Posts by Simon Grigg
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Jackie Clark,
Thanks Jackie. Wow that is a terrifying low level of immigration.
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Does New Zealand still get most of its immigrants from the UK? I can't find any information on that.
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Russell Brown,
It was a big thing realising I wasn't from there, I was of the Pacific.
But good, huh?!
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Joe Wylie,
I find it interesting how little NZ seems to have gained from the independent foreign policy of the 80s.
It was briefly exciting there wasn't it. For a moment we had an opinion.
In a way I prefer the current government's foreign stance to the last. We know - and they are quite obliviously open about the fact - that they wake up daily in a world that passed a decade or more ago.
Labour instead found it expedient to pretend they didn't but still sent the troops, aircraft and SAS.
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Russell Brown,
I still do feel a strong affinity for parts of the culture.
Same.
However, I was also bought back to earth with a resounding cultural bang when I moved there. Large parts of what I thought would resonate with me made me cringe.
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Joe Wylie,
Except, perhaps, where that brilliance has been eclipsed and bedazzled by things imperially American.
You could argue that working that out was part of what they did well - for right or wrong. When the Australia aligned themselves with the US they did so in the clear knowledge that the USA was in the ascendant.
A failure of the Howard government was the inability to deal with the fact that this had changed. It's still a mystery to McCully.
For all that though, the inter-relationships he and successive Australian governments have worked out in Asia and especially SEA have been successful and gained them huge mana that we lack. They are closer physically but the years of work has really given them a leg up.
That said, I'd argue that we have done better in the South Pacific in recent years.
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Sacha,
Not everyone lives on mulk and cheddar.
Immediately after Chch in February, one report we were watching talked of the urgent need to ensure fast access to milk and bread. I probably wouldn't have blinked if I was in-country but it sounded mighty odd from this angle.
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to BenWilson,
I've never got the Mother England thing.
It's odd the way that any half baked story from the UK seems to get instant media legs - both tabloid and mainstream - ahead of big parts of what happens in our own backyard.
Australia has always been brilliant at working out where they sit in the world and adjusting their gaze to suit. New Zealand - in very general terms - on the other hand, seems stymied by an inability move its focus from the past to the future. It frustrates.
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to George Darroch,
Then I realise that New Zealand engages in the same game - it dances around class, and the implications that the titles had and still have, especially in relation to the country that bore them, pretending as if there is none.
Quite. The implications in the homeland are quite ugly, as is the history - often quite recent - behind them. Our benign - rose tinted even - grasp of the Imperial British legacy still astounds me at times.
As does the oft repeated nonsense that the British were better colonial masters than the Dutch, French or Belgian monarchy. It's a pretty low bar to start with - but go and ask the Malaysians, Singapore, China, or the whole Indian subcontinent for their version of that story. Really.
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Kumara Republic,
In Australia, John Howard is staunchly monarchist, even though he didn't bring back knighthoods. He did, however, effectively set up the republicanism debate to fail.
True, but can you imagine the fuss in Australia if he had tried to reintroduce these? From across the spectrum I'd argue.
We are quite different in that way. I think it's accepted that it's when rather than if Australia becomes a republic - partially because of it's history which was never as subservient as ours (witness the withdrawal of forces from Europe in WW2).
The reintroduction of honours in NZ was perhaps an indicator of how distant that conversation is in NZ.