Paul Thomas: Lucky country has pros - and quite a few cons

Australia has produced a dead-set comic genius in Barry Humphries (pictured) and even their graceless cricketers have been known to display a sense of humour. Photo / Steven McNicholl

The transtasman migration pattern, a mountain of anecdotal evidence and the build-up to tomorrow's World Cup grudge match at Eden Park all suggest that New Zealanders love Australia but can't stand Australians.

Having spent more than a decade across the Ditch and counting several Aussies among my closest friends, it seems to me the lucky country and its inhabitants have their pros and cons.

Pros

Sense of humour: Hard as it may be to swallow, humour is more central to Australians' sense of national identity than it is to ours. Australia has produced a dead-set comic genius in Barry Humphries and even their supposedly snarling, graceless cricketers have been known to display a keen, if earthy, sense of humour.

Fast bowler Jeff Hammond, who wore the baggy green cap in the early 1970s, was nicknamed Crayfish because "he was all arms and legs and had shit for brains".

Kiwis remember Greg Chappell as the captain who ordered the infamous 1981 underarm delivery at the MCG. However, when playing county cricket in England, Chappell taught his landlord's mynah bird to say, "G'day, why don't you get rooted?" I think they cancel each other out.

And Greg's older brother Ian, whose hard-nosed mid-70s team is the model for all Australian teams, including the current one, deserves our grateful thanks for putting smarmy English media "personality" Piers Morgan in his place.

During last summer's Ashes series, Morgan bowled up to Chappell. "Hi Mr Chappell, I'm Piers Morgan." "Nah mate," replied the still combative septuagenarian. "You're a dickhead."

Robustness: Aussies tend to accept robust give and take in public discourse as a healthy thing. Even the intelligentsia. It's hard to imagine 130 Australian artists and writers putting their names to a sentence as precious and pompous as the following from the open letter in support of Eleanor Catton, New Zealand literature's Joan of Arc: "Those who in their wilful ignorance mock the integral importance of art as the impetus for societal change are appropriately condemned as the hollow moribund creatures they are."

Natural resources: the lifestyle that exercises a magnetic attraction for so many Kiwis is underpinned by mineral wealth. Whenever their economy stalls, the Aussies just dig another hole and sell the contents to the Chinese. The Western Australian mining town of Kalgoorlie (pop. 35,000) may be in one of the least hospitable places on the planet but it has more self-made millionaires per capita than New York.

The weather: It seems Mark Twain didn't actually say the coldest winter he ever experienced was summer in San Francisco, but it has a nice ring to it. Speaking for myself, some of my best summers were winters in Sydney.

Cons

The weather: According to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, in less than 25 years Sydney's climate won't be much different to Kalgoorlie's. And by the end of the century the Sydney Opera House - along with some of the most desirable private property in the Southern Hemisphere - will be under water.

Federalism: an expensive and unnecessary extra tier of government and haven for crooks and ratbags like notorious influence peddler Eddie Obeid. Obeid was eventually expelled from the New South Wales Labour Party for bringing it into disrepute, a feat hitherto thought impossible.

Or Troy Buswell, who shot to prominence for sniffing a female staffer's chair and accumulated nine speeding fines during his three years as West Australia's Minister for Transport.

Organised crime: Quiet of late but Sydney's underworld in the 70s and 80s, and more recently Melbourne's, made The Sopranos look like Downton Abbey.

The likes of Christopher Flannery, aka Mr Rent-a-Kill, who once told a high-ranking cop trying to negotiate a gangland ceasefire: "You're not a protected species, you know. You're not a f*****g koala."

Flannery disappeared in 1985. The finger was pointed at highly decorated cop Detective Sergeant Roger Rogerson. After he was kicked off the force, he teamed up with legendary crim Mark "Chopper" Read in a show entitled The Wild Colonial Psychos. Only in Australia.