Hard News: There's a funny bit at the end ...
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They like to have sex with sheep, ha ha ha ha. They fuck sheep, ha ha. Just kidding mate, just kidding, just having a little joke . . . Ya sheep fucker!
And you know what to say next time, don't you? "Yup, mate. That's right. Shagged sheep, shagged <insert nationality of person insulting you> . Still prefer sheep. "
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About 10 years ago I traveled to Indonesia surfing. I can recall reading, before I left, a small news item about a man who had been arrested in Palmerston North after breaking into a sex store and stealing a sex toy (his get away vehicle was a bike so it's not so surprising he was caught).
Once I got to Indo, I found that the story was front page news in Australia, and its full details were recounted to me in full by gleeful Australian surfers.
Our thief, you see, had been caught riding away with an inflatable sheep sex-toy.
Whilst we keep doing things like this, I'm inclined to think that the Australian's are entitled to the odd laugh at our expense.
Best sheep joke I heard:
"How do New Zealand men find sheep in long grass"
"Most satisfying" -
I'm not enjoying this fit of self-congratulation. While I think it's true that there is a particularly visible strain of bigotry in Oz, we have it here too, it's just that it's been a while since it made the news.
If New Zealand does have lower levels of interethnic violence, perhaps that's because for most of the 20th century we've had a more racist and less open immigration policy than Australia, rather than because of some inherent virtue in the national character.
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I don't believe Australians are on average any more racist than NZers or anyone else
I generally agree with this statement, however I do think that Australian racists are much bolder in their views and I think this is, in part, related to the crap policies Australia's pursued under Howard.
Like it or not, intended or otherwise, Howard's actions and statements on Tampa, on Conelia Rau, the establishment of off-shore assessment for refugees on Tokelau, and the appalling situation of many detainees are understood by some to legitimise their otherwise offensive statements. He is a master of dog whistle politics.
It's no accident that Howard's gone through yet another Minister of Immigration, Vanstone, in only a couple of years.
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Nicely said, Stephen.
The difference, in my own observation, is that in Australia there is more social latitude to be brazen about it. Here, it's muttered, or scrawled on a cyber toilet wall like this.
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Check out this nut job, in particular look at the eyes...
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1533491675
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Ewe-Toob seems to have pulled the trigger and I can't see the other one now either. But have no fear. I was following up something yesterday and came across this gay and feel good response to the ABBA song Dancing Queen. It should cheer you up...
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one, a mate has been to a few Millwall FC games, and he reckons they're "pretty bloody full-on mate".
but two, i've been to AFL at the MCG, and was pretty bloody shocked by the things blokes were yelling at the aboriginal players on the field. i've never heard a nzlers yell, "f###ing niggers" to a maori player from the terraces at Eden Park.
but then, that doesn't mean it hasn't happened. you only have to look at the anti-treaty, or anti-invAsian groundswell to see the real nzl.
the other thing is that while these boofheads were screaming from the ground floor in the MCG, two levels above them grandmothers were sitting eating sandwiches with their grandkids in complete peace, and just enjoying the game.
bit of a microcosm really.
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I had a similar experience at the old Lang Park in Brisvegas. The occasion was the national final of the NSL before all the changes. The locals were playing a team from sydney by way of Croatia, I think it may have been Sydney F.C. their supporters were seriously nasty and took delight in disrupting the mainly white middle class families that had come along to support a team no-one held much help of winning (but did 2-0). The crowning moment was when one of the away supporters was being escorted to the exit by the constabulary and giving the home crowd a mouthful, when a kid sitting in front of me about 10-12 hurled a 4n20 mince and cheese from about twenty metres away on the terraces. It sailed gently on the breeze rotating slowly, and struck the clown full on the face. He got the rasberry from about 5000 people, the two policemen momentarily lost their hold on him as they were laughing so much.
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Having lived in Australian for six years I heard my share of sheep shagging jokes, sure they got tedious, but I am sure I was tedious when for example the ABs won. If you can't laugh at yourself..........
I am sure that by and large Australians are not more racist than us, but they seem more vocal in voicing their bigotry and opinions IMHO
The thing that I don't get and have never got with any nationality is flag waving, I have never ever felt the need to grab the NZ flag and take it to an event or to fly it from a flag pole from my front garden. Flags waving in front of you at a concert or sport event are boring and distracting. I just don't get what that is about.
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I'm going to add my favourite sheep joke. I heard it whilst living in the UK in 2001 when they had their foot and mouth epidemic, a friend of mine said to me:
"Lucky New Zealand doesn't have foot and mouth aye? Then it'd be an STD".
Gold. If it's quality sheep jokes I'm all for them. -
I have to agree with David and Che on the relative levels of bigotry in Oz and NZ. I'd like to see empirical evidence but my feeling is there is little difference. Unlike Australia, NZ has a much larger and more visible indigenous population that, in my lifetime anyway, doesn't tolerate the sort of behaviour Che describes. This in turn emboldens Pakeha and others who are disgusted by bigotry to speak up about it.
One of my closest mates, a pathologically stroppy Samoan afakasi woman got called a "dirty bonga b**ch" by a passing car full of (mostly but not all pakeha) drunken yobos.
We didn't need to hold each other back cause the token Pakeha in our NZ Austronesian diaspora gang wrenched open their car door at the red light the stopped and proceeded to tell them how peeps like them made her embarassed to be a Pakeha NZer. It was a savage tongue lashing and they all looked shamed, especially when they realised much of the onlookers were just as peeved as our mate.
We didn't need to say or do a thing because she wasn't speaking for us, she was defending her own sense of honour as a Pakeha. It was a sweet moment.
But what so many NZers express when they think they're in private or not in front of their 'others' is really no different to what Aussies do in public.
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Che
I've also had the (mis)fortune of attending a Millwall footy game when the other team (Crystal Palace) had the likes of Ian Wright, Paul Parker, and Mark Bright in their ranks, and gazing in fear and wonder at more veins standing out on more shiny foreheads in the crowd than you could possibly believe.
I also remember hearing an Old Firm crowd singing 'could you go a chicken supper Bobby Sands, could you go a chicken supper, go a chicken supper ... anyway you get the drift
Alternatively, I've also seen little old ladies foaming at the mouth while screaming the most vile abuse at Tony Lockett when he was playing at St Kilda for man-handling their teams fullbacks.
I guess the point is, part of the attraction of sport the world over is the fury and the passion, the problem is, when that fury and passion crosses some reasonable line (for purposes of argument I'll argue that race, religion, nationality, and family should be the 'line')
Is NZ really that different? - dunno
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But what so many NZers express when they think they're in private or not in front of their 'others' is really no different to what Aussies do in public
How would you know that? You said the onlookers were as peeved as your mate. In Australia or Britain their sympathies would most likely be with the yobos. I have lived in some racist countries and this is not one of them.
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hmmm ... after living in over in Oz (North Brisbane) for 6 years or so, including a longish stint it's state school system, my 2 cents would be to say that the racism there is far more widespread.
We learned jack about the Aboriginals, zero about the shameful past, "open seasons" etc, while Australia Day was so pimped, it should have been on July the 4th, and this was back in the 80's.
Back then most Queenslanders were worried about the "Japs" coming in and buying up all of the Gold Coast.
Certainly there is racism here in NZ, but in OZ I'd call it McRacism it's so widely accepted.
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Righto serious post time:
I went to Wellington College (don't judge me, so did Keith Ng), and every year the McEvedy Shield is held, it's an athletic's event between Coll, St Pat's Town, St Pat's Silverstream and Rongotai and I brought a friend along when I started university and he likened it to a Nuremberg Rally. Some of the chant's we used to yell were pretty horrendous in hindsight.
Rongotai in particular copped a lot, they are predominantly a Polynesian/Maori school and we used to sing (to the tune of We'll See You when you get there) "We'll see you on Crimewatch" and they also had a lot of African long distance runners to whom we'd chant "show us your passport".
So no I don't think it's different here at all. My old man took me to my very first test match in 1994 when the Springboks were touring and Chester Williams was playing on the wing, I can recall a number of drunken louts yelling racially charged abuse at him. -
I think perhaps in NZ people are generally more discreet in their racism, or at least, racial prejudices. While it may not be acceptable to talk to these beliefs in public, work, socialising, who knows what is said or thought in the privacy of the family home, or to one's intimate friends?
Perhaps this is the true value of political correctness, that people aspire to being polite and courteous and veil their obnoxious or odd views?
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Lest we run away with the notion that the entire continent is mired in ill-will:
From a forwarded email doing the rounds of a university in Sydney:
Hi there.
You may have heard that Google intends to take high resolution photos of Sydney on Australia Day as part of its Google Earth project. (Google Earth Events: Australia Day 2007)
We think it’s a great opportunity for a bit of activism.We’ll be chalking up the word “Sorry” in a bunch of places that are clearly visible from Google’s plane. Given our record on Aboriginal human rights, Iraq, Kyoto, East Timor’s Oil, &c. we have plenty to apologise for.
Full post here
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How would you know that?
Because in my everyday life I tend to 'pass' as a Pakeha. So I hear a lot of things that most Pasifika, African, etc people never would. I also have a tendency to 'collect' other peoples bigotry, meaning I will often steer conversation in the general direction and see what comes out of a new acqauntainces mouth.
I also worked in hospotality for a very long time - its a profession where you get treated as if you're invisble - and the things i heard and saw are just as bad as my experiences in Aussie, America etc. Just not quite so public or overt, but after a couple of quiets the bigot beast will often rear its ugly head.
I'm also privy to what Maori say about Pakeha, Chinese, Somalis ets and its equally disquieting.
NZers definitely harbour the same prejiduces as Aussies, and probably to the same extent. The difference seems to be our choices in how we act on it - or not.
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I have lived in some racist countries and this is not one of them.
My feeling too (having lived in Africa, UK, Europe and NZ). Still, it is a fragile state that can change very quickly for the sake of a few votes. The tenor set by Howard in Australia is shameful and should be recognised as such. Hatred and division can be frighteningly easy to stir up.
On a happier note, Mr. Slack has reduced my productivity today to something so close to zero a pure mathematician would round it off within a blink of an eye.
My favourite so far from www.fstdt.com is:
"as a pro-lifer, I cannot support an organization that is opposed to the death penalty"
No, wait, it's this one putting the final nail in evolution's coffin (not before time, I might add):
"several million years for a monkey to turn into a man. oh wait thats right. monkeys dont live several million years"
and I know I am going to love the post titled "The fallacies of gravity" which I hope and prey was not written by an antipodean.
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Lest we run away with the notion that the entire continent is mired in ill-will:
That's a nice gesture, I hope it helps reduce the atrocious number of Aboriginal kids that die 'mysteriously' in police custody.
Has anyone seen the John Safran vs God episode where he satires those Melburnian hippies? Hilarious
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How would you know that? You said the onlookers were as peeved as your mate. In Australia or Britain their sympathies would most likely be with the yobos. I have lived in some racist countries and this is not one of them.
Relatively speaking, I think you're right. We are hardly free of blight, but I don't think an independent observer would pick us as a particularly racist country.
Also, having lived in London for five years, it strikes me that while we may lack the sporting passion of some similar countries, we can all sit next to each other at sports matches. At the football in Britain, opposing fans are almost always seated in separate parts of the ground. They still occasionally kill each other.
On the other hand, I was always aware that - living in Brixton anyway - I was in a very different environment to that in many American cities. At the bar, at the market, whatever: it was integrated. So I guess there are no simple pictures.
Perhaps we're all striving to be reasonable, but we're coming to different conclusions than people did in similar discussions on PA in 2005. Two emails from a Dec 2005 Hard News, first from an anonymous reader:
Was born in Australia and live in Godzone on my Oz passport. I have (again) requested the papers to apply for NZ citizenship. Last time was when the Tampa thing was going on.
When I lived in Sydney I was torn between the fundamental nice-ness of your typical strine, and the raving red-neck that lurked beneath.
It was surreal, like some Sci-Fi thing where they land on this perfectly ordinary paradise planet, and then get served boiled-alien-baby for dinner or something. You'd be chatting to a perfectly sane Strine about tax avoidance (a most popular Bar-B topic) and all of a sudden some bizarre Nazi statement about "Abo's" would pop out.
The whole ethos was centred on assimilation (aka integration, to use the PC right-wing term). You _will_ become dinky-di Aussies. Resistance is futile. Spooky. Too spooky for me.
During the Tampa thing I came as close as I ever have to smacking someone in their ( extremely large and obnoxious) gob. He was repeating the Howard Govt bullshit lines about refugees. No rational argument, just keep repeating "throw babies in ocean".
Recently I noted the Federal government are running TV ad's saying "beware... we're under attack... they're all out to get you". All this crap serves to feed an underlying feeling that the Australian way of life is under threat by people who wear different clothes. The Howard government has validated the ravings of the right wing nutters by it's brown-nosing with Bush.
Howard has consistently made me ashamed of the passport, and the Australian people for succumbing to such blatant FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) tactics.
I just need to find the $$ for the citizenship application now!
And Ben Wilson:
I spent 5 years in Melbourne, working firstly for an NZ software house selling software to a huge ozzie milk company, and then in the most reputable stockbroker as IT support and eventually as a support manager.
Not once in all those years did I see one aboriginal in employment anywhere. In fact I scarcely saw any aboriginals at all, except hanging around the train station sinking piss. I met more maoris and PIs there. Which was odd since Victoria was reputedly the most densely populated part of Australia prior to european colonization.
When I asked people about aboriginals, I was shocked to find moderate educated people telling me things like 'they're a fucken useless race', or 'we're not sure they're actually the same species'. 'Rock apes' was not an uncommon phrase.
The papers persist to this day in calling aboriginals 'Blacks', without the slightest hint of embarrassment. When I asked one 'leftie' guy about that, he said 'well, they are black'. I warned him not to do it in NZ if he liked having his original teeth.
It kind of sickened me, to see how low a people could be driven. You begin to wonder to what extent the aboriginals brought it on themselves. Then you do a bit of research and find that systematic slaughter and relocation happened on a scale that make the maori land confiscations look like acts of altruism. The first employment ever given on an official basis to aboriginals was the job of tracking down and killing other aboriginals for rustling sheep. I believe in Tasmania you could buy a license to shoot any aboriginal you wanted from the post office.
So that's just the attitudes to aboriginals, to set the scene. Immigrants fared better - barely. The PIs and Maoris that I met were never in the corporate environment, they were entirely in jobs of manual labour or semiskilled trades. But not unhappy with that lot, it would seem - at least they earned good money. Statistically they were an insignificant group - one in a thousand, it seemed like.
The real tension in Melb was between 'skippies' ('Anglos' in Sydney?) and mediterranean folks, particularly Greeks and Italians. They fared quite well, the Italians better than the Greeks. Italians were represented right up to upper middle management. But in the stockbroker they were completely absent from the board of directors. Similarly for the Greeks.
Attitudes towards them ranged from mild annoyance to open contempt, in the skippy crowd. The same didn't seem to go in reverse. But I think Melbournites don't realize quite how much the fiery latin temperament has rubbed off on them. Italians were always blamed for gang activity, although I think they were not responsible for any more than their fair share of the hits, protection rackets, pimping, drug selling and standover tactics which seemed to be so widely accepted there and so foreign to me. It is a strange experience to see a cop come into a restaurant, abuse the owner, get a free meal, then help himself out of the till before leaving.
Asians were totally underrepresented in business. None in any management role I ever saw. I saw violence towards them several times, and constant niggling.
Kiwis were the most tolerated bunch, generally, however much australians complain about us. There is so much cultural similarity that the oppression I felt was about as lame as what I'd feel being an Aucklander in Wellington. Generally, we're hired as expendable attack dogs. Many people are genuinely fond of kiwis, seeing us as their little brothers. Until we assert ourselves, of course, then every silly stereotype comes flooding out. I kept thinking of Wellington when it happened.
My perspective, not scientific, but it's what I've got. I'll never forget in my life the vitriol I received when I resigned from my management role and suggested my second in command, a Greek lady, be my replacement. You find out who your friends are and who are merely sycophants.
To be fair, I met many non racist ozzies. But they were mostly what would be considered 'extreme lefties' here.
I'm a bit dubious about the distinction between a racist environment and one where it's permissible to voice and act on racist sentiments. Don't they amount to the same thing?
Anyway, my observation was that Australia is a different place, and it is. We simply do not endure the same kind of social conflict. We don't have warring racial gangs staging riots and mob beatings, and producing popular hate videos that are, on both sides, deeply, scarily racist. We just don't.
I find it interesting that right-wingers in Australia invariably blame multiculturalism for conflict. Hasn't assimilation had long enough to prove its merit?
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On a happier note, Mr. Slack has reduced my productivity today to something so close to zero a pure mathematician would round it off within a blink of an eye.
My favourite so far from www.fstdt.com is:
I had to consciously force myself to cease with it. But I thought this was genius:
"Marijuana is the Gateway Drug.
And Darwin is the Gateway Science.
First it's evolution. Then comes plate tectonics and the Big-Bang. Then comes Athiesm. Then comes self-loathing and misanthropy, which leads to elitism and superiority complexes. The resulting social ostracization leads to homoeroticism and other perversions. The insatiable demand for money to fund extravagances coupled with the sloth that accompanies the welfare check creates a visceral hatred of capitalism. Finally, the abuser is no longer able to feel for his country and multiculturalism takes over. The transformation is complete.
I've seen it happen again and again."
The world in a nutshell.
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"as a pro-lifer, I cannot support an organization that is opposed to the death penalty"
and I'm glad there's no one left in the office to hear my spluttering. That is genius!
I moved to Australia in early 2001 after having lived in England, New York and Portugal for the previous 5 years, and was shocked at just how explicitly racist, and staunchly xenophobic, many white Australians were (only Portugal came close). All the while I consoled myself with the belief that New Zealand couldn't be that bad.
But then I moved home to discover Winston in full flight and teenagers being repatriated to a life of abuse in Sri Lanka, and I really had to reconsider.
In the end I decided that some of the apparent difference was simply the bluntness of Australian discourse. Things do seem to bee worn on one's sleeve so much more there. And there are some wonderful activists in Australia doing their best to act as a countervailing force. And they go about it with a bluntness equivalent to their opposite numbers - and which would probably seem out of place to most New Zealanders.
However, even taking this into account, Australia still seemed worse. People really had no compunction expounding their racist world view only minutes after having met. And my pale(ish) skin really did become a passport - there were several times was on the receiving end (as a perceived co-conspirator) of tirades against foreigners. Like I wasn't one????
As a total off topic thing - I'm just listening to Pet Sounds. Did anyone else out there know that the Frank Black song "Hang on to Your Ego" was a cover? Of the Beach Boys song "I know there's an Answer"?
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the (un?)fortunate thing about working on a computer is that the micropausese between bouts of high productivity are often computer related.
on the race thing. i think we need to acknowledge that racism is actually normal. doesn't matter whether you like it and practice it or not, it occurs in near any society that has contact with outsiders.
the difference is whether the society has leaders who actively exploit a groups natural racist tendencies for their own gain. nzl has a fairly good pedigree in that regard.
the main difference between here and oz seems to be that they've actively backed away from public policy that minimises or seeks to undermine racism, and we *tend* not to elect leaders who do so. and that backing away in australia is what (IMHO) is leaving plenty of space for nutters and boofheads to express themselves.
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