An Anzac confederation?

Press, 11 April 1977, Page 10

An Anzac confederation?

By

Cedric Mentiplay

The idea of New Zealand joining with Australia, either as an equal power or as a state in the Australian Commonwealth, has been discussed many times. It has been talked about with feeling, and then rejected with variations of emotion ranging from scorn to indignation. But the modern world is in a continuing state of fiscal, economic and political change. In an international situation which has seen Britain almost literally forced to enter the European Economic Community as a means of survival, and to make common ground with erstwhile foes at the expense of members of the old Empire, it is archaic to talk of "differences” between Australia and New Zealand. In the last week Australia's Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Overseas Trade (Mr J. D. Anthony) and the Minister of Industries and Ci mmerce (Senator R. C. Cotton) have had inconclusive talks concerning the New Zealand-Australia free trade, area. The talks were hedged about with “what is good for us and you.”

It was the usual letdown from the great expectations of the original ideas projected by Sir John Marshall. The cynics in industry view the Trans-Tasman trade “agreement” as a continuing struggle, which Australians are sure to win at one level or another by arguing against our import restrictions at one end, and by hiking tariffs or making threats of not buying at the other. This is” a small and unsatisfactory point of contact between the two independent nations. At other points there is either no contact at all, or a sort of floating arrangement to “keep in touch on an advice level.”

Our defences play at being parts of a whole which is theoretically capable of correlation, if not integration. Looking at the growing com-