Transcript
TAHS
Australia and NZ
MĀNI: Today we’re casting ourselves back into history. Far back, many, many years ago.
Back to when William Ray was in his early 20s.
WILLIAM: The year is 2012 and William has just landed in London as part of his big OE. He starts up a conversation with some fellow tourists.
“That’s a funny accent, where are you from?” one American asks.
“New Zealand” William replies.
“New Zealand?” the American says “that’s part of Australia, right?”
A lot of New Zealanders have had this experience, and it can be kinda frustrating … But have you ever stopped to think, why isn’t Aotearoa part of Australia?
MĀNI: We’ve got a lot in common, right?
WILLIAM: Britain colonised both places.
MĀNI: Both countries have gone to war side by side.
WILLIAM: We share a lot of the same slang and our accents aren’t all that different.
MĀNI: We enjoy playing many of the same sports … well… most of the time.
WILLIAM: …And heaps of New Zealanders and Australians have relatives on each side of the ditch.
MĀNI: And you know what? At one point we actually did consider joining up as part of Australia.
WILLIAM: So in this episode, we’re gonna look at the history we’ve made with our mates across the ditch.
STING
MĀNI: So if you go way, way back, Aotearoa and Australia were literally joined together. Part of the supercontinent Gondwana.
The land that would one day become New Zealand split off from Gondwana about 85 million years ago and sailed off into the South Pacific.
WILLIAM: For tens of millions of years the only trans-tasman travellers were migratory birds, fish and marine mammals.
MĀNI: As we mention in our episode on the first 500 years of Māori history, some East Polynesian ancestors of Māori may have reached the east coast of Australia - but if they did they didn’t stick around long.
WILLIAM: It was several hundred years before the next humans would cross Te Tai-O-Rehua, later also named the Tasman Sea.
MĀNI: The Tasman Sea got that name from Abel Tasman - a Dutch explorer who sighted both New Zealand and Tasmania in 1642.
WILLIAM: Tasmania by the way: Also named after Abel Tasman.
MĀNI: 125 years later, French and British expeditions carried out more extensive explorations of the South Pacific - and a few decades after that, colonisation got underway..
On January 26 1788, eleven ships landed at Botany Bay in New South Wales, where they established the first of several convict settlements.
WILLIAM: Deporting convicts to Australia was seen as a win/win - Britain’s jails were overflowing, and the industrial revolution was causing intense social pressure..
emptied out its overflowing jails, and got hold of natural resources using cheap labour.
WILLIAM: Once the convicts had done the hard work of establishing a foothold on the frontier, wealthier free settlers could come over too.
MĀNI: The largest convict settlement was Port Jackson - now better known as Sydney.
Sydney quickly became a hub for contact between Aotearoa and the wider world.
WILLIAM: Māori were vital trading partners for Australian colonists, providing flax, food and timber in exchange for clothing, iron tools, and eventually muskets.
MĀNI: More than a few Māori made their way across the ditch themselves - mostly as crew on sailing ships.
WILLIAM: And these voyagers didn’t just meet European colonists in Sydney, they also came into contact with Australia’s indigenous peoples.
MĀNI: There are very few records of these interactions, but British observers often claimed Māori visitors were dismissive of Indigenous Australian culture...
For example when the Ngāpuhi rangatira Te Pahi visited Sydney in 1805 Governor Phillip Gidley King said he expressed…
“...utmost abhorrence of [Indigenous Australians] going naked, and their want of ingenuity or inclination to procure food [through European style agriculture].”
While the Sydney Gazette reported that Te Pahi…
“...regarded with contempt their warfare.”
WILLIAM: But as Australian historian Rachel Standfield points out, we can’t necessarily take these quotes at face value…
“These comments were included in colonial sources precisely because they were negative, helping to justify colonisation and dispossession in the Australian context …. We cannot know how genuine, or representative, these mediated comments are…”
MĀNI: What is clear is that many Māori recognised Indigenous Australians were suffering due to colonisation and were anxious to avoid the same fate.
WILLIAM: For example, during the debate over the singing of the Treaty of Waitangi Makoare Te Taonui of Ngāpuhi said:
“We want no Governor; we will be our own Governor. How do the Pākehās behave to the black fellows of Port Jackson? They treat them like dogs!”
MĀNI: The fact that all this trans-Tasman contact kicked off about 50 years before the arrival of large numbers of European colonists in Aotearoa was absolutely critical for Māori.
WILLIAM: By the time the Treaty was signed in 1840, many Māori had learned to speak English, they knew how to use and defend themselves against firearms, and they had an understanding of British culture and worldviews - including their attitudes towards indigenous people.
MĀNI: Some 19th century Europeans viewed some non-white people as under-developed branches of humanity. However, others were described as subhuman - even different species altogether.
WILLIAM: Where different indigenous people ranked in this order of things was shaped by how similar they were to the British.
MĀNI: Many Brits saw a lot of themselves in Māori - both societies had settled agriculture, defined property rights, social hierarchies.
WILLIAM: On the other hand many Brits thought they had little in common with Indigenous Australians. As historian Denis McLean puts it:
“Europeans could not come to terms with the elusive, spiritual basis of Aboriginal life and culture. Nomadic ways without settled villages and agriculture, were interpreted as … a mark of a lower order of civilisation, rather than a subtle adaptation to a harsh environment.”
MĀNI: As we explained in our earlier episode on the Native Land Court the British only recognised indigenous ownership of land if it was used in ways that made sense to them: Growing crops, raising domesticated animals, building permanent structures to mark boundaries.
So while the Brits did assert that much of Aotearoa was “wasteland”, they accepted that swathes of it belonged to Māori.
WILLIAM: Australia on the other hand was outright considered “Terra Nullius”, that’s Latin for “land without an owner”.
Indigenous Australians who contested their land rights were often killed, including through mass poisoning and shootings.
MĀNI: As Australian History Professor John Molony wrote:
“...by the 1830s … a hardening of attitudes to the Aborigines meant their virtual extermination in [Tasmania] and their decimation along the eastern seaboard.”
WILLIAM: While race relations were taking different shapes in both countries, at the same time shipping and trade links were bringing us closer together.
So much so that, in 1831 the Governor of New South Wales had his authority expanded to include British subjects in Aotearoa - including hundreds of convicts who’d made their home here.
MĀNI: The next year a British official called James Busby, was sent across from New South Wales to the Bay of Islands to try and control British subjects - who’d been causing trouble in places as far apart as Northland and Banks Peninsula.
WILLIAM: But Busby was “a man o’ war without guns” - he had no troops to enforce his orders.
MĀNI: The best he could do was arrange legal protection for Māori-owned trading ships operating in Australia and help organise He Whakaputanga, the Declaration of Independence, to discourage the French from annexing these islands.
WILLIAM: British authorities were doing their best to leave New Zealand to its own devices - they had plenty to keep themselves busy elsewhere in their empire. But it was getting harder and harder to turn a blind eye…
MĀNI: Increasing numbers of Australian colonists were relocating here - especially after Britain stopped sending convict ships, and Aussie sheep farmers could no longer exploit the cheap labour.
As historian Keith Sinclair pointed out…
“As the Australian pastoral industry fell on hard times in the 1830s squatters and would-be squatters began to turn to New Zealand in search of land where they might prosper temporarily free from licence fees and variable taxes on their flocks. Almost every ship crossing the Tasman Sea brought land-hungry passengers from New South Wales.”
WILLIAM: Around the same time, many former whalers from Sydney were crossing the ditch to become farmers.
MĀNI: Plus, by 1839, the New Zealand Company was preparing to send a fleet of colonists to Aotearoa direct from Britain.
WILLIAM: Something had to be done.
MĀNI: That something was the Treaty of Waitangi - and if you want to know about some of the twists and turns behind that document, please check out our episode from season one..
WILLIAM: From 1840 onwards the formal colonisation of Aotearoa was underway, and early British settlements in New Zealand remained closely linked to those in Australia, in all sorts of ways.
MĀNI: There was no “New Zealand” or “Australia” as we think of them today. Until late in the 19th century Europeans viewed all the colonies on both sides of the Tasman Sea as a whole - what some called “Australasia”, literally “South of Asia”.
WILLIAM: Colonists didn’t often call themselves “Australians” or “New Zealanders” - they mostly just called themselves “colonists”.
MĀNI: And through the second half of the 19th century, trans-Tasman connection, trade and migration only got more intense.
WILLIAM: Thousands of colonists rushed from New Zealand to Victoria to hunt for gold in 1851.
MĀNI: Then they, along with hordes of Aussie diggers, jumped back across the Tasman for the Otago gold rush ten years later. It’s estimated about two thirds of the Otago gold miners came from Australia.
WILLIAM: When a series of droughts hammered South Australia in the mid-1860s, many farmers came to Aotearoa literally looking for greener pastures.
MĀNI: At the same time, the New Zealand Wars were being fought, and some came from Australian colonies to join the British military.
WILLIAM: Then, when New Zealand was smacked by the Long Depression in the 1880s, hundreds left to work in Melbourne, which was enjoying a construction boom.
MĀNI: Migrants from Australia were critical for the development of modern Aotearoa.
WILLIAM: Aussie sheep farmers, for example, brought know-how and capital which was severely lacking in New Zealand in the 1860s.
MĀNI: Australian gold diggers brought a more anti-authoritarian worldview - partly influenced by their convict heritage and the sometimes brutal policing of Victorian goldfields.
That worldview heavily influenced early left-wing political organisations in Aotearoa - like the union movement, parts of the Liberal Party, and the Labour Party.
WILLIAM: Many of the founding figures in these movements came from across the ditch, including Liberal Party premiers Richard Seddon and Joseph Ward, and our first Labour Prime Minister - Michael Joseph Savage.
MĀNI: Ward and Savage were both born in Victoria. And it worked both ways with many Australian politicians having New Zealand backgrounds.
WILLIAM: But towards the end of the 19th century New Zealand politicians were faced with a big decision. Should they tighten New Zealand’s links with Australia, or go their own way?
MĀNI: Some context: by the 1870s Australian colonists were looking at forming a federation - bringing their six colonies together into a single unified entity - the Commonwealth of Australia.
And they asked New Zealand if we wanted to be part of this federation - which made sense, given the way British New Zealand had grown out of British Australia.
WILLIAM: Kiwi politicians thought about federation, and then said… yeah nah. Not for us, thanks.
MĀNI: Why? Well there were a bunch of reasons:
First, self interest.
The last thing New Zealand politicians like Premier Richard Seddon wanted was to give up power to a federal government across the Tasman.
WILLIAM: As this cartoon shows, he wanted to row his own boat, not crew on a big ship.
MĀNI: But there were less cynical reasons to oppose federation.
The most obvious was distance. When former Premier Sir John Hall spoke at a conference on potential federation in 1890, he said.
“Nature has made 1,200 impediments to the inclusion of New Zealand in any such federation in the 1,200 miles of stormy ocean which lies between us and our brethren in Australia … Democratic government must be a government not only for the people, and by the people, but … must be in sight and within hearing of the people.”
WILLIAM: And by the way, Western Australia wrestled with much the same issue given how far they would be from the new capital on the other side of the continent.
MĀNI: Another big factor was trade.
WILLIAM: In 1890 the Australian colonies traded extensively with each other. Between 28 and 83 percent of each colony's exports went to another Aussie colony.
But New Zealand sent less than 17 percent of its exports to Australia at the time.
MĀNI: So Kiwi exporters weren’t all that anxious about being left out of potential internal trade agreements in a new unified Australia.
WILLIAM: In many ways Pākehā in New Zealand felt closer to Britain anyway.
One fun stat underlying that point is that per capita, New Zealand sent more letters back to Britain than any of the Australian colonies.
MĀNI: So it probably wasn’t surprising when most submissions to a New Zealand Royal Commission in 1901 opposed federation.
WILLIAM: Maybe the biggest reason we didn’t join up with Australia though, was nationalism: the idea that New Zealand had a distinct - maybe even superior - national character to the colonies of Australia.
MĀNI: Now that might seem a bit strange given we’re still in a time when many Pākehā referred to themselves as British rather than as New Zealanders.
But many early New Zealand nationalists saw themselves as “Better British”.
WILLIAM: After all their colonies had been founded on grand ideals, with specially selected migrants - whereas the first Australian colonies had been founded as open air jails.
MĀNI: It’s kind of all summed up in this cartoon which was published in October 1900.
Over on the left we have New Zealand depicted as a beautiful white woman. On the right is a big hairy ogre wearing shackles - representing New South Wales.
WILLIAM: According to the caption below the ogre is saying “Come into my arms”, while New Zealand replies: “Nay, sir, those arms bear chains”
MĀNI: And if you’re wondering about the other woman holding hands with New Zealand, she’s there to represent the other islands of the South Pacific.
WILLIAM: Part of that idea of Ogre Australia focused on the treatment of Maori.
MĀNI: Yeah, it was widely believed that federation would be bad news for Māori… and given the oppression of Indigenous Australians at the time, that was probably a fair assumption.
WILLIAM: Most New Zealand colonists thought their relations with Māori were superior to the way Australian colonists treated indigenous Australians.
And in part that came back to that idea of a hierarchy of races. Many white people on both sides of the Tasman believed that Māori were superior to Indigenous Australians.
MĀNI: For example, Australian politician King O’Malley argued that Māori should be able to vote in its federal elections - but not Indigenous Australians.
He said:
"An Aborigine is not as intelligent as a Māori. There is no scientific evidence that he is a human being at all."
WILLIAM: In fact, some New Zealand politicians claimed one of the reasons New Zealand colonists were better than their Aussie counterparts was because they came into contact with the “superior” Māori rather than “inferior” Indigenous Australians.
MĀNI: Some New Zealand nationalists even claimed they were superior to Australians cos of… the weather.
WILLIAM: Defence Minister Captain William Russell said New Zealand colonists had…
“...to struggle against a more boisterous climate than Australia.”
And in this struggle Captain Russell claimed kiwi colonists had shown…
“...self-denial to an extent of which the people of the Australian continent have no conception.”
MĀNI: Yeah… I mean what could Australians possibly know about dealing with a harsh natural environment.
WILLIAM: But as historian Philippa Mein Smith points out, this wasn’t an unusual idea at the time.
“Medical theories reinforced the popular belief that climate moulded character, and in New Zealand's eyes there was but one trajectory for Australians: Downwards, given the enervating effects of their tropical climate.”
MĀNI: And these theories of climate were linked to New Zealand's supposed destiny as a “white man’s paradise”.
Politicians like Captain Russell argued Northern parts of Australia were so inhospitable to Europeans that they could only be exploited by labourers brought in from places like South East Asia and Melanesia.
WILLIAM: New Zealand politicians and trade unionists were afraid federation might enable some of these non-white migrants to spread to Aotearoa.
MĀNI: So for all these reasons, Aotearoa turned down the opportunity to federate with Australia.
WILLIAM: But fun fact: There’s still a clause in the Australian constitution which says we can join up with them anytime we like. All we have to do is ask.
MĀNI: While we decided not to become Australia’s seventh state, we remained close to our trans-tasman cousins. In fact, it’s hard to think of two neighbouring countries with a closer relationship.
WILLIAM: For the last hundred years or so, the most important symbol of that connection has been the story of the Anzacs - the New Zealanders and Australians who fought side by side in the First World War.
MĀNI: Although when they arrived in Egypt on their way to the frontline, Kiwi and Aussie soldiers mostly ended up fighting each other. As historian Keith Sinclair noted:
“From the first there was ‘bad blood’ between New Zealanders and Australians. There was frequent trouble: [one anonymous New Zealand soldier said] ‘if we meet or see them in a restaurant or anywhere in town there is generally a row of some kind.’”
WILLIAM: This bad blood mostly evaporated once the Anzacs reached Gallipoli. After landing, one New Zealand soldier wrote that the Australians had:
“...covered themselves in glory … one would hardly know the Australian officers and men as the same men [who] were in Egypt haggling at one another.”
MĀNI: But not every Kiwi soldier or officer was willing to lose their prejudice against Australians.
Lieutenant-Colonel William Malone, the famous commander of New Zealand’s Wellington Battalion, repeatedly criticised Australian troops as “slack”.
In May 1915 he wrote that…
“It is a relief to get in where the war is being waged scientifically and where we are clear of the Australians. They swarm around our line like flies.”
WILLIAM: Historian Philippa Mein Smith suggests Malone’s comments reflect how the national myth of the Anzacs evolved differently in our two countries, and how the experience of the war helped emphasise the differences between Aussies and Kiwis.
“New Zealanders considered Aussies to be bumptious know-alls. Aussies saw Kiwis as too subservient to British military culture, and less independent than Australian larrikins.”
MĀNI: Despite those differences, the Anzac story is still remembered as a touchstone for Trans-Tasman solidarity.
WILLIAM: And the feelings of solidarity were strong at the time, just take a look at this Christmas Card from 1915
MĀNI: What’s less well remembered is how that solidarity was stretched during the next world war.
WILLIAM: When Japan launched its campaign in the Pacific in December 1941, New Zealand and Australia were caught flat-footed.
As members of the British Empire, both our armies were on the opposite side of the world, fighting the Germans and Italians in North Africa.
MĀNI: Australia immediately rushed many of its troops home to repel the Japanese, who were pushing south towards the Australian mainland.
WILLIAM: Over the course of the war Japan would launch more than a hundred air raids into northern Australia.
MĀNI: The largest was a major attack on Darwin Harbour in February 1942. More bombs were dropped in that raid than in the attack on Pearl Harbour, although far fewer people were killed.
WILLIAM: At first, New Zealand leaders suggested they’d bring our troops back to support Australia, but, under pressure from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, they changed their minds and kept the New Zealand division in North Africa.
MĀNI: The Australians were infuriated, they read this as New Zealand putting our relationship with Britain ahead of responsibilities in the Pacific.
WILLIAM: In 1943 Australian Prime Minister John Curtin told New Zealand PM Peter Fraser that…
“...if we had not insisted on the return of the [Australian Imperial Force], New Guinea would have been lost and we would now be fighting on the mainland of Australia. For every soldier New Zealand keeps away from the Pacific theatre either an Australian or an American has to fill his place.”
MĀNI: That criticism was understandable given the threat Australia faced, but the reality is this was a global conflict. Fraser could equally have said that every soldier Australia brought back from the European theatre meant another Kiwi, Brit, or Russian had to fill their place.
WILLIAM: Discussions about Tasman and Pacific security eventually evolved into the 1951 ANZUS Treaty - a mutual defence agreement between Australia, New Zealand and the United States.
MĀNI: The ANZUS treaty signalled a major change in the relationship Aotearoa and Australia had with Britain.
World War Two had made it clear neither country could rely on the empire to come to the rescue - instead they had to make their own independent alliances for military security.
WILLIAM: In doing so, Aotearoa and Australia haven’t exactly seen eye to eye on military issues.
MĀNI: One of the most common complaints from Australia is that we rely too heavily on them for military security - each Australian taxpayer contributes more than triple what each Kiwi taxpayer spends on defence.
WILLIAM: In 1986 New Zealand was suspended from ANZUS thanks to our Nuclear Free Policy, which effectively banned US warships from passing through our waters.
MĀNI: That policy infuriated the Australians, who once again saw us as jeopardising Trans-Tasman security.
WILLIAM: On the flipside, New Zealanders criticised Australians for linking too closely with the United States. That criticism was especially pointed when Australia joined the US and Britain in invading Iraq in 2003.
MĀNI: But it’s notable that’s the only time Australia has gone to war without New Zealand. Since 1950 our troops have been deployed side by side in all sorts of conflicts:
Korea, Vietnam, Solomon Islands, Malaysia, Bouganville, East Timor amongst others.
WILLIAM: Despite our disagreements, relations between Aotearoa and Australia have really only gotten closer since the 1950s, partly through migration.
MĀNI: About 70 thousand Aussies live here, while more than half a million Kiwis live over there, including one in every six Māori.
WILLIAM: Since the 1960s, it’s mostly been New Zealanders looking for opportunity in Australia rather than vice versa.
The idea of a trans-tasman “brain drain” has caused anxieties for this country ever since, although Prime Minister Robert Muldoon did his best to paper over them in the 1970s with his quip that New Zealanders who crossed the ditch “raised the IQs of both countries”.
MĀNI: Trans-tasman connection has been boosted by new technology.
The rise in air travel has allowed us to jet across the ditch in just a few hours. And the rise of TV and commercial radio allowed us to absorb more of each other’s cultures.
WILLIAM: Australians have become extremely fond of some New Zealand-born musicians, actors and even racehorses - like this lot.
So fond in fact, they’ve become convinced these famous Kiwis are, in fact, Australians.
MĀNI: And on the flipside, many kiwis can’t get enough Australian TV shows and sports leagues…
WILLIAM: And both countries love to face off on the sportsfield.
Crossing the Tasman to compete dates back to the 1850s for horse-racing. And throughout the rest of the 1800s the miners, whalers, missionaries and Māori who moved between both countries all took their sports with them.
MĀNI: New Zealand’s first international rugby and cricket matches were against Australian teams in the late 1800s and Australia was the destination for those code’s first tours.
Today, the sporting connections are bigger than ever. Professional sport in this country would struggle to exist without trans-Tasman competitions.
WILLIAM: Yeah, seven of New Zealand’s 10 most popular sports have had New Zealand teams playing in Australian competitions in recent years. And that doesn’t even include motor sport!
MĀNI: Australia and Aotearoa are known for our fierce rivalry… and it goes way back. In 1901 a joint bowls team called The Antipodeans toured Britain and the Kiwi members broke away to tour independently.
Sports historian Dr Geoff Watson says among the reasons given were a refusal to wear Aussie uniforms and be mixed with Australian players during games!
WILLIAM: But of course the most famous controversy was this moment in 1981 when Aussie bowler Trevor Chappell exploited a loophole in the rules of Cricket to bowl underarm so that kiwi batsman Brian McKechnie had no chance of hitting a match-winning six off the last ball.
MĀNI: Prime Minister Robert Muldoon described this as…
"....an act of true cowardice and I consider it appropriate that the Australian team were wearing yellow"
WILLIAM: But while Australian and New Zealand politicians have never lost votes by making fun of each other, it mostly is in good fun.
MĀNI: As well as cultural connections, we have also come together economically.
From the 1960s, both countries had to deal with the collapse of the world wool price, the final decline and dissolution of the British Empire, the UK’s economic reorientation towards Europe, and the rise of Asian economies.
WILLIAM: Partly in response to all of this, Aotearoa and Australia kicked off extensive trade and migration negotiations. This ultimately resulted in the Closer Economic Relations or “CER” agreement in 1983.
MĀNI: At the time this was probably the most comprehensive trade and immigration deal in the world.
WILLIAM: But the fact this deal is way better known on this side of the ditch is a sign of the power imbalance in our modern relations with Australia - economically speaking we need them more than they need us.
As of 2021 Australia was New Zealand’s second biggest trading partner, taking about 13 percent of our exports, whereas we’re Australia’s, sixth biggest, taking just 3 percent of their exports.
MĀNI: That imbalance has led to some frustrations - for example, up until 2022 Australia routinely deported people born in New Zealand if they were convicted of a crime, even if those people had lived in Australia for most of their lives.
And there was really nothing Kiwi politicians could do to reverse that policy.
WILLIAM: But despite tensions, diplomats on both sides of the Tasman are still working to bring us even closer together. Our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade describes the long term goal as:
“...creating a seamless trans-Tasman economic environment, making it as easy for New Zealanders to do business in Australia as it is to do business in and around New Zealand.”
MĀNI: So while Aotearoa hasn’t become the seventh state of Australia we are more interconnected than almost any other two countries you could think of.
WILLIAM: So, next time you’re chatting online with someone overseas, or having beers at a backpackers and someone asks, "aren’t New Zealand and Australia the same country?"
MĀNI: Don't rant about underarm bowling or who invented the pavlova.
WILLIAM: Just tell them "it's complicated". And then send them a link to this video!
