What if New Zealand became part of Australia?

In 1890, talks between the states on a federation of Australian (or rather Australasian) colonies began. Among the colonies at these talks was New Zealand. There was serious talk of New Zealand becoming a state of Australia, but it never came to be. Why was this?

One of the reasons why New Zealand never became part of Australia was that the leaders of New Zealand were deeply concerned about the place Maoris would have in Australia, taking into account the hardships faced by Aboriginal Australians who didn't even have citizenship, let alone the right to vote. Unlike their brother nation, New Zealand had a long history with their Maori inhabitants, often consisting of wars and land deals. In the NZ Parliament, they had four seats saved, specifically, for Maori representatives, which was better than the zero representation that Aboriginal Australians got.

In Delegate William Russel's own words, they had no interest in ceding power to a government which cared nothing for native administration and dealt with natives in a more summary manner than the New Zealanders did.

Australia, in an attempt to sway New Zealand to join, gave Māori the right to vote in 1902, while Australian Aborigines could not vote until 1967. Of course, New Zealand was still not interested.

Another issue was that Australia's proposed system of government was to include plural voting, which meant landowners would get additional votes, a system which New Zealand had just abolished in 1889. Of course, Australia never went ahead with plural voting, but it was still a turn-off for representatives from New Zealand.

But what if New Zealand and Australia were able to resolve, or at least are able to reach a compromise on these issues, and New Zealand agreed to become part of Australia in 1890, eventually formally uniting with it under Federation in 1901?
 
I feel like this has surely been discussed before, but I hate necro-ing threads more than I hate rehashing old topics and I'm sure there's more to discuss here, so...

I think the compromise that actually gets NZ across the line is important. Do OZ have to give Aboriginals citizenship? Do they have to make NZ two states instead of one, giving them a strong voting block in the Senate? This has the potential to remake OZ far more than it does to remake NZ.
 
It was indeed. One point to remember is that Aborigines in South Australia had the vote from IIRC 1856. Our constitution gave one man one vote from the beginning; women had the vote, including Aboriginal women from 1893/4.
I have never heard of the idea of plural voting being considered in Federation. I used to teach Aus History, so I would like a source for that claim. Given that several colonies has secret ballot and one man, one vote from the 1850’s, I am doubtful if plural voting was ever serious.
One consequence of NZ joining as one or two states, is probably better treatment of our indigenous people. However, the bar is pretty low on that issue.
 
Possibly it would make Australasia more of a federation in popular culture around the world, instead of a unitary state with a federal political system. A lot of federal and unitary states have an East-West or North-South divide, but instead of a boring East-West split, Australasia now has an East-West-South split.
 
You really need an earlier formation - say 1890 at latest, to try and act before NZ political identity became super strong

Or an external threat - say a WW1 analogue - which could force togetherness where it otherwise wouldn't
 
Well, speaking of native rights, what effect would such a union of Australia and New Zealand have on immigration?

Depends what you mean. There was a load of internal migration between the two OTL. If you mean external - well both were very keen on White British migration till well after WW2. Although arguably NZ was even less keen than Australia on liberalising that - see latter's large Greek and Italian communities. NZ has at best a sizeable Dutch descended (basically integrated - which was due to heavy pressure by NZ govt - not particularly nice either - there even was apparently a soft ban on Dutch language newspapers).
 
In the long run - sports aside - practically nothing changes versus OTL?

NZ has been getting progressively poorer in relation to Australia since the 70s. Some Australian states are poorer than others, but we're all in this together so we prop up Tassie. I imagine that if NZ was an Australian state or states it'd be a fair bit richer because it'd be part of the club rather than going its own way.
 
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