Duncan Graham: Deluding ourselves

There’s a certain mantra chanted by overseas visitors interviewed on Radio National. It requires the newcomer to congratulate us on the beauty of our land, the friendly folk, and the quality of the lifestyle.

Clearly they fear visa cancellation unless they declare they’re carrying the right complement of clichés.

Their compliments are easy on the ear, leaving us who live here feeling balmy and content, even a little smug. If these grand world travellers who’ve been everywhere anoint us little cringers with their praise, then things aren’t that crook.

We dissemble that there’s the odd blemish. Nowhere is 100 per cent perfect. Or pure. Let’s face it, by comparison with the sleaze of Sydney, the slums of Manila and the pollution of Jakarta we’re really not that bad. When we find an underbelly we shear it. Ha, ha.

There are 60 cities in the world with a population larger than the whole of NZ. Yet we’re governed by 122 parliamentarians, 16 city councils and 66 district councils all creating their own laws, rules and regulations. With all this management then surely we exercise the world’s best practice on the way the environment is used and how we behave.

Time for a reality check: Let’s sneak a closer look before we get seduced by the smarmy words of visitors who know us not.

Crime statistics stretch and shrink because no nations agree on definitions, but we’re proportionately jailing more people here than in the UK, most European countries, China and Australia – the catchments for our tourists.

Corrections Minister Judith Collins isn’t proposing to use shipping containers just to house parking ticket defaulters. The courts even give home detention and community service orders to burglars, druggies, and other assorted hoons.

Read them whatever way you like, but the figures seem to show NZ is not the calm, quiet place of our visitors’ imaginings.

Our murder rate is higher than Indonesia, Ireland and Hong Kong. When the figures are teased apart we do more harm to women than men, even when compared with Australia.

A fine place to raise the kids? Statistically it’s the best place to brutalise. UNICEF says NZ had the world’s third highest child maltreatment death rate.

Clean and green? Try the rail line between Auckland and Wellington for the most ghastly graffiti. Our trash doesn’t get recycled – its retrained. Our rivers are overloading with nitrogen and a thousand toxins bloom. Don’t swim in the Hutt River if you value your health.

Beautiful land? Despite chopping, clearing, flooding and filling the space with sharp-tooth ferals, enough scenery remains to charm. Pity about the native birds.

Friendly folk? Visit Flaxmere or chat to boy racers in Christchurch.

Good sporting nation? Ask the French rugby team.

We want others to think Ed Hillary and Willie Apiata aren’t extraordinary exceptions, just a bit above the normal run of rugged and courageous Kiwis. Yet Graham Burton, Antoine Dixon and all the other brutes and bastards are aberrations, unrepresentative of our tolerant and moderate nation.

Thugs reportedly thump a dreadlocked French centre and Shock! Horror!

Wellington mayor Kerry Prendergast says the alleged bashing of Mathieu Bastareaud was a “one-off”. If only. The 30 arrests after the All Blacks game in Wellington weren’t all for jaywalking.

And isn’t it the capital’s First Lady who’s under 24-hour guard following threats of physical violence?

The Dutch issued travel warnings after two holidaymakers were assaulted and one raped. It’s surprising that the governments of Britain, Ireland, Korea, China and other countries whose nationals have also been mugged and sometimes murdered haven’t done the same thing.

The truth is we’re a violent people and all the evidence shows it’s usually fuelled by grog and other drugs. Until we confront our culture of preferring to have a fight than a feed, just for a laugh ya know, then we’ll continue to stage surprise every time it happens.

Wellington journalist Duncan Graham (www.indonesianow.blogspot.com) is the author of The People Next Door (University of Western Australia Press).

© Scoop Media