Gordon McLauchlan: We'd better get used to each other

The other day I parked my car about 50m from the apartment I live in, staggered along with several plastic bags full of supermarket shopping, and came upon a group of Asian youngsters who had just exited a language school and spilled across the footpath.

I seemed invisible to them so I shoved my way through, lurching and bumping as I went. None of them showed any resentment. Some even smiled nicely.

Talk for 10 minutes with any Pakeha inner-city dweller and they'll wax on resentfully about the way our Asian citizens clog up the footpaths and make the roads hazardous because of the casual way they walk and drive.

It pays, though, to do this behind your hand or quietly because one of the most dangerous moves you can make these days is to criticise an ethnic group unless it's Australians or Brits on whom there's always been an open season. The politically correct lie in wait around every corner with socks full of sand with which to clobber liberals like me who are ruled racist.

I use the term Pakeha to avoid "white people" because I don't know any. Every Kiwi of European extraction I know is either fawn or unhealthily rubicund. But that's another issue.

Suggesting that our beige brothers are less than perfect is okay for Winston Peters every three years.

Once the wrinklies in Tauranga have stopped stomping their feet and cheering, strapped on their incontinence bags and staggered off to vote, we all get back to normal and the smiling opportunist returns to partying as is his wont.

But cultural differences are real and they have become apparent on the roads and footpaths of the nation, especially in Auckland. Take driving standards first. The main problem is that Asian Kiwis drive as though getting there is indeed more fun than arriving; as though both they and their cars are on automatic transmission.

At the other extreme, Kiwis of the Maori and Pakeha persuasion consider the journey an intolerable intrusion on their progress through this vale of tears to their immediate destination, and believe in a conspiracy that all the others cars are on the road to obstruct and impede them.

The footpath situation is different. Asian Kiwis swirl all over the place, step in front of you and idle about like wandering sheep. But an Asian mate explains that in countries with high population density, you occupy a space and don't lightly yield it or concede a right-of-way through some convention of courtesy.

If everyone during rush-hour in Tokyo stopped, said, "After you", and ushered others past them, he says, the river of people would not flow freely, would become turbulent and full of whirlpools.

I walk quickly and hate being obstructed, so the fascist in me yearns for the days when I was a little boy and New Zealand cities had white lines down the middle of footpaths, and signs* urging pedestrians to keep to the left.

During late-night shopping, always on Fridays with a closed weekend looming, footpaths would be relatively crowded and if you got in the way of orderly progress police on the beat would order you to "Move along, please."

If my father stopped to talk to someone he met, they would gently slide over to the kerb to ensure they didn't block the pathway.

All this was possible because of the New Zealand obsession with orderliness, and with not so many people about you could ride a bike through without bumping into anyone; except that riding a bike on the footpath was an offence certain to draw at least a "Hullo, hullo, hullo, what's going on here then?"

In the 1970s a retired superintendent of police living next door to me in Kohimarama dropped in for a serious chat about one of my sons riding his bike on the footpath. Had there been zero tolerance perhaps he would not have moved on to the greater crime of riding his bike on the footpath at night without a light.

Today, I guess we'd better get used to each other. One of the gifts Asian Kiwis have given Auckland is this: they like to live right in town and get out and about and their additional numbers make the city's main streets much safer at night than they were.

It is, as we say, all relative. I recall a few years ago taking some relatives from Gisborne to Takapuna Beach. In Gisborne, families stake out claims on the sand 20m or 30m apart because of the ratio of people to beach space. It was a lovely Auckland day, Takapuna was crowded, and the people from Gisborne were disconcerted by the proximity of others. They felt exposed.

A couple of weeks later I was on Waikiki where if you reach for something from your bag you may find someone next to you has rolled over and taken a crucial 20cm of beach from you. The odd thing, I realised, is that in that mass of people so much was happening, no one was taking any notice of anyone else; so I actually had more privacy than in Gisborne or Takapuna.

* I can also remember signs in most cities that urged pedestrians not to spit on the footpath; except in Wellington where the bureaucracy lives and the signs read: "Please do not expectorate on the footpath."