Dave Gee: Life from Right Field

It's great to see an Australian parliamentary committee is encouraging Australia and New Zealand to work together towards a full union... or to at least adopt a single currency, and have more common markets.

Committee chairman Peter Slipper says, "This is not an attempt to annex New Zealand, or have a compulsory takeover... Any change would have to be voluntary and mutually beneficial."

New Zealand - population around 4.1 million (less than even Sydney) - actually used to be administered as a part of the colony of New South Wales.

New Zealand became a separate colony in 1840, the capital moving from Okiato to Auckland to the more central Wellington, after political concerns the South Island would form a separate colony when gold was discovered in Central Otago.

The Australian committee wants to see a closer relationship between the six ocker colonies, and the lone colony in the deep south, and is calling for a joint committee between the Australian and New Zealand parliaments to investigate the possibilities.

Labour's Finance Minister, Dr Micky Cullen has rejected any suggestion of New Zealand adopting the Australian currency... although he hasn't been quite as dismissive of the idea of an Anzac currency or adopting the US dollar.

And in an exclusive interview with LFRF, PM Hillin Cluck said, "I don't rucken ut'll hippin. Nu Zuhlind us the bust countray un the wehld, end we won't consudah joinung Austrahliah fur et least sux or siven years".

Let's face it, the Aussie accent isn't quite as bad as the Kiwi one, and the two countries flags look pretty much identical.

If we joined Australia as a new state, our sports news would be filled with happier stories about our national cricket team, basketball team, football team, and swimming stars. (We could just agree to ignore that Aussie Rules game down here ;-)

Hat tip to...
* Radar blog: Stay where you are, New Zealand, we're taking over