John Key

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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  • Neil whose sister's a cop says:

    07:07pm | 15/11/09

    Helen it should read “Tip Tin. Rather. And I don’t know about you but I prefer Canadians and even Americans over NZ’ers although I find most of them to be alright. Read more »

  • bengeck says:

    03:18am | 26/09/09

    New zealand, where man are man, and the sheep are nervous. Read more »

 

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