Oceanic Combine(TUE)

**Dev. Status** | Conceptual

*And some dark night all is right and quiet in the town,*

*I'll get the bastards one and all, I'll gun the floggers down.*

*I'll give them all a little treat, remember what I say*

*And they'll yet regret they sent Jim Jones in chains to Botany Bay.*

- "Jim Jones at Botany Bay," An Australian Folk Ballad Adopted as the Anthem of the UCOW
The **Oceanic Combine**, also referred to as the **Combine** or the **Australian bloc**, is a union of Oceanic states into a common trade, defence and diplomatic led by Australia and New Zealand, but also including other terrtories such as Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Singapore. Initially formed as an alliance of the left-leaning governments of Australia and New Zealand, both seeking to create workers' utopias within their respective nations as both were fearful of the sweep of the Asian race and the militant communism and fascism such a spread brought. Within Australia, the fall of Britain to communism had prompted conservative parties to adopt a more protectionist view and as such, Australian politics too, transitioned to the left with its mother country. Yet the Alliance between the newly formed French and British communist states, manifesting in the Comintern, worried some other members of the former-British inhabitants. The Commonwealth of South Africa, under its newly elected radical Afrikaner parties was the first to defect to the Axis bloc, fearing the imposition of more liberal racial policies by the progressive government in London, after pressure from its fellow Comintern members in the Soviet Union and France. Such progressive views threatened all of Australia's political parties, who had been working to forge a white worker's utopia in Australia, and their New Zealand counterparts who sought to form a similarly pure system for Maori and White workers, free from the threat of the Asiatic hordes.

Papua New Guinea and Singapore, both administrated similarly by more conservative and supremacist bureaucrats, joined Australia and New Zealand to form a worker's entente of sorts, an Oceanic Workers' Combine. This Combine would defend itself against the Fascist Imperial Japanese and their Nationalist allies, as well as the authoritarian communists of the Red Asiatic Dynasties. The Combine has also enjoyed an influx of refugees from Fascist and Communist Europe, seeking to find a new place free from the politics, leading to further industrialisation and huge expansions to the Combine's mining and farming industries and military strength. Seizing territory from the dysfunctional Malay and capturing several other pacific islands, the Combine seeks to dig in against anyone who should threaten its interest or its worker's utopia. The Combine's military focuses heavily on digging in and defending and holding territory.

## Behind the Scenes

* The Combine is a combination of Australian trade movement/protectionist politics with the White Australia Policy instituted in the fist half of 20th century Australia, albeit applied to a much larger scale with New Zealand, Singapore, PNG and other pacific territories involved. The idea was to create a rabidly xenophobic and close-minded worker's utopia dedicated to protecting its 'utopian' interests from the wars of the Asian Dynasties and Japan/Chinese Nationalists. It also offers me a chance, as an Australian, to create an Australian-centric faction that both espouses patriotism and also explores some of the more controversial points of my nation's history.

* Ideologically the Combine is an interesting beast, combining the notion of creating a worker's utopia, where trade unions have huge amounts of power with an extremely xenophobic, isolationist and racist view of the Asia-Pacific region. Furthermore, the Combine espouses the idea of a strong worker and hides an undercurrent of apathy towards those who are unable or unwilling to work. As such, the Combine has become an interesting element where unionism, protectionism, racism and conservatism meet to form an interesting cocktail.