders in Australia aren’t what they used to be. But there’s a reason for that.
By the late 1990s, more than one in nine New Zealand immigrants entering this country was a Kiwi in name only, word having gotten around the Pacific Islands and Asia of a back door to Australia.
Canberra’s suggestion that both countries adopt similar immigration policies to address this was rebuffed. By 2000, Australia was paying $950m per year in welfare benefits to New Zealand-born residents yet Wellington refused to increase the $159m it reluctantly contributed towards that cost. Small wonder the Howard government drastically curtailed the scheme.
As New Zealanders plan to flee Jacindaland (like Californians, having voted for socialism, they immediately flee it) by the millions, some 600,000 want to come to Australia.
Albo probably thinks he sees a sweetheart deal, there.
As New Zealand Stuff political editor Luke Malpass observed last week. “If a whole pile of Kiwis became citizens, that could create two or three more seats in the federal Parliament, most likely in Queensland, seats Labor would most likely win,” he wrote.
The Australian
But, as the Democrats in the US are finding, flooding the country with migrants fleeing socialist collapse isn’t exactly guaranteed to work in their favour.
To throw Jacinda’s words back at her: “Do not deport your people and your problems”.
