Paul Thomas: How we make the world's jaw drop

According to the stereotype, New Zealanders are inordinately proud of their country, yet plagued by insecurity. Thus visitors to Godzone are invited to start dishing out compliments before they've cleared Customs.

But this probably isn't a good time to pop the question, "What do you think of New Zealand?" Positive reinforcement might be in short supply.

Visitors who take a crash course in the state of our nation by immersing themselves in the media might notice, for instance, that the power blackout which turned Auckland into a ghost town for six hours and sucked many millions of dollars out of the economy was caused by two 40-year-old rusty shackles not being up to the job.

They might wonder what sort of country lets things slide to the extent that its largest city's power supply is dependent on a couple of rusty old shackles. They might wonder what sort of power industry has to find out the hard way that rusty old shackles aren't up to the job.

Having also noticed that heavy use of power because of severe weather has led to peak-hour shut-downs for some communities, they might search the newspaper for evidence that these events have galvanised the Government into something more than a band-aid response to what increasingly seems a critical situation.

Having searched in vain, they might conclude that the travel agent back home in Osaka or Bremen or Seattle has sent them here on false pretences, and if they'd wanted a Third World holiday they'd have chosen somewhere a lot warmer and a lot cheaper.

After double-checking that their travel insurance is in order, they read on, only to be confronted by the horror of the Kahui twins.

Coming across a politician calling for the Government to spend more money on non-violence programmes, they might wonder what sort of people have to be taught not to bash their babies to death. Perhaps people who as infants were themselves bashed by their nearest and dearest.

Observing that much of the discussion of this tragedy centres on the fact that the dead babies were Maori, and studying statistics which show child abuse is significantly more prevalent among Maori than other ethnic groups, the visitors might wonder how it has come to this.

And if they'd boned up on New Zealand in advance and absorbed the fact that the Waitangi process is the centrepiece of our race relations, they might wonder what will happen when that process runs its course.

Finally, observing the Kahui family's unwillingness to reveal who is responsible for this most inhuman of acts, they might conclude that omerta, the code of silence, is no longer the exclusive property of the Mafia.

If that causes our visitors to wonder about New Zealanders' respect for the law and the efficacy of our criminal justice system, what would they make of the news that an inmate of Rimutaka Prison arranged for a house-call from a prostitute?

Presumably that even though security in our prisons is laughably lax, our criminals are so pampered and lazy that they'd rather dial a hooker than go to the trouble and expense of breaking out of jail and taking a girl out to dinner.

If by this stage our visitors are thinking that New Zealand is in need of an injection of fresh thinking, they might be encouraged to learn that our future head of state coined a cool $42 million last year largely as a result of reforming antiquated practices on his inherited land-holdings.

However, the fact that the land-holdings in question are 20,000km away might make them question why a supposedly egalitarian and independent South Pacific nation chooses to have a European hereditary monarch as its head of state.

By now our visitors are desperate for some light relief and, being sympathetically disposed, hoping for our sakes we have something to divert us from our bleak day-to-day reality.

A televised dance-off between a girlish former beauty queen and a larger-than-life discus thrower probably wasn't what they had in mind, but it seems to work for us. We can only hope they didn't get here in time to witness the leader of one of our political parties conclude his routine by spear-tackling his partner into the dance-floor.

When they started getting to know us, our visitors skipped over the news that one of America's leading alien-hunters is on her way to New Zealand. Now they find themselves returning to this story and nodding knowingly: where better place to look?

Having noted that we shared our neighbours' pain when they were eliminated from the soccer World Cup, and our preoccupation with an Australian movie star's marriage, the visitors might assume that the two Antipodean hearts beat as one.

That really just goes to show that these exercises are very much a matter of timing. Just as fishermen who didn't get a bite and storm-blasted campers are always told "You should've been here last week," so visitors observing next week's build-up to the Bledisloe Cup match will be left with a very different impression of the transtasman relationship.

Sometimes our warts are there for all to see and sometimes we present an immaculate face to the world. This was a Clearasil week.