On 22May2020 0806, Alex Goodwin wrote:
>>      > - Thailand
>>      >
>>      > - Australia (still reeling somewhat from New Zealand's accession
>>      as the
>>      > NZ Special Autonomous Region in the 2030s)
>>
>>      I can only assume that the Business Round Table managed to buy a
>>      (National Party) government, because nobody else here would
>>      contemplate
>>      such a thing.
>>
> Rupert, I thus sit corrected.  I was working from the "better the devil
> you know / hang together rather than hang separately" that seems to have
> been driving unifications on the rest of the same rock.
I could see stronger mutual defence agreements, and with a different set
of governments in both NZ and Australia from about 2000 onwards might've
made a EU-style currency union possible by the 2030s (over the very loud
complaints of many New Zealanders, because of what the loss of sovereign
currency would do to local fiscal policy options). However, right now
the Aussies are doing things that NZ wants no part of, both socially and
economically. Even with severe outside pressure I can't see any union
before the 2050s, and it's wouldn't include being called anything that
implied NZ wasn't a near-equal partner (too much national pride for
anything else), unless Australia annexed NZ somehow.

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>