The tasman connection: New Zealand's trade and defence relations with Australia, 1901-1914

Abstract

On 1 January 1901, the Commonwealth of Australia, the culmination of a federation movement that had perservered for over two decades, was officially inaugurated. For New Zealand - a colony that had flirted with federation but eventually contented itself to bury the last vestiges of the movement under the weighty report of a Royal Commission on Federation - the momentous events across the Tasman interjected an added degree of uncertainty into future relations with the newly-united Australian colonies. Existing or pre-Commonwealth relations in trade and defence had remained substantially the same in the nineties of the previous century. A silent steady flow of goods continued to move in both directions across the Tasman. Trading between New Zealand and her Australian neighbours had undergone a gradual decline in the second half of the nineteenth century that had levelled off by 1900 with Australia accounting for approximately eleven per cent of New Zealand's total trade. Though there had been attempts to negotiate reciprocal agreements, no treaties had eventuated.