The trans-Tasman connection

Press, 24 October 1984, Page 16

The trans-Tasman connection

By

BRUCE JUDDERY,

a free-lance journalist and expatri-

ate New Zealander living in Canberra

A few weeks ago the New Zealand Desk of Australia’s Department ,of Foreign Affairs did something unprecedented: it drew up a list of “significant” ministerial visits each way across the Tasman, and found that they totalled a dozen every month, something “unique” in Australia’s bilateral relations with any country. The statistic appears to support the rationale of Sir Laurie Francis, the retiring New Zealand High Commissioner to Canberra, for rejecting the most recent suggestions from the western side of the Tasman that Australia and New Zealand should look to a political merger. “Why buy a cow,” he asks “when you can get your milk for nothing.” ■

That metaphor does not immediately find favour with Australian public servants, but it does reflect the growing, informal integration of the two countries’ political and economic processes over the eight , years since Sir Laurie took up his post in Canberra. Longevity has made him Dean of the Diplomatic Corps in the Australian capital, with a long, potentially-debilitating round of official farewells to be faced before his retirement from the job in January, and a more immediate round of farewells in state capitals and the Northern Territory, scheduled from the running of the Melbourne Cup, which gives him an opportunity to visit Victoria’s Premier, Mr Cain. A recurrent theme of those

farewells will be New Zealand’s access to government contracts in Australia, a subject on which Mr Cain has been relatively conciliatory,- but his. New South Wales counterpart, Mr Wran, less so.

The increased intensity of transTasman relations has contributed to the Lange Government’s decision that he will not be replaced — as bipartisan precedent would suggest — with another political appointee (Sir Laurie is a former divisionsal chairman of the National Party) but with a professional diplomat and trained economist, with Canberra experience in the 19605, Mr Graham Ansell.

Hitherto political appointments (a practice maintained by Australia, whose High Commissioner in Wellington is a former Labour Minister, Mr Les Johnson) have been justified by reference to a "special relationship” between the two countries, one that merited instant access at the political level between personal emissaries of the respective Prime Ministers. From the New Zealand perspective, at least, the special relationship is now a specialised one, so complex that it merits a professional appointee. Australians are familiar with this sort of development. Eyebrows were raised, but inevitability was acknowledged, when, 20 years ago as the A.N.Z.U.S. alliance dragged the antipodean nations into Vietnam, Australia’s first professional was appointed ambassador in Washington.

the other direction) that could notionally permit a New Zealand state to retain, for instance, its own broadcasting and social security systems, do not excite him.

The last several years have certainly seen a development of the trans-Tasman relationship beyond anything anticipated, certainly on the Australian side, a decade ago. Laurie Francis — the knighthood last January has not impaired his informality at places like the National Press Club — has been, along with his staff, the chief intermediary in this process. He remains bluntly dismissive of suggestions, more public in Australia, but with some currency in New Zealand business circles, that New Zealand will ever become a State of the Australian Commonwealth as most recently floated by Mr Justice Kirby, now of the New South Wales Court of Appeal, and by Professor Geoffrey Blainey, the eminent and controversial historian.

Even prospective changes to the Australian constitution to permit Commonwealth “referral” of its powers to individual states (at present , the process works only in

“You’ve got a perfect picture here of a state that is not a state but has all the entree to all deliberations, in all areas, of a stated. .

“Now, with the Closer Economic Relationship, and the phasing out of tariffs, the machinery is all there without the constitutional hazards. I think it’s very germane that in every state bar one, in the last six years there has been a change of Government, and the incoming Governments have in no way questioned the relationships between New Zealand Ministers and State and Federal Ministers, and have adopted them. “To me, that’s been one of the most far-reaching things in my time as High Commissioner. Certainly C.E.R. has been a highlight, but the feasibility of C.E.R. was oiled by the access of all New Zealand Ministers to their counterparts, including officials. “The ‘entente cordiale’ presently enjoyed by both countries is an unique example of something that I think is non-existent elsewhere in the world.” Australian officials can count no fewer than 22 Federal-State ministerial councils on which New Zealanders sit as either participants or observers. They echo Sir Laurie, to the extent of admitting: “It’s unique in terms of Australia’s relations with any other country.” Sir Laurie traces the process of greater political (and consequent economic) integration to the “Nareen Declaration” of March, 1978, framed when Brian Taiboys visited Malcolm Fraser, at his Western Victorian home. Australian officials are less effusive about Nareen. Indeed, the specific measures agreed there — exchanges of Parliamentary delegations and of officials, regular consultation on international legal and related matters, and “further steps” to co-ordinate development co-operation — appear to have been greatly exceeded by the relationship that, in fact, has developed. According to Sir Laurie, last year’s change of Government on the western side of the Tasman, even while the Muldoon Government office on the eastern, did nothing to retard relations. “The empathy of this present Government towards New Zealand is profound,” he proclaims. “I feel closer on New Zealand’s behalf to

the Hawke Governent than, with the exception of Doug Anthony, I ever did to the Fraser Government.” His conversation is sprinkled with admiring references to Mr Anthony, the now-retired, former leader of the National (formerly Country) Party, Mr Fraser’s deputy and Trade Minister.

Australian officials tend to parallel his judgments. In spite of reports that Mr Hawke and Mr Lange did not get on well at the recent South Pacific Forum meeting, and though Mr Hawke has spelled out Australia’s preference for the maintenance of A.N.Z.U.S. they point out, both he and his Foreign Minister have been careful not to cast themselves as intermediaries between New Zealand and the United States.

“There’s probably a feeling that resolution of that outstanding problem means there will be one less problem to deal with,” says one senior officer.

“There’s a determination on both sides of the Tasman that the relationship should be enhanced during the terms of the Labour Governments on the two sides of the Tasman,” he suggested, adding quickly that it would be “pragmatic” in its effect: “We are not going to give them handouts.” In particular, Australian officials are sensitive to New Zealand’s prosecution of projects, like expansion of its steel industry that, unlike energy development, they see as both economically questionable, and counter to Australian interests. (Sir Laurie, by contrast, recalls with pleasure how the protests of the Fraser Government were brushed off by Mr Muldoon). In Canberra, the main ripple over the last few years in development of the “unique” trans-Tas-man relationship is seen as having been the Muldoon Government’s interpretation of the Gleneagles Agreement on sporting links with South Africa, which impinged on Australia's over-all diplomacy in Africa. The Lange Government’s election is seen to have removed this impediment. Over-all, the unofficial view of officials here is not so very different from Sir Laurie’s: certainly no-one sees a political merger as a practical agenda item during the present century. “I think we will remain two countries,” says one, philosophically, “but, if we keep going down the present track, we will end up being effectively one country. The question of political union is of secondary importance.”