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Probably the most obvious difference between Australia and New Zealand is the geographical size of each country. Australia is spread over a vast 7.7 million square kilometres - a much larger land mass than the whole of western Europe. New Zealand covers a mere quarter of a million square kilometres, less than one thirtieth the size of Australia, but contains in that domain a population numbering more than a fifth of Australia's. These contrasts are in turn related to some of the more obvious structural differences in the political arrangements of the two countries. The Australian population is not evenly distributed over the entirety of the continent. It is heavily concentrated in certain places along the south-eastern arc of the country with pockets of population elsewhere. The various centres of population, which started life as the principal towns of separate colonies, are quite isolated from each other and even with modern communications and travel the distances between them remain an important consideration.^

"*0n the role of distance in Australian history see Geoffrey Blainey, The Tyranny of Distance (Melbourne: Sun Books, 1966).

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It became apparent in the late nineteenth century that if Australia were to be fused into one nation it would need to adopt a federal system of government, for to have one central government making all the laws for those in settlements as far removed from each other as Perth, Brisbane and Hobart was neither politically nor practically viable. New Zealand, for its part, had earlier adopted and then rejected a provincial system that had some characteristics of a federation.^ Even though New Zealand has a small total area it is an elongated country which runs for about 2000 kilometres from top to toe. Problems of distance were not inconsiderable in the early days of settlement, particularly since the colony's capital city was initially in the far north. After the centrally located Wellington replaced Auckland as the capital in 1865, and with the advancement of communications in the latter part of the nineteenth century, it became apparent that the provincial system was becoming superfluous and uneconomical in New Zealand and that a unitary system of government would serve better. Thus around the time realization was dawning that through the mechanism of federalism the Australian colonies could be governed together as one nation, New Zealand was doing away with a "federal" system which it no longer really needed.

The juxtaposition of these developments nicely captures the differences between the political superstructures of Australia and New Zealand and how these came to be. Implicitly it also sets the context for the question with which we are most concerned in this chapter: does federalism make a significant difference to political behaviour? This is a complex question and we can do little more here

"*On New Zealand's experience with the provincial system see Morrell, The Provincial System in New Zealand 1852-76.

than review some evidence and hope to turn over some stones of discovery towards an answer. We can move in that direction by examining some related but more manageable questions such as whether there are significant regional variations in political behaviour in Australia and/or New Zealand. Were we to find evidence of marked regionalism in either or both countries it would have a strong bearing on the analysis in later chapters. It is important to look at where and when a federal structure might make a difference over and above ordinary regional variations. The point of interest in this connection is whether certain regional effects would exist in the absence of institutionalized federalism. What difference, if any, does the existence of an extra tier of government make? Potentially, the presence of separate political structures and events at the state level in Australia, with no equivalent in New Zealand, poses a problem for the comparison of the two countries. If substantial differences in political behaviour were found to be attributable to a "federalism effect" then the close comparability of political behaviour in Australian and New Zealand would be impaired. The nature of the comparative exercise would inevitably have to alter. A major objective of this chapter is to determine whether we have such a problem on our hands.

Initially a federal political system develops as a response to a particular set of conditions but given that we are dealing with a federal system which has been in operation for some time, it is reasonable to treat federalism as a causal factor when variables operating in that system are set against variables operating in an established unitary system. That is not to say, of course, that there cannot be regional variations in the absence of a federal structure

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or, to put it another way, that regionalism may not be due in some cases to factors other than federalism.

Australia provides a good test case for studying the consequences of federalism for political behaviour because it is relatively uncluttered with divergent patterns of settlement and historical development, by culturally and ethnically disparate races, factors that would likely lead to very great regional variations and moves towards separatism. There is indeed an impressive cultural homogeneity throughout Australia which, by and large, we may assume acts as a constant for this exercise.^