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Kia Ora, but not for Green Okkers

By Duncan Graham - posted Tuesday, 11 June 2013


At the New Zealand Greens' AGM in Christchurch this month, a TV station seeking a stereotype unearthed an elderly bearded delegate in bird-watching gear hitching his bike to a rail outside the conference hall.

A yesteryear image – as outdated as workers in cloth caps and bosses in top hats.

For the party's co-leaders, lawyer Metiria Turei, 43 and political scientist Dr Russel Norman, 46, have been trying to dress their party in different clothes. Literally.

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Ms Turei, once a radical Maori activist, has turned from protest brown to blue designer outfits, reportedly costing thousands. Meanwhile clean shaven Dr Norman is seldom seen outside a business suit, embracing economics before hugging trees. Marijuana reform? Hush.

With 14 members in NZ's 121-member, eight-party unicameral parliament, the Greens are now widely tipped as possible coalition partners with Labour, should the National government lose its two-seat overall majority at next year's election.

The likelihood of this is best shown by the ferocious attempts to undermine Dr Norman. The party's policies are moving into the mainstream. The man is articulate and usually well informed, so a difficult target. Better to concentrate on a major personal defect.

For Dr Norman (and apologies for any offence felt across the Ditch), is an Australian.

Although quitting his homeland in 1997 Dr Norman has failed to grasp the subtleties of the cross-Tasman relationship and the residual hates and jealousies.

Trevor Chappell's underarm at the MCG was in 1981. It could have been yesterday measured by the regularity the shameful incident is bowled up to prove the untrustworthiness of the people next door.

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Possums in NZ aren't cute, cuddly and protected – they're pests from Australia to be poisoned, trapped and shot for chomping their way through native wildlife and habitat.

And what Australian ever recognises Phar Lap as a Timaru horse, or that the Pavlova was invented in NZ?

Bank bashing is a universal sport. NZ's big four are all Australian owned, as are hundreds of other companies, including miners like Bathurst Resources, keen to open-cut coal fields on conservation land in the South Island's Denniston Plateau.

Almost half a million Kiwis live in Australia where the weather and wages are better, but those who arrived since 2001 are denied many social benefits. This doesn't apply to Australians in NZ. The unfairness is a guaranteed staple for a slow news day, or a Kiwi politician hunting a headline.

A more nuanced operator than the earnest Dr Norman would have spent time learning to pronounce the dairy product 'melk', and being photographed barracking for the All Blacks.

Instead he made a Politics 101 howler: His attack on 'crony capitalism' was acceptable, but then he played the man, not the ball. OK in Canberra, but not in Aotearoa – unless the object is an Aussie.

Dr Norman tackled former finance trader Prime Minister John Key, an Auckland-born benign centre-righter famous for his friendliness, and compared him to gruff Sir Robert Muldoon who reigned between 1975 and 84.

Ms Turei could have hit out and ducked the backlash. She was only a schoolgirl when 'Piggy' Muldoon backed the 1981 Springbok tour that split the nation, but she was in Palmerston North hearing the murmur of the Manawatu, while her colleague was a kid sweating in Brisbane.

Sir Robert, who died in 1984, is still considered a 'divisive and corrosive' figure in NZ history – but at least he was Kiwi. The Dominion Post editorialised: '… to suggest Mr Key's personal style is akin to that of Sir Robert is to do nothing but betray ignorance.

'The two could not be more different. Sir Robert was a micro-manager; Mr Key delegates. Sir Robert snarled; Mr Key smiles. Sir Robert banned journalists from press conferences, insulted foreign leaders and once punched a demonstrator outside a meeting. Mr Key occasionally gets a little tetchy.'

The commentariat went into overdrive. After scarifying the Australian's past, right wing political analyst Matthew Hooton told Radio NZ National: 'there's something inauthentic and hollow about Russel Norman when he talks about NZ history … it's probably wise for new immigrants who get involved in politics to talk about the future than the past.'

The debate erodes NZ's reputation as a welcoming multicultural nation where 25 per cent were born overseas. The Green's co-leader has lived in NZ for 16 years. He's a citizen and married to a Kiwi, but to many (too many?) forever flawed because his Mum didn't go into labour in Godzone.

If Dr Norman had come from China, Korea, India, the US, the UK or the Pacific Islands like many MPs, it's unlikely he'd have been ridiculed for making the mistake of being born elsewhere. That would have been labelled racist.

There's a streak of sinophobia in NZ, as revealed in opposition to Chinese land purchases, but this is mild when compared to Okker-intolerance.

Dr Norman should have known all this from his PhD thesis on NZ's left wing Alliance Party, research that gave him an understanding of Kiwi history better than many of his mockers.

But here's another problem: He studied at Macquarie, not Massey. Unforgivable.

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About the Author

Duncan Graham is a Perth journalist who now lives in Indonesia in winter and New Zealand in summer. He is the author of The People Next Door (University of Western Australia Press) and Doing Business Next Door (Wordstars). He blogs atIndonesia Now.

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Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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