Across the Tasman: swallowing Kiwis

We’ve always regarded our cousins across the Tasman as ever-so-polite. Behind all that Haka bravado is a nation of SNAKs (Sensitive New Age Kiwis) renowned for being so laid-back they’re horizontal.

But now a mob of Aussie Parliamentarians want to change all that. They made a pre-Christmas pronouncement from Canberra that will have the Kiwistanis throwing off their SNAK veneer and exclaiming, in unison, three words beginning with the letters w***, t** and f*** respectively.

In December it was reported that a bi-partisan Australian Parliamentary Committee recommended that Australia and New Zealand consider merging into one country.

Seriously.

The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal & Constitutional Affairs (LACA) has decided that harmonising Australia and New Zealand’s legal systems wouldn’t be such a bad idea. It concluded our two countries have had a uniquely close relationship stemming from historical factors such as New Zealand being one of seven British colonies in Australasia prior to Australian Federation in 1901.

Now, of course, I could suggest that the Kiwi insistence on going it alone arose because they preferred sheep to kangaroos. But that would be very nasty of me, and might even risk rupturing what the LACA Committee describes as “the strong ties between the two countries - the economic, cultural, migration, defence, governmental and people-to-people linkages - suggest[ing] that an even closer relationship, including the possibility of union, is both desirable and realistic.”

Then again, a merger might be just what us wild West Islanders (it takes time getting used to this terminology) need. Things haven’t been going well for us in recent times. I’m sure Kevin Rudd wouldn’t knock back some of Helen Clark’s political luck. Maybe “Aunty Hilun” could take over and lead the ALP to victory against the hitherto invincible Howard.

I doubt whether a Kiwistani agricultural board would have been caught out paying secret bribes to Saddam Hussein. And the way things are going, our tourism advertisements have been consigned to the deepest depths of bloody hell.

Let’s be honest. There are plenty of examples of Australia and New Zealand having close cultural ties. Fair-dinkum, true-blue Aussie musicians like the Finn brothers and Russell Crowe love touring Kiwistan at every available opportunity. Rumours surfacing in pubs across Bondi have it that they may have even purchased property there.

We Aussies could also do with Kiwis running our beaches. I doubt there’d be race riots at Cronulla if the place was inundated with SNAKs sharing fush “n” chups with the locals. Certainly we’d have fewer shark fatalities if we had Kiwis patrolling our coasts.

Aussie sport isn’t the best either, notwithstanding the Ashes. Although I love wearing my Wallabies jersey when appearing on NZ television, I’ll admit that our Rugby players aren’t all that crash-hot with traditional war dances or tackling All Blacks.

On the positive side, there is plenty the Kiwis could learn from us. There’s no doubt our journalists compensate for our Rugby players in the tackling department. I mean, just last week, one of Rupert Murdoch’s scribes decided to practise his tackling skills at the otherwise sleepy annual Walkley awards. The poor intoxicated offender blamed his migraine pills for colliding with his alcohol, forcing him to collide with Crikey founder Stephen Mayne and push him off the stage.

Murdoch’s company has refused to sack the offending journalist, instead opting for “internal” discipline. And we all know why. Mayne’s antics at News Limited AGMs - asking Murdoch curly questions - have probably led to other staff at the corporation wanting to mix alcohol with migraine pills also.

Which brings me to another reason why all those Kiwistanis should favourably consider any Australian merger proposal: I’m sure they’d love having huge chunks of their print media and TV owned by an American citizen. Imagine having virtually each and every newspaper editorial and columnist calling for Helen Clark to send Kiwi troops to Iraq (or whichever hot spot on the other side of the planet the Americans target next for “regime change”).

The LACA Committee wants the Australian Parliament to invite the New Zealand Parliament to establish a committee to work towards harmonisation of our legal systems. It then makes this incisive observation: “The merger of Australia and New Zealand or the progression to a unitary system of government in Australia, however desirable, might not be easy to achieve.”

You don’t say? But the report gets better.

“Australia and New Zealand should also consider introducing a common currency.”

I think this makes perfect cents. Every time I cross the Tasman, the shrapnel situation confuses the hell out of me. Why? Because for some weird reason, our $2 coin is smaller than our $1 coin - but with the Kiwis’ it’s the other way around.

This is almost as stupid as having a $2 coin smaller than 50 cent and 20 cent coins.

Clearly, our countries have so much in common already - sharing a currency is but a small step!

And so, my fellow Australians, I urge you to support in this grand cross-Tasman merger project. Let’s extend the Sydney Harbour Bridge eastward. Let’s build a light rail to Auckland. Let us join with our Kiwistani cousins to create the world’s first South Pacific superpower.

And if the Kiwistanis are reluctant, let’s remind them of the words of their former tribal chief Robert “Piggy” Muldoon who once explained that increasing the number of Kiwi migrants to Australia would only raise the average IQ of both our nations!