New Zealand 'has it all over us'

Two foreign journalists had contrasting views of New Zealand in recent visits. Here, Sydney Morning Herald senior reporter Paola Totaro has nothing but praise. Use the link at the bottom of the page for a less complimentary view from a British writer.

Paola Totaro flies into Auckland and, in the time it takes her to catch a cab into the city, she is in a positive frame of mind.

It is the comment of her Indian taxi driver that grabs her attention.

"In Australia, passengers see you are foreign and demand to know if you know your way. In New Zealand, they ask you if you're okay, how you are settling. They wait to hear the answer. Do you know what I mean?" he asks her.

Totaro says first impressions are often gut-driven and intuition is deeply undervalued.

With intuition as her guide, Totaro then lists reasons why New Zealand, as she puts it, "has it all over us".

In a likely reference to Kim Hill, Totaro commends our "real women" on television - the ones with "grey hair, wrinkles and imperfect upper arms" - who she says ask questions of politicians with unabashed irreverence.

"They refuse to accept obfuscating answers and allow their faces to reveal every emotion - from utter disdain to disbelieving exasperation."

Totaro, in an article published last Thursday, expands her praise to New Zealand women who exude a "confident, intelligent feminism" across all generations and sectors.

She believes our politicians have yet to succumb to the culture of spin and praises Helen Clark and Don Brash for their head-to-head debates, and public meet and greets.

She finds New Zealand politicians relatively interesting, even at times demonstrating genuine warmth or humour.

Forget militant underbellies, Totaro claims Winston Peters's Iraqi revelations were handled without too much strident rhetoric.

And putting aside the front-bums debacle, she also admires John Tamihere's show of dignified respect for political rival Dr Pita Sharples.

She says Helen Clark's personal sense of identity is "strong and blissfully unaffected by vanity".

"Who else could have sent one of the world's first trans-gender MPs and a former sex worker - Georgina (originally George) Beyer - to meet the Queen at the airport? It takes a confident nation to make a small decision like that - and big decisions like kissing goodbye the possibility of a free-trade deal with the US to retain an unstintingly pacifist stance on the world stage."