Francis Collins: Confronting the Real Trans-Tasman Relationship

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is welcomed by John Key at Government House on October 17, 2015. Photo / Getty Images

The news this week that a tetraplegic man was 'dumped' at Auckland airport by Australian authorities after 36 years across the Tasman is striking an angry chord with many. The move highlights a disregard for the basic responsibilities of governments to their populations. As New Zealanders consider ourselves 'family' or 'mates' with our Aussie cousins that should include us, right?

The event seems like a scandal that needs to be addressed at the highest level so that we can return to the normal state of affairs. A more powerful way of looking at this incident is to see it as an opportunity to confront the real trans-Tasman relationship that is generally obscured from view. This is how political philosopher Alain Badiou would see it: when he spoke at the University of Auckland last year he made exactly this point, that political scandals are not unusual controversies but rather a small window into the real arrangement of the world.

So what constitutes the real trans-Tasman relationship? Well for starters, we would need to recognise that much of the trans-Tasman migration that New Zealand publics and goverments lament is a reserve labour force that comes into action when the Australian economy moves into full gear and in many cases reduces or returns when there is a significant downturn, as seems to be the case this year.

Ideas about wage differences, job opportunities and endless sun can drive this migration but it is the 'special category visa' allowing free entry to the labour market that facilitates the inward and outward flow of people. The reduction of rights for New Zealanders in 2001 as well as the current shift to deport people who have been sentenced to a 12 month or more jail term is indicative of the relationship. Unless they qualify as skilled migrants for permanent residence and citizenship New Zealanders in Australia are a 'use and discard' population. When there are labour shortages they are welcomed as hard workers but with limited rights, and when the economy is in decline either unemployment, living costs or the law will return many to these shores.

Migration is only part of the picture however. Financial deregulation in the 1980s and 1990s has meant that nearly 90% of the retail banking sector in New Zealand is owned by the four largest Australian financial institutions. In the context of a speculation fueled property boom in Auckland, its worth remembering that three quarters of overseas debt in New Zealand is channeled across the Tasman, sometimes then linked into wider financial markets. So we have a relationship of financing on one side and labour provision on the other.

Of course, there is much inequality on both sides of the Tasman. Many New Zealanders leave this country because of limitations here and then enter the Australian labour market where they compete with other workers who may be facing similar issues. So too the financial relationships across the Tasman reveal the way that consecutive governments have sought to construct New Zealand as an open marketplace where global and local companies can make profit. The question of whether jobs are created or what the social implications are has often been less important. The trans-Tasman relationship is of course one amongst many conduits for these globalising arrangements.

There is no easy response to the real trans-Tasman relationship or its wider place in making New Zealand in the 21st century. A parochial response will not do because it would likely involve increasing regulation of population mobility in ways that are both undemocratic and undesirable. Financial re-regulation is possible but is rarely on the political agenda. The first step needs to focus on seeing beyond the current scandal and secondly on rethinking the way that we arrange our society and economy both here, with our 'mates' across the Tasman and in the wider world.

Francis Collins is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Auckland and a Rutherford Discovery Fellow.