John Key

So NZ Prime Minister John Key is upset about the way Australia treats Kiwi immigrants. He can’t be serious. New Zealanders who make the quick jump across the ditch are treated better than immigrants from any other nation.

Kiwis should not be entitled to permanent residency the moment they set up shop on Bondi Beach. I say that as someone who came here from New Zealand as a child, back when permanent residency was essentially automatic, and benefitted from the easier system.

Australia loves New Zealanders, but there’s only so much special treatment they can expect to receive. Kiwi immigrants have absolutely nothing to complain about.

Continue reading "Quit your whingeing Kiwi cuzzies, life here is sweet as" »

Antipodean Greens have established themselves as the rudest on the planet, with the New Zealanders easily winning the local derby.

Tomorrow Prime Minister Julia Gillard will address the New Zealand Parliament in Wellington in what her Kiwi counterpart, conservative John Key, had hoped would be a first.

However, NZ Greens co-leader Russel Norman and colleagues have made sure the Parliament won’t be in session when she arrives, making it just another speech and not a high-level honour.

Continue reading "Rude Greens give red light to Gillard" »

It’s a case of life imitating art or, more precisely, life almost imitating a cult Kiwi musical comedy duo’s US cable TV show.

In the second series of the relentlessly self-deprecating Flight of the Conchords, the New Zealand Prime Minister Brian visits America but is such a non-entity that the closest he comes to meeting Barack Obama is on a public tour of the White House and then later at a party with an Obama impersonator.

In a follow-up episode Brian opens the single dismal exhibit New Zealand Town in New York and insists on providing the commentary while driving the guided tour bus past it himself.

Continue reading "Top ten ways to describe New Zealand to Americans" »