Sweetening The Deal: Why Are The Aussies Suddenly Being Nice To Their Kiwi Mates?

Welcome Back, Cobber: Is it possible that Anthony Albanese’s limited concessions on New Zealanders’ access to Australian citizenship are intended to act as a sweetener for the wholesale diplomatic, military, economic and cultural realignments that New Zealand signing-on to AUKUS would portend? If so, then the aftertaste of Albanese’s Anzac ice-lolly may prove to be extremely bitter.

LET’S GET SOMETHING STRAIGHT, right from the start, Australia is still discriminating against New Zealanders. They’re making it a lot quicker and easier for Kiwis to become Aussie citizens, which is great, so – “Thanks, Cobber!” – but, that’s all they’re doing.

An Aussie, crossing the Tasman, is guaranteed instant residence here and can apply for permanent resident status after just two years. Permanent residents, in New Zealand, get to enjoy pretty much the same rights and privileges as full New Zealand citizens. They can vote, they have full access to health and education services, they can get the dole. About the only thing a permanent resident can’t do is stand for public office. That right is reserved for citizens alone.

When the new regime announced by Australia’s Labor PM, Anthony Albanese, on 21 April 2023 comes into effect on 1 July, however, a Kiwi crossing the Tasman will still not be allowed to vote or access much of the Lucky Country’s education, health and welfare services. Yes, after four years, and providing they keep their nose clean, Kiwis will become eligible for Australian citizenship. But, until that threshold is reached, New Zealanders across the ditch will continue to remain worse off than their Australian counterparts over here.

To understand why the Australians moved away from the full reciprocation of benefits provided for in the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement of 1973, it is necessary to refresh our historical memories.

In February 2001, the conservative Australian government, led by Prime Minister John Howard, was struggling to turn back boatloads of illegal immigrants desperate to settle in Australia. Sensitised by what he saw as these unrelenting challenges to his country’s borders, and conscious of the potential cost of what amounted to uncontrolled immigration from New Zealand, Howard strong-armed the New Zealand Government into a new bilateral social security arrangement with New Zealand, and amended citizenship laws for New Zealand citizens. The Special Category Visa (SCV) set up for New Zealanders in 1994, was transformed, practically overnight, into a bureaucratic mechanism for keeping Kiwis in a state of permanent impermanence. They could check-in any time they liked to Australia, but they could never arrive.

In late August of 2001, the Australian Government’s intolerance of uncontrolled immigration went up several notches in response to the MV Tampa affair. An important aspect of the political crisis kicked off by the Tampa was the Howard Government’s attempt to secure the urgent passage of the Border Protection Bill. This legislative initiative would have granted draconian powers to Australia’s border authorities to turn back illegal immigrants. Although rejected by the Australian Senate, the bill nevertheless revealed the lengths to which the Liberal and National parties were prepared to go to “Stop the Boats” and “Keep Australia Safe”. This drive for enhanced national security was super-charged by the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Certainly, there is no disputing the role played by the Tampa and 9/11 in securing the Howard Government’s re-election in October 2001.

Nor should we forget the role played by the New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark, in the Tampa affair, one which left a bitter taste in conservative Australian mouths. While the world was condemning Howard’s brutal handling of the Tampa refugees, it was heaping praise on Clark for her offer to settle 150 of them in New Zealand. Aussie politicians and public servants saw this as yet another example of “the bloody Kiwis” making themselves look good at Australia’s expense.

The Bali Bombing of October 2002 only reinforced the Australian Government’s conviction that their draconian controls over immigration and Australian citizenship were justified. Thanks to Bali, the Bush Administration’s War On Terror instantly became Australia’s war. As far as Howard’s Government was concerned, Australia could not be too careful in determining who should become a citizen – and who should not.

The refusal of “the bloody Kiwis” to join their Anzac brothers in the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, did nothing to dispel the growing conviction on the Australian Right that, in spite of all their protestations to the contrary, New Zealanders were no longer Australia’s best friends.

Best friends do not rat on their mates by legislating for a nuclear-free New Zealand. They do not dismantle the air-combat wing of their air force and generally allow their armed forces to become a bad military joke. Best friends do not boast about their “independent foreign policy” – thereby delivering a not very subtle rebuke to Australia’s decision to become Uncle Sam’s “deputy sheriff”. Nor do they suck-up to the Chinese so assiduously that Beijing declines to impose anything like the punitive economic restrictions it has slapped on Australian exports.

The role played by racism in Australia’s response to New Zealand immigration is difficult to overestimate. Most Australians will not hesitate to sing the praises of white New Zealand migrants, they are, however, considerably less voluble when it comes to Māori and Pasifika arrivals. These brown Kiwis are the ones disproportionately deported under Section 501 of the Migration Act. They are the “trash” the Liberal Party’s Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, boasted about “taking out” two years ago. The risk that naturalised New Zealanders from India, the Middle East and Africa might take advantage of the SCV rules to circumvent Australia’s strict immigration laws is another of the unacknowledged rationales for clamping-down on the Kiwis back in 2001.

How, then, to explain Albanese’s promised relaxation of the rules controlling New Zealand immigration? After all, Howard’s decisive victory in 2001 had convinced the Labor Party that taking anything other than a hard line on immigration policy was electoral suicide. Neither Kevin Rudd, nor Julia Gillard, both Labor prime-ministers, were willing to budge on the state of limbo into which the highly-restrictive 2001 SCVs had cast nearly half-a-million Kiwi ex-pats. What brought on Albanese’s Damascene conversion?

Could it be that Australia is simply hungry for New Zealand’s best and brightest? As in the rest of the West, shortages of highly-skilled labour are becoming critical in Australia. It is entirely possible that the harsh conditions imposed back in 2001 are making it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain the talented Kiwis they need?

Poaching our best and brightest may not, however, be the worst of it. New Zealand’s refusal to come to terms with the new Indo-Pacific geo-strategic environment is bothering people in Washington, London and Canberra. It’s even beginning to bother some people in Wellington.

Helen Clark’s “benign strategic environment” of 20 years ago is long gone, and it is becoming ever clearer that New Zealand will very soon have to pick a side in the intensifying rivalry between the USA and China. New Zealand’s “traditional allies” want it to join the new AUKUS alliance – even if poking such a sharp stick at China entails abandoning the country’s Nuclear Free Zone status, and topples New Zealand into a profound economic crisis.

Is it possible that Albanese’s limited concessions on citizenship are intended to act as a sweetener for the wholesale diplomatic, military, economic and cultural realignments that New Zealand signing-on to AUKUS would portend? If so, then the aftertaste of Albanese’s Anzac ice-lolly may prove to be extremely bitter.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website of Monday, 24 April 2023.

Unreliable Sources.

Alarmist Images: As part of the Australian Government's effort to undermine Jacinda Ardern's outreach to Manus Island refugees, Australian Intelligence (oxymoron?) sources claim to have recorded a "spike" in people smugglers' attempts to land asylum seekers on Australian shores. These claims have been illustrated with images of boat-people headed for "Newsland". Few of those absorbing these images will realise they are 7 years old!

IS IT REAL NEWS, or fake news? In the end, it all comes down to sources. The people and the institutions we most trust, are the people and the institutions we most believe.

For those who lived through the Second World War, the words “London calling! London calling!”, which prefaced the BBC World Service’s news broadcasts, signalled accuracy, reliability and dignity in a world awash with bombastic propaganda.

President Donald Trump’s followers place their faith in the “fair and balanced” reporting of Fox News. His opponents rely on the Washington Post, whose intrepid reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, covered the Watergate break-in and contributed to the fall of President Richard Nixon.

Why were Woodward and Bernstein so sure of their ground? Because their most valuable anonymous source – “Deep Throat” – was none other than Mark Felt, the Associate-Director of the FBI! Good sources make for good stories. The rule is as old as journalism.

What, then, should we make of the latest stories, sourced to “Australian Intelligence”, of a “spike” in the number of “boat people” intercepted en route to Australia and, allegedly, New Zealand? Are such reports to be taken seriously? And should the National Party Opposition really be using them as a stick against Jacinda Ardern’s handling of the Manus Island refugee crisis? Just how good a look is it to rely upon leaks from a foreign government, in order to have a crack at your own?

The first thing to observe about these “intelligence” leaks is that they shouldn’t be happening. Just recall the repeated, blank-faced refusals of Helen Clark and John Key to share even the tiniest scraps of “operational” intelligence with the New Zealand news media. Even when the details of New Zealand’s involvement in special forces operations overseas were published in foreign newspapers, the politicians remained tight-lipped. As for the directors of our own intelligence agencies: the SIS and the GCSB; their mouths appear to have been sewn shut!

Which can only mean that “Australian Intelligence” is leaking information to the Australian and New Zealand news media under instruction and on purpose. Which immediately raises the question: What can that purpose be?

Before we attempt to answer that question, however, there are one or two other things to note about these Australian Intelligence-sourced stories. The most important of these is a disturbing lack of detail. Apart from the improbably precise figure of 164 intercepted asylum seekers, New Zealanders have been given precious little in the way of incontrovertible evidence.

The Royal Australian Navy and its Coast Guard are equipped with multiple video cameras to record any and every interception in Australian waters. If a small flotilla of “boat people” had indeed put to sea, inspired by Jacinda Ardern’s international displays of compassion, then it would be a straightforward matter to release the video recordings of its interception to the news media. What better way to make the Aussie Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s case, than to record an asylum seeker naming New Zealand’s prime minister as the reason she and her children are risking their lives in a leaky boat?

What we have been shown, instead, is a seven-year-old photograph showing Sri Lankan refugees displaying a sign which reads: “We like to go to NEWSLAND.” Interesting, but hardly relevant to the situation in 2018!

This promiscuous mixing of dated imagery, emotive language, and uncorroborated assertion is almost always evidence of an unreliable source. Which raises, once again, the question of whether or not there is any method to the Australians’ madness? Why is the Turnbull Government persisting in its attacks on New Zealand’s new prime minister?

The most probable cause of this spike in Australian pique is the deteriorating situation on Manus Island. There, the already deplorable conditions into which hundreds of male asylum-seekers were pitched, following the forcible closure of the New Guinea government-owned (but Australian government-controlled) detention centre, have continued to deteriorate.

The Turnbull Government’s latest leaks would, therefore, appear to be pre-emptive in intent. If Manus erupts in riotous violence, attracting global scrutiny and condemnation, as well as a reiteration of New Zealand’s willingness to take at least 150 of the refugees trapped on the island, then the Liberal-National Government has primed its trans-Tasman soulmates in the National Party to step forward and entertain Kiwi voters with “Australian Intelligence’s” grim fairy tales.

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 26 January 2018.

Is Australia Sending Us A Message?

The Friendly Face Of Australia: In a newspaper advertisement published across the Middle East, Lieutenant General Angus Campbell bluntly informs seaborne refugees that they will not make Australia home. So visceral is Australia's fear of "boat people" that it has proved willing to erode its own and its Pacific neighbours' democratic rights in order to "defend the borders". Not even the strong historical relationship with New Zealand has escaped the Australians' exclusionist madness.

 

THE NEW ZEALAND GOVERNMENT puts the number of Kiwis incarcerated in Australian detention centres at 184. Seventy-five of those detained deportees are being held in the isolated detention facility on Christmas Island. This lonely spec of Australian territory rises out of the Indian Ocean 2,608 kilometres north of Perth and 2,748 kilometres west of Darwin. If everybody had their own, Christmas Island would be part of Indonesia – from whose shores it is separated by just 500 kilometres.

 

That’s the whole point, of course. Christmas Island’s proximity to the Indonesian coast made it the obvious forward staging point in Australia’s long-running battle against refugees making for Australia in boats.

 

These “boat people” bring out the very worst in Australians. A visceral hatred of “Asians” that erupts from somewhere deep in the Aussie psyche. A primal fear, perhaps, of being over-run and destroyed – just as the First Peoples of Australia were over-run and destroyed by the progeny of Mother England. Australia’s bad conscience is projected onto these terrified human-beings. “Real” Australians see hordes of “illegal migrants” headed for the Lucky Country, and imagine it being swamped under a tsunami of unwanted brown and yellow flesh.

 

Not that there’s any shortage of dark primal secrets for the Aussie psyche to project. Like the genteelly named “Sunday Hunts”. Those still unacknowledged campaigns of genocidal murder that, in grim historical anticipation of the Nazis best efforts to render Eastern Europe “Juden Frei”, emptied the squatters’ sprawling estates of unwanted Aboriginals. Remembering, too, the “Blackbirders” of the early 1900s. Those sea captains and their brutal crews who raided the islands of Melanesia, carrying off hundreds of men and boys to slave in the sugar plantations of Northern Queensland. Oh yes, there’s much more than just the “White Australia Policy” to lay at our Aussie “cousins’” door.

 

It would be funny if it wasn’t all so squalid and so sad. A nation founded on the brutal policy of exiling another nation’s “criminal classes” to a far off land on the other side of the world, rounding up their own “convicts” and exiling them to another country of which they know next to nothing. Forty years ago, to be descended from a convict was something an Australian would happily boast about. Proof that even the most wretched of human-beings has something worthwhile to pass down the generations. That the only thing distinguishing the Squatters from the Convicts was that the former’s crimes almost always went unpunished.

 

But that’s not the way they look at things in Australia’s electorally decisive suburbs. They don’t want to know about their country’s history, and see nothing worth celebrating in its egalitarian traditions. Tragically, the suburbs’ grasping materialism, withered social values, unreconstructed racism and xenophobia has become the Royal Road to electoral success. This brutal fact has made cowards out of virtually the entire Australian political class. To the point where “stop the boats” has become the touchstone of electability for both the Liberal and Labour parties.

 

The big problem with this bi-partisan “stop the boats” policy, is that it is utterly incompatible with democratic norms and values (not to mention in complete contravention of a multitude of international laws and treaties). It’s why the “boat people” had to be moved to places offshore where the protection of Australia’s laws was no longer available. Hence John Howard’s “Pacific Solution” – a sort of “blackbirding” in reverse.

 

Papua-New Guinea’s Manus Island presented less of a problem for the Australian authorities than the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru. As a former colony of Australia, Papua-New Guinea has yet to free itself from the corruption choking practically every institution inherited from its colonial masters. Nauru, on the other hand, is a powerless and impoverished statelet for which not only Australia, but the UK and New Zealand, have long-standing responsibilities. Australia’s corruption of Nauru would be harder to hide.

 

Is it merely coincidence that the arrival of the first Kiwis at Christmas Island coincided with New Zealand’s insistence that the independence and probity of Nauru’s justice system (which New Zealand funds) be fully restored? Australia knows that its Pacific Solution cannot exist alongside functioning courts and democratic institutions. Has New Zealand’s courageous defence of the rule of law in Nauru thrown a spanner in the works? Is the rising number of detained Kiwi citizens some sort of message?

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 2 October 2015.