glad to have ya, mates! although who is to say that the US will be around in 50 years or that some of our states won't be fighting over who gets to become the seventh state in ozland!

this guy's something of a nuff-nuff with a very cursory understanding of Australian society... Doesn't he understand that our 'sense of nationhood' and everything that goes with it is just not in the form he might regard as relevant...

Long live the land of the long-weekend!

Oh my! Why doesn't the article mention who's doing the urging? Being an outsider (from the US), I have to say Australia, to me, certainly has its own identity and culture(s). It's also a mistake, I think, to assume signing up for Statehood is going to fix the bushfire problems right away. Who is that professor anyway, and what is he basing his statements on?

So he is arguing that we be giving up our sovriegnty so that we can be, amongst other things, "Fielding teams in the US national basketball, baseball and gridiron competitions. "

And this guy is a professor?

I think he has just argued against one of his other proposed benefits.

"Access to the world's best higher education system. "

Oh those UaSsians! Some of them put both feet in their mouth at once. Why do they think the rest of the world wnats to be like them? They just want more mindless humans following their great leader? They don't get it that our "nationhood " (Canada's for me) is terribly important to us. Sounds like they think your support in the Iraq thing means you want to blend!

For goodness sakes!! Australia is a continent!! We should be joining you!

Seriously, I appreciate some of the rants here. America (I live there) does believe it is the greatest nation on the earth (and there is some argument for it). We are typically very ignorant of the rest of the world, though that is changing.

Many Americans wish for the good old days, many preachers are trying "To take back America" but I think part of the problem is that in the good old days, there was little world competition.

So if everybody out there globally could just "tone down" the competition and allow us to make $20-$25 an hour instead of other countries doing it for much less, we would appreciate it. ;)

People been sayin te same tin about Canada for years.

Hehehe... perhaps the professor should have added another advantage: our media at least tries not to publish material that sounds like its from the Onion, apparently unlike News.com.au. ;-)

I'd be seriously shocked if many of you guys down under would support becoming Americans, but who knows...

If you think we wanna become Americans...you can get stuffed :)

Any other Aussies seen that Foster's ad? I play football WITHOUT a helmet...etc etc etc?

I wonder if anyone will finish this off:

AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE!!!
........