What does it mean to be a New Zealander?

[H00dz]

To me being a New Zealander means that I can stand with my head high, and thank GOD Almighty that he didn't make me an.........AUSTRALIAN !!!!

[ElCoyote]

Currently this means being dictated to by a bunch of ugly socialist dykes, who despite their proclivity, seem to breed with each coming year. Should they have ridden a bike, their feminazzi mate excluded, then I may reverse my plans to relocate overseas. to Uncle Comrade Helen

[Animal]

Another arrogant safa let into the country......

I'm sure there are people from worse off places who could say safaland is a wondertful place. So why did you leave? Because you saw there could be something better.....

Arrogant? Yeah, whatever. I'd argue the point but I can't be bothered.

You're not wrong. Most of sub-equatorial Africa thinks that Safaland (wtf?) is a wonderful place - until they get there and realise it's dangerous, harsh, and unforgiving. It's not a good place to be if you hold any hope of ever growing old.

Why did I leave? Because my life is valuable to me. Several of my very close family and numerous friends and colleagues had been murdered in the country's out-of-control crime. You have to have lived there and buried some of your closest kin to appreciate that in Africa, life is a valueless commodity.

I had a number of options open to me when I decided my time in South Africa was over, but I chose NZ above all of them. The country has been very good to me, and I have willingly and faithfully repaid the opportunity I was granted, in taxes, charity, and investment in the NZ economy.

I have been both an employee and an employer, and in both roles I have made a committed and positive contribution to the country's economy and reduced the unemployed by a few. The work ethic, skills and qualifications I brought with me into NZ have been put to extremely good use by past employers, and continue to do so. Even now, while establishing commercial interests in Perth, I continue to contribute to my adoptive country's economic growth.

I still consider myself to be extremely fortunate and blessed to have been accepted into NZ. I am proud to introduce myself as a Kiwi - even if I wasn't born in NZ. I am proud to have willingly immersed myself in NZ's culture and made a real and valuable contribution to the country in return for opening its doors to me. I am proud to have been able to put my skills and expertse to use in this country. I would like to believe that the people who are now employed and better off through my contribution are appreciative of my having emigrated to NZ.

So maybe this makes me another arrogant Safa. Well, whatever. Hell, I've been called far worse and also not given a shit. It just really saddens me when born New Zealanders with little or nothing to contribute to the country of their birth are so damn quick to moan about it. I wouldn't want to be part of any other country, even though my expertise could take me anywhere. Oh shit, that's probably arrogant...

[BarryG]

I'm as true blue a Kiwi as anyone, even though I've been living elsewhere since I was 13.
I don't hang on to my kiwi-ness in any overt way, but I'm always proud to inform someone who hears my accent (yes, still there despite being bastardised by South Africa, Canada and the Southern US!) that my origins and family are from New Zealand.
At the end of the day, though, my natural (Kiwi?) cynicism imparts itself and tells me that nationalism (and religion) have cursed the world for time immemorial, and the sooner we realise we're citizens of the earth and our humanness should define us, rather than where we had the sheer chance to be born, the better a place this world will be.
I know, I know - a romantic cynic.
Cheers
Barry
Sorry, doesn't exactly answer your question, I realise that............

[Grub]

To all you Kiwis who never seem to stop bitching about your country, shut the fuck up. You have no idea how lucky you really are. You have a fantastic country, learn to appreciate it.

Oh true ... so true.

Every time I leave the country I come back to a place that is not equalled anywhere I've been. Uncle Helen and Aunty Michael have done their best to stuff it up but so far they haven't succeeded.

What we do seem to have lost in the last 30yrs though is our sense of identity, our sense of pride and cheekiness that made us proud to be the battling kiwi able to transcend any boundary or barrier and come out on top.

Our individual identity is being swallowed up in globalism. Bad youth are wearing the colours of LA street gangs. Our uniqueness is being diluted as we become multi-cultural. It is now being fashionable to pull and put ourselves down. Look how the media and others drool with glee when some obscure UN nobody states that we have a race problem.

Our lack of pride and purpose is destroying the remarkable qualities that defined us as a nation and a race. What were those qualities? I don't know for sure, but a very good collection of them are epitomised in three of the four books reviewed here. They illustrate what the original post was asking. What we have to now ask ourselves is how we have changed - and why - and what can we do about it.

Don't put your country down, it's the best one there is ... that's why people are busting their asses to come here FFS.

[Grub]

At the end of the day being a New Zealander means I live in NZ. I love it, it's my home, but that's all it is.

How long have you spent working and living outside of the country?

[Usarka]

Grub, that's the problem some of us see the place becoming like all those "worse" places around the globe.

Do we sit back and do/say nothing because we "don't know how lucky we are". Or do we rark the place up and try to keep it a place worth living in?

id rather be on the whinging side than the side with all the apathy.

[Grub]

id rather be on the whinging side than the side with all the apathy.

Agreed! Apathy is what we have descended into because we have lost our way. That's possibly because the nay-sayers are all employed in the media. I don't now how we get out of that vicious spiral.

[Dave Lobster]

We work at jobs, we care for our loved ones, we eat, sleep, and go to work again.

A country has already gone downhill when families are referred to as young ones.
Pretty soon, if it hasn't happened already, the politicians will start answering all questions with What is really important is.. rather than what they were asked. President Blair did the same.

re: South Africa. One of my better mates left South Africa when he was forced to take on a black man as his apprentice. Once he'd been taught to read/write and how to become a surveyor, he'd replace my mate, who'd be kicked out for being white. He walked out.. and went to the UK.

As am immigrant, being kiwi seems to me to mean not being able to spell, believing everything taught to you at school (not including free thinking), and attending work for long hours but getting no more done than the poms that are only there for eight.

[RantyDave]

The foresight of previous governments means we are blessed with nuclear free status...

It was neither foresight nor a blessing.

Dave

[Grahameeboy]

Thankfully, I am still me...

[James Deuce]

It was neither foresight nor a blessing.

Dave

Before that "Nuclear Free" thing gets out of hand, we can't use current commercial reactors in NZ because we don't use enough energy. There's no rheostat on a 2GW nuclear reactor and NZ's energy use amounts to huge peaks and troughs. 10kW at its lowest or something insane like that. We'd have to install a HUGE light bulb over the Chathams and rely on attenuation to suck up the excess.

ANZUS? "Free Trade" with the US? Look up the Canberra Treaty of 1944 and see if you think the US have NZ's best interests at heart.

[BuFfY]

I don't quite know what it means to be a New Zealander, I know my history (my Poppa wrote a book that I got for my 21st - tradition)

What I do know is that I will always teach in New Zealand, I have no desire to go across the ditch to teach Australians, or to go teach in a school in England. I hope I can do my part and make a difference in atleast 20 children's lives a year, to make them know how lucky they are to live here.

At the moment at school we are looking at landmarks, and how they are so significant to groups of people. Amazingly most of my children have no idea what the Statue of Liberty is, other than what they have seen in the movie Madagascar!!

[Usarka]

re: South Africa. One of my better mates left South Africa when he was forced to take on a black man as his apprentice. Once he'd been taught to read/write and how to become a surveyor, he'd replace my mate, who'd be kicked out for being white. He walked out.. and went to the UK.

I feel sorry for people (like many safa's) who see their once good country way of life deteriorate. Seems to be happening in lots of places, and isn't this happening here too, but at a slower less intense pace?

just because it's a good country it doesn't mean it can't be any better, or that there aren't better places depending on your values.

An top athlete doesn't start smoking and eating pies once he's won a gold medal. he works on improving.

i think NZ is slipping backwards in a lot of areas (crime, low income for long work hours, affordability etc). Maybe that's because i'm living in Auck at the moment. but.... a quote i heard a while back from an unremembered source: "If you don't like auckland now then you won't like NZ in 20 years".

Negativism? Realism? Identifying issues to create a groundswell in order to work at fixing them? It's hard to tell peoples intent from words on the internet isn't it.... so no i wont shut the fuck up bahahahahahaaaa

[Animal]

Don't put your country down, it's the best one there is ... that's why people are busting their asses to come here FFS.

My point exactly! Well said, that man.