15
Australia and New Zealand
Parallel and Divergent Paths
Keith Rankin
The thesis of Australia’s exceptionalism contends that Australia has a distinct-
ive social, economic, and political history, which has created an informal yet
confident strategic personality, and forged a distinctive development path
reflecting a political culture of pragmatic interventionist government. Has
New Zealand conformed to this Australian path? Has it, in fact, originated
aspects of such a path? Or has New Zealand deviated from Australia’s course?
Is New Zealand exceptionally exceptional?
Australian political exceptionalism is commonly linked to the develop-
ment roles of ‘the state’ (and the ‘states’), and to early working-class
assertiveness. Australia emerged from thefinancial, economic, and drought
crises of the 1890s with a Commonwealth government that presided
over a national‘settlement’, which Castles (1985, p.8) has called‘working-
class welfare’. The political narrative in New Zealand, in contrast, has
revolved less around the juxtaposition of labour and capital, and more
around equitable land settlement and income security. New Zealand,
which defederated well before Australia federated, arguably exceeded
Australia in its levels of economic intervention. Several aspects of a
trans-Tasman exceptionalism were pioneered in New Zealand, through
nationalism expressed within a British imperial geopolity, through the
use of government to substantially modify resource allocation and distri-
bution (albeit within a general commitment to classical political economy),
through visions of‘utopian’improvement, and through the early adoption
of social security measures.