Bleak, moody, suicidal - that's NZ

Two foreign journalists had contrasting views of New Zealand in recent visits. Here, Douglas Davis of the Spectator in Britain has little good to say. Use the link at the bottom of the page for a more glowing view from an Australian writer.

An early impression of New Zealand for Douglas Davis, writer for the conservative current events magazine The Spectator, was the "chainsaw voice" at Auckland Airport announcing that New Zealand's agricultural regulations prohibited the import of "enumels".

Davis then escapes the terminal - and the banned animals - where he notes a heavy grey sky overhanging Auckland which "offers a clue to the national mood".

In visiting the city for the first time in 30 years Davis reports an "involuntary tightening of the sphincter" and finds Auckland even more dour and dull than he could remember.

While friends rave about New Zealand as a Pacific paradise, all he sees is "a relentless sprawl of clapboard houses which entomb the bleak moodiness of their inhabitants".

While New Zealanders excel at rugby, in most other endeavours they barely touched mediocrity, he says.

"New Zealand is everything that Australia is not.

"While Australia exhibits the characteristics of a thrusting alpha-male, New Zealand remains stuck in sullen adolescence."

Davis, writing in the latest edition of the weekly magazine, says while both New Zealanders and Australians derive from a common British ancestry, he is surprised their world views and aspirations have diverged so radically.

Davis says our domestic policy appears to be informed by an overarching guilt complex about "supposed" historic wrongs done to Maori.

Oblivious to the backlash attracted by Tariana Turia's holocaust remarks, he claims the "chattering Pakeha classes" quickly lapse into bizarre jargon like acculturative stress, material deprivation, colonial trauma and collective grief to describe their angst.

Meanwhile, New Zealanders have acquired a passionate hatred for Americans, Israelis, and anyone else who is not aware of nuclear issues, globalisation, the environment, ecology, or animal rights.

Davis says alcoholism and drug abuse continue to take a crippling toll, suicide is a significant cause of death, and the incidence of violence against children is among the highest in the developed world.

"Not a very happy paradise."