Irfan, when both of us were Young Liberals - you with the Fundamental Catholic, I, with Korovin, I do remember you being good with your words and quite funny. Being a lawyer, you need to be good with your words.

However, your anti white Australian comments did surprise me. You are showing yourself to be of the same fault of many from Arab nations. That is, refusing to intergrate and quick to attack. Don't like it, leave.

With New Zealand increasingly weak on national security, Australia just may have to take control of New Zealand for her own National security which would be sad to see happen.

OK Ian, you have put together a set of features of our joining with Canada that makes sense from an individual's point of view. They are clearly "nice to have", but where are the advantages at a national level? Given the amount of compromise and tap-dancing that would need to happen to harmonize (say) our immigration laws or States' rights, is this all there is? Just a bit of extra convenience for people who want to study or work in Canada?

Most people who presently have a desire to study or work in Canada today tend to find a way, after all; there is nothing that prohibits either, is there? Why do you believe we need to go through these extraordinary political and economic gyrations simply to make things easier for people who, let's face it, couldn't be terribly keen in the first place, otherwise they would get off their backsides and find a way to make it happen?

Sorry, but the whole exercise is just make-work for bureaucrats with time on their hands and our money in their pockets.

Pericles, if I were involved in business I would probably give business-oriented examples, but as I am a teacher I gave an example more closely related to my area. Calculations regarding the amount of tap-dancing to be done and the scale of potential benefits at that level would, I suppose, have to be left to people who know more than I do. The advantages I see at the national level may well strike you as warm and fuzzy rather than specific and real.

Firstly, I think we have a tendency to be pretty parochial. Federation was a move in the opposite direction: it meant looking beyond existing borders and acknowledging that our similarities were far greater than our differences. If we can’t look across the Tasman and say the same thing now, then I think we have lost something that we had a century ago and given in to parochialism. Canada would be a bigger step, of course, but a step of the same nature. Our view of the world and of our place in it would necessarily become broader if we could think big rather than small and recognise, as the architects of federation did, that others share our basic culture, institutions and values.

Secondly, I think we can actually change how we fit into the international system. If New South Wales were a separate country, it would have relatively little to do with Asia, but Australia as a whole has a certain influence among its northern neighbours. Adding New Zealand to the federation would make a slight change, but a federation of New Zealand, the Australian states and the Canadian provinces would be on quite a different scale. CANZ would, more or less automatically, be part of the G8 and NATO. Rather than being a relatively small and relatively peripheral country that is rarely of any relevance in international affairs, we would be a substantially larger country whose opinion would be likely to count for something more often

We'll have to agree to disagree, I'm afraid.

Yes, we are parochial. But merging with other countries won't make us "un-parochial". We can do that ourselves, by being more aware - and informed - of other countries and geo-political relationships.

Do you think that the content of our six-o'clock news ("two people hurt in light plane crash in Northern NSW") would change significantly in CANZ?

Believe me, I'm not defending our parochialism, merely observing it.

I agree that merging with New Zealand and Canada would not necessarily have the effect of making us less parochial. I suspect that it might (together with the whole public debate and negotiation process), but even if it did, we would probably still have to agree to disagree on cost-benefit questions.

I accept that I am in a pretty small minority in seeing CANZ as a natural and desirable progression for our federation, although I do have some Canadian friends who share the idea

I see the process as being already in place, the game has already begun. There is little to no difference between the negoiations between Oz and NZ and the early negoiations between France and Germany that led to the European Common Market and then the EU. It is a continum.
I think that the inclusion of states other than OZ and NZ in a SPU will take 2-3 generations but we should begin the alinement now. These things take time the EU took 50 years and is still evolving.
I should point out that MEROSUR is more than a common market. By internal funding it diminishes the power of the IMF which is, for historical reasons largely controlled by the USA. This means that South America can regain sway over its own agenda. The IMF travels with that old Russian saying. "The shortage will be divided equally amonst the poor."
There is a problem with bureaucracy in Europe but this largely arises from national and local levels. The actual EU is surpisingly light for 550 million people.
Medieval Europe was a back water, the action was in the East. China had the first cities of a million and far exceeded Europe in steel production. Then through a long and painful process the city states gave way to the Nation States. First they devoured that remaining city states in Europe then swept the world in an orgy of colonisation. Now in Europe they have moved to the next step, a net work of nation states,the EU. This is the structure of the future. The idea that a piffling little nation state that is good at quarrying and cricket can survive for the next centuary is implausable. We are already under the thrall of others.