Lincoln Tan: Good neighbours are people who speak face to face

It's so funny how we don't talk any more/ It's so funny why we don't talk any more ... "

These are words from a song written by Alan Tarney and first sung by Sir Cliff Richard in 1997. Probably the last thing on Tarney's or Richards' mind was for it to be philosophical, but one could argue that it does reflect the dismal state of human relations that exist among communities in New Zealand today.

Henry, a relatively new migrant from Malaysia, shared this story with me: He had just moved into his new house on the North Shore and bought a pet german shepherd puppy. The day he brought his puppy home there was a thunderstorm. The poor pooch was scared and shivering and no amount of pacifying could stop it from whining.

The next morning, an officer from the dog control unit was at Henry's front door to give him a warning. A neighbour had complained about the noise the dog had made the night before.

Henry was angry. He asked why his neighbour did not just come and talk to him. They were all part of a "neighbourhood watch" scheme and had the telephone numbers of everyone in the neighbourhood - so why couldn't his neighbour just phone him instead of calling the North Shore City Council?

For a time, he turned from wanting to know his neighbours to wanting to keep away from them, not knowing who had reported him.

Contrast this with the story of Roland Wong, who came here from China as a teenager with his family in the 60s to set up a market garden.

He recalls his first contact with a New Zealander, who also happened to be his neighbour: His car was blocking the driveway, and his neighbour knocked on his door to ask him to move it. After that was done, his father invited the neighbour in for a cup of tea.

That cup of tea marked the start of a friendship that was to last a lifetime - until the neighbour died a few years ago.

Unlike in many parts of Asia, where people can travel on the same train daily for years and not even say hello, people in New Zealand are seemingly more civil to one another. But beyond the "hello" and "how are you today?" there is overt strife among the many communities here.

It's quite common for differences to crop up among communities everywhere but the method of resolving them can be very different. People-to-people relations are viewed as of utmost importance in many Asian societies, where your next promotion or salary increase could be dependent on who you know (this concept of a general understanding between two people is called "Guanxi"), as opposed to what you know. So, settling the issue with each other supersedes turning to an authority figure.

Resolving matters among people from the same background and who speak the same language is much easier than with someone completely different. I am sure we are all a bit xenophobic at times, as we fear how the other person will react or that confronting the problem head-on will escalate matters rather than resolve them.

So we hide behind anonymous complaints. Like Henry's neighbour, most New Zealanders do so by making complaints to the authorities.

Jessica Phuang, the Asian liaison officer at the Auckland Central police station, acknowledges that there is still a distrust of authorities such as the police among some immigrant communities.

So they launch their own complaints anonymously: through discussion forums, websites and the internet. Hiding behind names such as Red Dragon, Yellow Pride and Spider Lotus, they talk about their bad experiences in New Zealand and even discuss ways of revenge and taking the law into their own hands.

Having their own ethnic online channels, newspapers and other media, minority ethnic communities are able to live here without the need to talk with people outside their community. In such a situation, no one wins, and the biggest loser is New Zealand. Will it get better?

Not so, thinks Carmen Gray, a journalism student at Auckland University of Technology who has spent time in China and a year in Korea teaching English. She has also been to Russia and Argentina. She says students of different ethnicities at AUT stick to their own groups and often do not mix, and the situation of racial integration in New Zealand is worse than overseas, because many still resist change.

So where are we headed?

Unless we take it upon ourselves to make an effort to change, we are headed for disaster. There is already enough division in a bicultural New Zealand; we don't need further cracks as we head down the road to multiculturalism.

We know there are big divides between Maori and Pakeha but at least they talk and argue with each other. What worries me is that the problems the Asian community has with the wider community and vice versa are kept separate from each other. It is hard to be one people rowing the same waka if we don't even talk to one another.

Perhaps we can make a start. Even before the commandment "Love thy neighbour", we should have one that says "Talk to thy neighbour". The next time your Chinese neighbour blasts his music too loudly, tackle him first and don't call the police. Like Roland Wong - who knows where that might lead?