Foreign relations between neighbouring countries Australia and New Zealand, also referred to as Trans-Tasman relations, are extremely close. Both countries share a British colonial heritage as antipodean Dominions and settler colonies, and both are part of the core Anglosphere. New Zealand sent representatives to the constitutional conventions which led to the uniting of the six Australian colonies but opted not to join. In the Boer War and in both world wars, New Zealand soldiers fought alongside Australian soldiers. In recent years, the Closer Economic Relations free trade agreement and its predecessors have inspired ever-converging economic integration. Despite some shared similarities, the cultures of Australia and New Zealand also have their own sets of differences and there are sometimes differences of opinion which some have declared as symptomatic of sibling rivalry. This often centres upon sports and in commercio-economic tensions, such as those arising from the failure of Ansett Australia and those engendered by the formerly long-standing Australian ban on New Zealand apple imports.
Both countries are constitutional monarchies and Commonwealth realms sharing the same person as the sovereign and independent head of state – with parliamentary democracies based on the Westminster system. Their only land border defines the western extent of the Ross Dependency and eastern extent of the Australian Antarctic Territory. They acknowledge two distinct maritime boundaries conclusively delimited by the Australia–New Zealand Maritime Treaty of 2004.
In 2017, a major poll showed that New Zealand was considered Australia's "best friend", a position previously held by the United States.
History
The history of Indigenous Australians is generally thought to be rich to the extent of at least 40,000–45,000 years duration, whereas the ancestors of Māori arrived in Aotearoa/New Zealand in several waves by means of waka from Eastern Polynesia in waves roughly between 1320 and 1350.Rat remains help date New Zealand's colonisation. Retrieved 23 June 2008. New Scientist. Indigenous Australians and Māori (and by extension Moriori) are not recorded to have met or interacted before the 17th and 18th centuries European exploration of Australia. Regarding the respective indigenous populations, while it may be said that there is a single Māori language and the iwi have been able to present as a unified population represented by a monarch neither has ever been able to be said of the Australian Aboriginal languages or their corresponding population groups.
The first European landing in Australia occurred in the Janszoon voyage of 1605–06. Abel Tasman in two distinct voyages in the period 1642–1644 is recorded as the first person to have coastally explored regions of the respective landforms, including Van Diemen's Land – later named for him as the Australian state of Tasmania. The first voyage of James Cook stands as significant for the circumnavigation of New Zealand in 1769 and as the European discovery and first ever coastal navigation of Eastern Australia from April to August 1770. The European settlement of Australia and New Zealand, then referred to as the colony of New South Wales, dates from the arrival of the First Fleet into Cadi/Port Jackson on Australia Day, 1788.
New Zealand was separated from the Colony of New South Wales in 1840, at which time its European population numbered about 2,000 descended from Christian missionaries, sealers, and whalers (as opposed to mainland Australia's much larger penal colony population)."New Zealand – The Youngest Country", New Zealand Tourism
Although it is accurate to distinguish that New Zealand was never a penal colony, neither were some of the Australian colonies. In particular, South Australia was founded and settled in a similar manner to New Zealand, both being influenced by the ideas of Edward Gibbon Wakefield.Wakefield's influence on the New Zealand Company: and in relation to Wakefield's connection with South Australia:
Both countries experienced ongoing internal conflict concerning indigenous and settler populations, although this conflict took very different forms, most sharply manifested in the New Zealand Wars and Australian frontier wars respectively. Whereas Maori iwi endured the Musket Wars of the period 1807–1839 preceding the former in New Zealand, indigenous Australians have no comparable period of the experience of warfare amongst each other employing European-introduced modern weaponry either before or after their own confrontations with European settler society. Both countries experienced nineteenth century gold rushes and during the nineteenth century there was extensive trade and travel between the colonies.There were shipping connections between relatively minor ports and New Zealand, for example "the schooner Huia, which carried hardwood from Grafton on the north coast of New South Wales to New Zealand ports and softwoods in the other direction until about 1940." + "Trans-Tasman passenger shipping operated as an extension of the Australian interstate services, most intensively between Sydney and Wellington, but also connecting other Australian and New Zealand ports. Most of the Australian coastal shipping companies were involved in the trans-Tasman trade at some stage" per Also illustrating the point are the many wrecks of the Union Steam Ship Company "scattered around New Zealand, Australia and the South Pacific, but nowhere more thickly than in Tasmania and the dangerous bar harbours of Greymouth and Westport" per
New Zealand participated as a member of the Federal Council of Australasia from 1885 and fully involved itself among the other self-governing colonies in the 1890 conference and 1891 Convention leading up to Federation of Australia. Ultimately it declined to accept the invitation to join the Commonwealth of Australia resultingly formed in 1901, remaining as a self-governing colony until becoming the Dominion of New Zealand in 1907 and with other territories later constituting the Realm of New Zealand effectively as an independent country of its own. In the 1908 Olympics, the 1911 Festival of Empire and the 1912 Olympics, the two countries were represented at least in sporting competition as the unified entity "Australasia".
Both continued to co-operate politically in the 20th century as each sought closer relations with the United Kingdom, particularly in the area of trade. This was helped by the development of refrigerated shipping, which allowed New Zealand in particular to base its economy on the export of meat and dairy – both of which Australia had in abundance – to Britain.
The two nations sealed the Canberra Pact in January 1944 for successfully prosecuting the war against the Axis powers in World War II and providing for the administration of an armistice and territorial trusteeship in its aftermath. The Agreement foreshadowed the establishment of a permanent Australia–New Zealand Secretariat, it provided for consultation in matters of common interest, it provided for the maintenance of separate military commands and for "the maximum degree of unity in the presentation ... of the views of the two countries".
The quantity of trans-Tasman trade increased by 9% per annum from the early 1980s through to the end of 2007, with the Closer Economic Relations free trade agreement of 1983 being a major turning point. This was partially a result of Britain joining the European Economic Community in the early 1970s, thus restricting the access of both countries to their biggest export market.
Military
In the Harriet Affair of 1834, a group of British soldiers of the 50th Regiment from Australia landed in Taranaki, New Zealand, to rescue Betty Guard, the wife of John (Jacky) Guard, and the Guards' two children, following their kidnapping by local Māori. This was the first clash between Māori and British troops. The expedition was sent by Governor Bourke from Sydney and was subsequently criticised by a British House of Commons report in 1835 for the use of excessive force.
In 1861, the Australian ship HMCSS Victoria was dispatched to help the New Zealand colonial government in its war against Māori in Taranaki. Victoria was subsequently used for patrol duties and logistic support, although several personnel were involved in actions against Māori fortifications.Dennis et al 1995, p. 435. In late 1863, the New Zealand government requested troops to assist in the invasion of the Waikato. Promised settlement on confiscated land, more than 2500 Australians were recruited. Other Australians became scouts in the Company of Forest Rangers. Australians were involved in actions at Matarikoriko, Pukekohe East, Titi Hill, Ōrākau and Te Ranga.Coulthard-Clark, pp. viii–ix.
In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, both countries or their colonial precursors were enthusiastic members of the British Empire and both either sent soldiers or permitted the sending of military volunteers to the Mahdist War in the Sudan, the quelling of the Boxer Rebellion, the Second Boer War, the First and Second World Wars and the Malayan Emergency and Konfrontasi. Independent of the sense of Empire (or Commonwealth), both nations in the second half of the twentieth century otherwise provided contingents in support of United States strategic aims in the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Gulf War. Whereas military personnel from both countries participated in UNTSO, the Multinational Force and Observers to Sinai, INTERFET to East Timor, the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands, UNMIS to Sudan, and more recent intervention in Tonga. The New Zealand government officially condemned the 2003 invasion of Iraq and stood apart from Australia in refusing to contribute any combat forces. Somewhat similarly in 1982, although without speaking in condemnation, Australia found no purpose in joining with New Zealand to support the United Kingdom in the Falklands War against Argentina just as New Zealand had declined to join Australia in Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War or in UNEF to Egypt and Israel during the 1970s.
In the First World War, the soldiers of both countries were formed into the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs). Together, Australia and New Zealand saw their first major military action in the Battle of Gallipoli, in which both suffered major casualties. For many decades the battle was seen by both countries as the moment at which they came of age as nations. It continues to be commemorated annually in both countries on Anzac Day, although since the 1960s there has been some questioning of the "coming of age" idea.