My journey with the Listener began when my first journey to Aotearoa New Zealand ended. I came home from my 2018 trip with a huge crush on the nation and its people, and wrote a piece about why I wanted to live there, that the Listener graciously published.
This February, I finally scratched my seven-year itch, and my crush has grown into true romantic love. So, instead of another lament about Donald Trump turning the US and much of the world into playthings for his endless narcissism, it’ll be better for my psyche – and hopefully yours – to offer Why I Want to Live in Aotearoa New Zealand 2.0.
My family spent three weeks in the South Island in January 2018, so this time we decided – sans adult kids, sadly – to give the North Island equal time, and it did not disappoint. So here’s a new list of reasons I’d like to leave one of the last land masses to experience human habitation for the very last:
1. Our Supreme Court gave legal personhood status to corporations. Your government gave similar status to a river, a mountain, and a national park. If this doesn’t loudly proclaim two wildly different sets of national priorities, I can’t think of anything that would.
2. I read enough of David Hackett Fischer’s Fairness and Freedom: A History of Two Open Societies, New Zealand and the United States, to understand his thesis, and see it played out here over and over. He argues the US prioritises freedom and individual liberty, while New Zealand prioritises fairness.
New Zealanders seem to enjoy ample freedom and liberty, but your emphasis on fairness creates a fundamental bond among and between people that has been vividly apparent at every turn, even in granular situations like when we ordered drinks at a crowded restaurant and voiced our desire to also order food. Our server apologised but said she had to take the order of the folks who sat down just before us.
As a travelling partner put it, over here, your fist’s freedom extends all the way to just before the tip of my nose.
3. Honking in Wellington’s Mt Victoria tunnel: In the US, honking is often a prelude to road rage. Here, as comedian Jerome Chandrahasen put it, “That little beep says, ‘I see you friend! You’re small, but you are one of us, and you matter.’”
4. A sense of humour, whimsy, and adventure are everywhere. It can be as simple as an exhibit at Wellington Museum, where instead of just telling you what’s in front of you, two options are offered for you to vote on.
5. Carrotland. I was gutted we couldn’t stop and spend five hours there, but the fact that there is a Carrotland – a place of reverence for the opposite end of the orange spectrum to Trump’s evil – is balm for my battered soul.
6. From Rotorua’s Kerosene Creek to Coromandel’s Hot Water Beach, the warmth of your waters mirrors the warmth of your people. There is a near-universal willingness to chat and offer help from the many folk I’ve engaged in conversation. We encountered only three people who ever-so-slightly diverged from the norm, prompting a friend to say there should be a National Registry for Indifferent Kiwis.
7. Breakfast. Every poached egg has been perfectly cooked, and eggs benedict on a crispy potato cake and focaccia instead of a flaccid English muffin is culinary genius.
8. Non-aggressive black swans. My wife and I have mild PTSD from a black swan attack in the US, so the languid ones on Lake Rotorua were welcome.
9. Beaches. From Enclosure Bay on Waiheke Island to Lonely Bay near Whitianga, the beauty and population paucity of your strips of sand and sea are simply amazing.
10. Birds. From tūī to fantails, kākā, takahē, shags and more, my avian fantasies are always amply fulfilled.
That’s far from the full list, but humans seem to love round numbers, so I’ll end this as I ended my first Listener piece: It’s your move, Department of Immigration. PS: Sorry, but I still have no skills.
