Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
'SO, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF NEW ZEALAND?'
That, by tradition, is the question that visitors are asked within an hour of disembarking in NZ. Sometimes they
might be granted an entire day's research before being asked to pronounce, but asked they are. The question -
composed equally of great pride and creeping doubt - is symbolic of the national consciousness.
When George Bernard Shaw visited for four weeks in 1934, he was deluged with what-do-you-think-of ques-
tions from newspaper reporters the length of the country. Although he never saw fit to write a word about NZ, his
answers to those newspaper questions were collected and reprinted as
What I Saw in New Zealand: the Newspa-
per Utterances of George Bernard Shaw in New Zealand
. Yes, people really were that keen for vindication.
Other visitors were more willing to pronounce in print, including the British Liberal MP, David Goldblatt, who
wrote an intriguing and prescient little book called
Democracy At Ease: a New Zealand Profile
. Goldblatt found
New Zealanders a blithe people: kind, prosperous and fond of machines.
For the bon vivant Goldblatt, the attitude towards food and drink was all too telling. He found only 'the plain
fare and even plainer fetch and carry of the normal feeding machine of this country' and shops catering 'in the
same pedestrian fashion for a people never fastidious - the same again is the order of the day'.
Thus, a people with access to some of the best fresh ingredients on earth tended to boil everything to death. A
nation strewn almost its entire length with excellent microclimates for viticulture produced only fortified plonk.
Material comfort was valued, but was a plain thing indeed.
It took New Zealanders a quarter of a century more to shuck 'the same dull sandwiches', and embrace a nation-
al awareness - and, as Goldblatt correctly anticipated, it took 'hazards and misfortunes' to spur the 'divine dis-
content' for change.
But when it did happen, it really happened.
Russell Brown is a journalist and manager of the popular Public Address blog site
(
www.publicaddress.net
).
A New New Zealand
There is a dynamism about NZ today that was rare in the 'golden weather' years before
the reforms. Today NZ farmers take on the world without the massive subsidies of yore,
and Wellington's inner city - once virtually closed after dark by oppressive licensing laws
- now thrives with great bars and restaurants.
As with the economic reforms, the 'Treaty process' of redress and reconciliation with
Maori made some New Zealanders uneasy, more in their uncertainty about its extent than
that it happened at all. The Maori population sat somewhere between 85,000 and 110,000
at the time of first European contact 200 years ago. Disease and warfare subsequently
decimated the population, but a high birth rate sees about 15% of New Zealanders
(599,000 people) identify as Maori, and that proportion is likely to grow.
In 2009 and 2010 NZ topped the Global Peace Index, earning the distinction of being rated the world's
most peaceful country. In 2011 it dropped to second place behind Iceland - something to do with all
those
haka
performed during the Rugby World Cup, perhaps?
