LITTLE INTEREST IN N.Z. BY AUSTRALIAN M.P.s

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31785, 16 September 1968, Page 19

LITTLE INTEREST IN N.Z. BY AUSTRALIAN M.P.s

(From DAVID BARBER, N.Z.P.A. staff correspondent) SYDNEY, September 12. In a gesture aimed at improving trans-Tasman relations on official and personal levels, the Australian Government, in 1965, introduced a scheme allowing each member of Federal Parliament one free return trip to New Zealand between elections.

Since then only 26 of the 184 Parliamentarians have taken the opportunity to visit New Zealand.

And each time one applies for his gratis air ticket, goes the story in Canberra, the Government and its New Zealand experts give a little shudder of apprehension. They feel that New Zealanders are so sensitive to criticism and so suspicious of suggestions of closer ties, that they worry about what their M.P.s might say. For this reason, the Government has not “pushed” the scheme. The figures and the story provide a graphic iluustration of how little Australians really think about New Zealand and the obstacles to closer relations. At the top, relations between the two countries are excellent, says Mr J. Luke Hazlett, New Zealand’s High Commissioner in Canberra for the last four and a half years. “1 have never talked to any Australian Minister without coming away knowing that I have been given a good, straight and sympathetic hearing and that every attention has been paid to our case,” he told me. But the fact remains that Australia and New Zealand—who probably have more in common than any other two countries in the world—have shown none of the same readiness to get together on' defence and political matters that they have demonstrated during the two and a half years operation of the free trade agreement. Traditional service rivalry and jealous guarding of independence have prevented closer defence ties; while in the field of external affairs Australia has paid so much attention to Asia in recent years that it probably knows more about Laos than New Zealand. While Australia was looking toward America and South-East Asia, New Zealand was still clinging to a rapidly retreating Britain. In the Australian External Affairs Department New Zealand is dealt with by the section embracing the two Americas and the Pacific. In Wellington, matters of policy and relationship with Australia are handled by officials whose area embraces Europe, the Commonwealth and America. Some Australian officials accept that they may have neglected New Zealand in the past and there are signs of i a new approach, but warmer] relations are inhibited by a few subtle differences of attitude.

“Australians see New Zealand as an immature little boy who tends to experiment and won’t take any notice of what he Is told,” said one New

Zealand official. Certainly Australians never really thought the welfare State would work, and to their minds New Zealand’s economic crisis of the last 18 months has proved that it won’t.

Australian officials talk of New Zealand's streak of wowserish Puritanism in interna-

tional affairs—“a kind of unsophisticated, holier-than-thou attitude that is out of touch and doesn’t face up to the realities of the world,” said one.

They claim to have seen this in New Zealand’s ready agreement to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, without first waiting to see what, say, India would do; in New Zealand’s attitude towards Australian problems in Papua-New Guinea; and in the time it took New Zealand th accept that Britain was really bent on entering the Common Market and withdrawing its forces east of Suez. Economically, they see it in New Zealand’s frowning rebuke: “Why are you going all American?”

“New Zealand has self-right-eously shut the door on American investment," said one official. “If it wasn't for American money our oil and natural gas would still be lying undiscovered under Bass Strait”

Joint diplomatic representation in some posts would be one way of joining together

overseas, but most Australians and New Zealanders—with the notable exception of the military—agree that the greatest prospects for closer liaison lie in the field of defence.

They say it is “absurd” that the two countries should be buying different aircraft, ships and hardware, and “silly” that they don’t pool their resources and co-ordinate planning and strategy while retaining similar defence policies. Tentative Moves

But while there have been tentative moves along these lines, while they exchange troops for training purposes, as they are doing this week, and while there are regular joint defence talks, six armed services, all jealously guarding their individual indentities, stand in the way of any. formal moves towards integration.

“Defence co-operation has increased little since the days of Gallipoli,” said one observer, pointing out that the difference in the two countries’ defence budgets—New Zealand spends about half as much per head as Australia—was a major obstacle to integration. Trade relations have improved tremendously over the last few years, with the Australian Government less inclined than it was to take notice of every producer’s bleat when he began to fee! the hot breath of competition from New Zealand down his neck.

Australians are clearly delighted that New Zealand has managed to increase her exports to this country at a time of economic crisis.

As far as talk of political union or federation is concerned, Australian officials are always somewhat surpris-

ed when a New Zealander brings up the topic, for they are not giving it any thought. In talk of ways and means of achieving closer ties, both Australian and New Zealand officials make it clear that they do not want a permanent Australian-New Zealand affairs secretariat as was envisaged by the now dust-cov-ered Canberra Pact of 1944.

Such bodies, they point out, are costly and unwieldy and usually generate so much of their own administration work they are unable to get down to the job they were set up to do. “We take each other for granted,” said one New Zealand official, and that’s the best possible basis for cementing closer relations.”

The last of three articles on New Zealand’s image in Australia, and trans-Tasman relations, written by David Barber, the N.Z.P.A. correspondent in Sydney.