On 22/5/20 11:11 am, Rupert Boleyn wrote:
>
>
> 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.
>
Well, the "different set of governments" follows naturally from the
divergent timeline. 

Unless "right now" stretches back more than 30 years from 2020, it's
restricted to OTL.

Part of me wants to lift the Oceania Community Union from the Front
Mission games (and the United States of the New Continent would then
have to come along for the ride), but that's far too federal - given
what you've said, Rupert, any such arrangement would have to be a
confederation.

Thanks for your feedback and (most importantly) patience.

Alex

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