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.

Former Kiwi PM Helen Clark converses with the author. Photo: AFP

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.

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  • Alec Black says:

    01:57pm | 06/02/13

    Known fact…Oz’s and Pom’s are the same…whine, whinge and selfish…b…srds of the Yanks..thats why you copy them and can only invent a revolving clothes line., Read more »

  • MK says:

    01:08pm | 06/02/13

    Exactly! about time we kicked the two-head out! Read more »

 

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

Gillard gets a friendly greeting from NZ PM John Key. Pic: Ray Strange

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.

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  • Tony says:

    01:54pm | 18/02/11

    Rosie, had the Independents swallowed all the sweeteners and promises Abbott bent over backwards to provide, he would have stopped the boats (by using mental powers—oops he’s hasn’t got much of a brain with only Masters and Bachelors degrees), introduced the flood levy saying that his hero John Howard had… Read more »

  • Your name: Marion says:

    10:50pm | 17/02/11

    Your comment: Gillard is special because: 1) She’s Australia’s first female PM.  2) She’s a migrant who managed to survive the rubbishing ockers would have dished out from childhood and are still doing so. 3) She is smarter than Abbott and can think on her feet.  He has admitted that… Read more »

 

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.

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  • Olivia says:

    05:58pm | 21/08/12

    That is very offensive to New Zealanders and somehow u think ur much beta. Read more »

  • Casey says:

    05:54pm | 21/08/12

    Kiwis rock.Aussies suck u can try to steal our pavlova and all our goods all u want but u can’t have it cause we r 2 good 4 u. Read more »

 

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