Australasia

**Australia**, officially the **Union of Australia**, is a country in Oceania, comprised of the continent of Australia and the island of Tasmania. Australasia also shares a naval border with New Zealand, the country's “sister nation” which seceded in 1936.

## History

### First Weltkrieg

#### AJMCP

Australasia (then the Commonwealth of Australia) joined the First Weltkrieg with enthusiasm, pledging its support with the rest of the Entente against the German Empire and its allies. Raising its arms almost immediately through the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (ANMEF), Australians were deployed to Port Moresby shortly after the start of the war to invade German New Guinea. They fully captured the ill-defended colony by September – less than two months after the war's beginning.

Despite the campaign's success, ANMEF's issues were apparent even before they reached Port Moresby, being horribly disorganized and suffering over 50 unnecessary casualties, a significant number given the lack of resistance and the small size of the expeditionary force. New Zealand, which was not a part of the Confederation, had much more success in its long-term mobilization despite its smaller size, and had seen even swifter success in occupying German Samoa in August.

As a result, in the following months, proposals for close cooperation between the SEF and ANMEF inspired by ANZAC proved popular. The Singapore Mutiny of February sparked fears of a roll-back in Asia and the Pacific (concurrent with Gallipoli)). Colonel William Holmes, head of the ANMEF, resigned his post to Samuel Pethebridge to join the Mediterranean theater. Eventually both forces merged on March 15th, 1915 with Pethebridge becoming head of the newly-created Australasian Joint Military Commission in the Pacific (AJMCP), now both a unified military expeditionary force and a centralized colonial governorate.

The Pethebridge administration found difficulty presiding over both colonies at the same time, as most radio stations built in the Pacific had been ruined during the invasion, and disagreements over the commission's composition led to a year-long scramble for control. This status of unclear administration led to the Near Seas Scandal, in which a massive network of German espionage in the colonies was discovered: despite allowing German plantations to continue existing in exchange for loyalty and exclusive Allied trading, these companies would still work and trade with Germany in secret, eventually becoming a source of revenues for German spies to fill the gaps. Though this was discovered in November 1916, outrage over this scandal would force Pethebridge's resignation.

Robert Logan, former head of the New Zealand SEF, was appointed to become the new governor, swiftly bringing the administration to work closer together. Despite his efforts, however, a perceived imbalance of power, combined with political backlash from the Near Seas Scandal and now the fallout of Gallipoli, left Australia to begin reducing its occupation forces to the bare minimum. This further caused New Zealand representatives to question their inheritance of Australia's burden. As Australia's withdrawal continued into 1917, a revolt of Chinese laborers in Samoa caused the expulsion of the whole region's Chinese population and the extremely controversial emergency ban on trade unions, which became the basis for later repression into Australasia.

Further controversy yet endured in 1918, as the Logan administration failed to properly quarantine the colonies for the Spanish flu outbreak, leading to the deaths of more than 20% of Samoans and 15% of New Guineans. Rapidly spreading through the Pacific, Australia continued to shut off its AJMCP commitments and instated a “hard border” in New Guinea, desperate to prevent it from reaching the mainland. Before this point, Germany was nearly victorious in the war, and the retreat of forces in the Middle East led to hopes within New Zealand for Australia renewing its commitments. However, its defense ministry instead decided to relocate their Middle East forces to Europe for the failed May Offensive planned for Australia in 1919.

The AJMCP would be largely forgotten in that time, mostly eclipsed by the ANZAC forces in the Mediterranean, but would become the basis for the later South Pacific Joint Military Commission in the Cold War.

### Second Weltkrieg

#### “The Task Ahead” speech

When the Eastern Seas War broke out in **???**, a nervous tension broke in Australia. Though the Third International and the Co-Prosperity Sphere became *de facto* allies in their war against the German Empire,