New Zealand generally complied with British wishes to accept Indians as
British subjects. Indeed, in the racial hierarchy of the day, Indians were
more‘Aryan’than Chinese. While immigration policy strongly favoured
Britons, an important special case was Pacific Polynesia, seen as New Zealand’s
own sub-imperial domain. Ethnic kinship with Maˉori exempted Polynesians
from some racial prejudice.
‘White Australia’was a unification project; creating a European bulwark
in an antipodean hemisphere of brown, yellow, and black. Australia’s nation-
alism has been more formal, more contrived, than that of New Zealand.
Australian citizenship became both a prized status and a set of formal respon-
sibilities. While voting eligibility was tight, it became compulsory to exercise
that right. Australia became a land of opportunity-seeking denizens amidst
privileged citizens. In the twenty-first century, a very large number of
those denizens are immigrants from New Zealand. Australian citizens, on
the other hand, continue to hold full residence rights in New Zealand.
While trans‑Tasman migration has always been sensitive to differences in
each country’s business cycle (Rankin 1992), immigration policy asymmetry
is a twenty-first-century phenomenon.
New Zealand’s‘big-four’banks are now entirely Australian-owned. And
since federation Sydney has remained an important cultural centre for New
Zealanders; a sort of London-lite (Fairburn 2008). Australian magazines were
always readily available and popular in New Zealand. Professional bodies
shared activities, though mostly in Australia. Entertainment exchanges con-
tinued through the twentieth century, from Nellie Melba’s tour in 1903, to
Kiri Te Kanawa’s visits to Australia towards the end of the century. Regular
visits to New Zealand of Australian circuses, such as Bullens, became part of
the fabric of New Zealand life in the 1950s and 1960s. Popular music bands,
such as Split Enz, sojourned in Australia. The‘Tasman World’was ongoing, in
reality, if not always in perception.
While general New Zealand news stories today seem conspicuous by their
absence in the Australian press, a random‘citing’of one country newspaper
((Rockhampton)Morning Bulletin, 1 July 1947) showed two New Zealand front
page stories. While sporting links were strong in some cases—rugby in par-
ticular—Australians chose not to play test cricket with New Zealand for many
decades,^33 despite New Zealand vying with the rest of the cricket-playing
empire. Horse racing, like rugby, was a significant shared activity, especially
through the Melbourne Cup and the Inter Dominion pacing championship.
New Zealand continues to be a nursery for Australian thoroughbreds. Carbine
(^33) The year 1973 was the second ever test match; 1974 the year of New Zealand’sfirst victory
over Australia.
Australia and New Zealand