London mayor hails cultural links between the two countries and says increased migration is in interests of both.
London mayor Boris Johnson has called on the UK and "phenomenally beautiful" Australia to create a "bilateral free labour mobility zone" to encourage migration between the two countries.
Johnson, who is currently in Australia, wrote for the UK's Daily Telegraph that after giving the keynote speech to open the Melbourne Writers Festival, he was approached by Australian teacher Sally Roycroft, who had been "effectively kicked out of Britain", curtailing her work with London schoolchildren, because she wasn't an EU citizen.
Johnson said this "disgrace" showed that the UK had to "raise its eyes" from the "economic gloom" of Europe and strengthen links with Australia for opportunities in people, services and goods.
"We British are more deeply connected with the Australians – culturally and emotionally – than with any other country on earth," he wrote, adding that the two countries shared a similar worldview, sense of humour and love of the TV show Top Gear.
These links should be strengthened with a free labour mobility agreement between the two countries, Johnson said.
"It would be good for the UK, where skilled people like Sally would no longer face an absurd discrimination," he said. "It would be good for Australia, where the unspoken reality is that Australians are actually quite keen to encourage more immigration from Britain."
"It is outrageous and indefensible that Sally Roycroft is deprived of a freedom that we legally confer on every French person. It is time she was given a fair suck of the sauce bottle, as the Australians say."
Johnson's call for greater Anglo-Australian ties followed a writers festival speech in which he referred to Star Wars, defunct confectionery and his time in Victoria as a young man.
The Conservative mayor said he skied down the "slushy gullies" of Mount Buller, wore shorts of "positively emetic brevity" and learned "to drink Victoria Bitter at 11am, a skill that has proved invaluable in what passes for my political career."
Johnson said he was in "shock" to discover that confectionery product the pollywaffle had been discontinued in Australia "and yet even without the pollywaffle I see Australia as the template of humanity and the most advanced society on earth; and that is because it is the most urbanised country in the world".
"Who was AB 'Banjo' Paterson? Was he a crag-jawed larrikin with a rain-drenched japara from RM Williams? Of course not: he was a Melbourne lawyer – nothing wrong with that."
Johnson said the future favoured globalised, free-trade urban centres which allowed the free movement of people and ideas. He finished by hailing the co-operation between the UK and Australia, and referred to the looming election.
"We gave you the dregs of the Victorian penal system. You gave us an extraordinary galaxy of stars, from Germaine Greer to Clive James to Kylie Minogue to Peter Andre," he said. "We gave you Marmite, you gave us Vegemite, though I am not sure, frankly, who got the better end of the deal."
"You gave us former Labour cabinet minister Patricia Hewitt; we ingeniously retaliated by sending you Julia Gillard.
"You sent us Lynton Crosby; we have already pinged Tony Abbott in your direction, with results that will shortly unfold.
"Long may it continue, this throbbing intercontinental two-way pipeline between London and Melbourne, a city that is in many ways our antipodean mirror, blessed like London with a superb climate, public bicycles, free museums, a brilliant Oystercard system called the Myki whose complexities I have yet to fathom and the same spirit of polyglot, polymorphous, pollywaffle-free dynamism and openness and generosity."
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