Bloody Aussies

Apparently, in order to be good Kiwis, we're supposed to hate Australians. We're seeing signs of this all over the place. It seems to be part of the national psyche. We've seen Australians described as 'racist' and 'dirty' (as in, 'dirty cheats,' not 'unclean'). There's a show on tv called Gangs of Oz which documents some of the criminal gangs in Australia. We get the message: Australia is dangerous! There's another show coming out that we saw previewed last night; it puts the Australians against New Zealanders in a Survivor-type, reality game show. We choked laughing when we heard the announcer: "Who will win? Will it be the dirty Australians? Or the righteous Kiwis?" (maybe it wasn't "righteous," but it was some equally noble quality used to describe the New Zealand team).

There's also this ad for a home improvement store. It suggests that Kiwis are hard-working, DIY types who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty. Australians, of course, are just lazy.



There's also a huge campaign to buy New Zealand-made products and services, and since a lot of things come from Australia, the message is often, "don't buy from them, buy from us." This was demonstrated recently with the launch of Jetstar airlines in New Zealand, an Australian airline that is now competing with Air New Zealand for domestic flights. Jetstar had a rough start here with crazy delays and cancellations. The reporters were almost giddy when reporting this. A story in the NZ Herald called it an "inglorious launch."

We haven't actually seen or heard of any Australians being victimised by hate crimes or anything like that. It's just the non-stop jokes. It seems to be somewhat similar to the rivalry between U.S. and Canada, or between England and [insert name of any country that England once colonised]. It's probably all in good fun.