• Free movement of people, with permanent residency available to nationals from the other jurisdiction – not tied to securing employment.

• Treaties for regulatory cooperation, simple enforcement of judgments (a court ruling in one jurisdiction being treated virtually identically to a ruling of a local court), and to avoid double taxation (including a system for taxpayer-initiated arbitration among the member states).

• Government commitment to harmonising business law more widely, for example consumer and competition law.

No, this is NOT necessarily the European Union (EU). These aspects characterise the Trans-Tasman framework built up between Australia and New Zealand, particularly over the last two decades. Sometimes this has been achieved through treaties (binding in international law), sometimes in softer ways (such as parallel legislation in each country), and sometimes even through unilateral abrogation of national sovereignty (New Zealand regarding film classifications!). Both countries are also actively pursuing bilateral and now some regional Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), especially in the Asia-Pacific.

So, why can’t these Trans-Tasman initiatives, and perhaps even some EU developments, provide a template for a true ‘Asia Pacific Community’ – beyond even what Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apparently has in mind, or for an ‘East Asian Community’, as suggested by the new Japanese PM, Yukio Hatoyama?

The region certainly remains very diverse in terms of social and legal or political systems. Yet economic integration has burgeoned since the 1980’s, and will intensify even further as pan-Asian production networks have been forced to turn away from European and US markets in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). The ‘diversity gap’ is narrowing significantly as the EU itself expands and becomes more diverse, at least when compared to the more developed democracies of East Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Indeed, the EU’s ‘Eastern Enlargement’ is forcing a marked reconceptualisation of its initial political motivation, which was to engage economic integration to maintain peace not only among major powers like Germany and the UK, but also to counterbalance the new Communist bloc within Europe.

The Cold War has also now thawed in most of Asia, which suggests the need for a similar rethink about why and how ASEAN was established – in the shadow of tensions in and with Vietnam. The 2008 ASEAN Charter as well many initiatives in economic policy particularly since the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis indicate some significant shifts away from traditional informal ways of promoting integration among the 10 member states. And who would have predicted in the 1990s the recent inauguration of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights?

Anyway, true respect for diversity within Asia-Pacific countries should include acknowledgement of subgroups that do exhibit greater convergence. For example, Australia and New Zealand share many commonalities with Singapore and even Malaysia, not only in terms of legal systems but also increasingly in standards of living. The economic parallels are even stronger with countries like Japan and now the Republic of Korea, with their originally ‘civil law’ traditions also undergoing significant transformations particularly over the last decade. These three pairs of countries could conceivably join in some more intense forms of economic partnership over the next decade. This has already occurred in the Trans-Tasman context – albeit with a sense of ‘back to the future’ for those two former British colonies.

Appreciation for the potential of subgroups is also found, moreover, within the EU system. It helps get around the problem that we are dealing with dual and fast-moving targets – in Europe and in the Asia-Pacific. In drawing inspiration already from the EU, we should also appreciate that ‘Brussels was not built in one day’. Various institutions have been grafted on or modified, through trial and error, and only some (or new variants) may prove useful for (some) countries nowadays within the Asia-Pacific region.

Countries like Australia need to examine the EU system more comprehensively to identify how such features might be adapted. We must get away from preconceptions generated, for example, by negative experiences in dealing with agricultural trade policy. For its part, the EU needs to overcome difficulties in projecting just what it stands for, particularly in Asia. Ironically, this problem is exacerbated by the EU’s internal diversity and the fact that broader foreign policy powers have been largely left to member state sovereignty.

More generally, the GFC has led to a reassessment of market liberalisation policies themselves. Rudd has consistently protested about the excesses of market fundamentalism, although it remains to be seen whether for example how far this will translate into reforms to consumer protection legislation in Australia (and New Zealand). Such views underpinned his electoral victory in 2007 (although a windback of labour market deregulation was a much higher profile issue). But there was a similar backdrop to Hatoyama’s election victory in Japan this August – what Arthur Stockwin described recently as a ‘political earthquake’. The new Japanese government appears likely to intensify measures to promote consumer rights and product safety, while simultaneously promoting actively both the WTO system and bilateral or regional FTAs. And the former EC Commissioner and now WTO Director-General, Pascal Lamy, has long pointed out that both East Asia and the EU share an appreciation not only of diversity, but also the need to balance free markets with other social and political values (Philomena Murray, ed, Europe and Asia: Regions in Flux, 2008, p7).

What is likely therefore to emerge – or, at least, what we should now be encouraging – is deeper and broader economic integration in the Asia-Pacific (or at least Australasia) that simultaneously incorporates regulatory safeguards to meet the challenges and expectations of our brave new post-GFC world. These innovations may be built into FTAs or negotiated out alongside them, but it needs to be done in a more concerted and comprehensive manner. Collaboration in regulating consumer product safety, financial markets, environmental protection, labour standards and investment regimes are only some of many possibilities explored in my Sydney Law School Research Paper downloadable here.

And, if it is still too difficult to use the ‘E’ word in contemporary discussions about an Asia-Pacific Community, surely there exists more scope to highlight some EU-like analogies already found in the Trans-Tasman context. Indeed, ignoring that context reminds me of the scene in Moliere’s comedy where a main character suddenly exclaims:

‘Good heavens! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it! [Par ma foi, il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose, sans que j’en susse rien!]’ (‘Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme’ [1670] Act II, Scene iv).