A confused Pacific Pom:

Kiwi Michael Laws on the differences between Australia and NZ:

"There is also another difference that we osmotically absorb. They are more optimistic than us. Whether it is the sun or their sunny disposition, Aussies are a "can do" kind of people. They do not feel constrained by their past nor even yesterday. Tomorrow is another day and that basic philosophy exudes through the Australian psyche.

By contrast, Kiwis are a negative lot. We are conditioned as such by our poor and insular media, by the Maori grievance industry and by the peculiarly Kiwi tradition of not making a fuss. The combination has been acidic of our spirit. We find reasons not to attempt for fear of failure. New Zealanders are pathologically afraid of making dicks of ourselves. Inertia is our inner guidance system.
He then goes on to say (about Australia):
"But it is a great country. It is great despite itself. Its economy is a shambles, its government inefficient and haphazard, its labour laws archaic and its productivity about that of a Tongan atoll. But it has every ore, every mineral, every metal the world could ever want. Australians are, very simply, just lucky, lucky bastards. And they know it."
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The Australian economy has performed consistently well for at least the last ten years, so where the "shambles" comes from is a mystery.
"inefficient and haphazard" government? As opposed to the efficient and streamlined NZ government, one assumes...yeah, riiight. New Zealanders, under the airy-fairy utopian idiocy of their MMP system, can be and are held to ransom by minority special-interest groups and are currently governed by a mixture of Marxist academics and unelected fringe loonies such as Sue "smacking is bashing" Bradford. A government that stole $800,000 of taxpayer's money and then passed legislation to make that theft legal.
"archaic" labour laws? The Howard government's reforms of labour laws were opposed by lefties in Oz, but reformed they were. Not enough, to be sure but NZ is hardly an exemplar in that area anyway.
Productivity--last time I looked, Australia's productivity left NZ's for dead.
And if it's all simply a matter of Australians being "lucky bastards", then he's suggesting that his earlier description of Aussies as "can do" people has nothing at all to do with their success.
Odd reasoning--or just laziness?
*Pommy=Australian term for British person.

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