The Great Australian Peril

Our type-setter had to be bribed with an extra $2 an hour to type this letter, largely because he is Australian. When last seen he was muttering about Australians doing the type-setting for Salient because Kiwis are short-sighted -Ed.)

After some thought on the matter I feel obliged to question the wisdom of our continuing further relations with Australia. The scum they gleefully let across are the major threat to New Zealand's policy of full employment and the free trade agreement running against us is so extrordinary a marriage that a mutual separation should be immediately solicited. (That's what my Kiwi brother-in-law does in Australia - solicits, - Type setter)

Imagine the marriage in human terms. The Kiwi guy meets the Queen of Brisbane's Fernberg Road in Auckland's Great Northern Hotel - soon to be demolished for the AMP society, she returns to the Brisbane beat, until she has had enough of cursing Whitlamism and the Doc's love for Juni Morosi. She cables her adoration of Kiwiland a year and a bit later. A $270 double diamond and saphire ring goes across forthwith: after that she informs the Kiwi guy she has been exhausted, in debt, out of work and on the Federal Welfare. The guy outlays her fare, air cargo and pays off her debts. She does not want her parents involved in the wedding.

On the morning after the wedding (let's say it's a ministerial one) she reveals for the first time to the guy her mental record of being in a suicide attempt pact and shock-treated commitals. Five weeks or so after the twelfth day of Christmas she gets work and takes off.

Diplomatic relations between Aussie chisellers and the impending Fraser-type Federal government over there should be terminated before their cats and dogs keep yapping and yelping around the hooves of our thoroughbred stallions. New Zealands military forces should be called out of mothballs to deal with this perilous invasion.