NEW WORLD ORDER

Pacific warning to 'ugly' Aussies

Pacific countries should abandon their own currencies in favour of the Aussie dollar, an influential Australian parliamentary committee says.
The recommendation, which comes among signs of a more aggressive Australian approach toward the Pacific, has sparked a warning that it risks being seen as the 'ugly American' of the region.
The Pacific did not need a country that behaved 'in an interventionist sort of way', Tupeni Baba, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Pacific Studies at Auckland University, said yesterday. 'I think it will backfire on Australia.'
National Party finance spokesman Don Brash, a former Reserve Bank governor, believed most New Zealanders would be unimpressed about adopting the Australian dollar. 'Most New Zealanders would say no thank you very much.'