Australia 100 New Zealand 0

Australia has effectively taken over New Zealand. Its not something most people want to admit but its a fact. In the end New Zealand will end up with an airline, a bunch of sports teams, and a ridiculously expensive Government and nothing else.

It all started with the Australians buying all our banks. Banks sell indebtedness and the Australians have done an excellent job selling that to New Zealanders. With the connivance of local government incompetence forcing up land prices they have managed to get New Zealanders in record amounts of mortgage debt. With the connivance of central Government they have managed to saddle our young people with huge amounts of personal debt. And with the connivance of Australian shopping mall owners they have created huge amounts of credit card debt. So now we are hideously in debt to Australians.

And anyone who saw the Australian film, The Bank, knows that being in debt to Australians basically means being owned by them. That means they own our land, our businesses and our futures. We don't own our own country any more.

Now they are gradually taking over, not just our malls and supermarkets but also the Warehouse, and other large retail outlets. And they will all be advertising in Australian owned media. Soon you will not be able to spend money without enriching an Australian. And then businesses will start asking why they have to use a foreign (NZ) currency to do business when they could do the same business in their own currency. As trans-Tasman standards erode the points of difference between our countries in the end whole sectors of Government (eg Health) will give up being different at all. Slowly but surely the lights will go out on New Zealand as anything other than a label and a tourist destination.

Is this a bad thing? Weren't we always doomed to be another state of Australia anyway? Well, I think it is because it shows a complete lack of management. We have simply drifted into the vortex without thinking about where we are going or what we want. Small nations that are actually thinking for themselves, such as Singapore or Finland do the opposite. Indeed they become the vortex around which larger nations turn.

There is absolutely nothing inevitable about Australia dominating New Zealand. Australia lacks water. New Zealand coud easily accomodate Australia's population. Britain has three times Australia's population and it is physically smaller. New Zealand has simply accepted a lesser role, has accepted second place and has accepted Australian bullying. It doesn't have to be the case, but admittedly, our ability to extract ourselves from this embrace is getting harder and harder as the years go by.

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