The High Road: What Australia can learn from New Zealand

Quarterly Essay #80

by Laura Tingle

Australia and New Zealand are often considered close cousins. But why, despite being so close, do we know so little about each other? And now, in the wake of COVID-19, is it time to change that? In this wise and illuminating essay, Laura Tingle looks at leadership, character and two nations in transition. In the past half-century, both countries have remade themselves amid shifting economic fortunes. New Zealand has been held up as a model for everything from privatisation to the conduct of politics to the response to COVID. Tingle considers how both countries have been governed, and the different way each has dealt with its colonial legacy. What could Australia learn from New Zealand? And New Zealand from Australia? This is a perceptive, often amusing introduction to two countries alike in some ways, but quite different in others.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Essays, Australia, Current Affairs, History, Audiobook

200 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 28, 2020

About the author

Laura Tingle is chief political correspondent for ABC TV’s 7.30. She won the Paul Lyneham Award for Excellence in Press Gallery Journalism in 2004, and Walkley awards in 2005 and 2011. She is the author of Chasing the Future: Recession, Recovery and the New Politics in Australia and four acclaimed Quarterly Essays, Great Expectations, Political Amnesia, Follow the Leader and The High Road.

Reviews

[Joel D · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm honestly starting to wonder why I bother with my subscription to the Quarterly Essay. Is it so that I can seem like a worldly, politically-engaged intellectual? Probably yes, because if the other reason were to read well-written insights about politics and society, that reason would certainly not be enough.

What was this essay about? I don't really know to be honest. Content-wise, it sort of gives a recent economic and political history of both Australia and Aotearoa NZ, including some interesting contrast with the treatment of Indigenous people, and then the economic deregulation project from the 1980s onwards. The idea seems to be that AU and NZ are alike in curious and interesting ways and that maybe we could learn stuff from our friends across the ditch.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Tingle never really lands a clear blow. I learnt some stuff about NZ. I was never really told the bigger picture of what it meant, what the conclusions are, what are the takeaways from this comparison. It's unclear if the writer herself knew.

Many Quarterly Essays I've read recently suffer from this. The editors really should insist that the author submits a little 'argument structure synthesis' that says what their thesis is and the case they are making because, bugger me, it's certainly not clear from reading the thing and, you know what? It should be. It's meant to be a friggin' essay.

So that was bad enough but then I read the correspondence which featured far too many letters from journalists fawning over Katharine Murphy's panegyric on Scott Morrison (QE#79), which really was too much for me.

[Yuri Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an Australian who lived in New Zealand for a decade (1970s) I read this essay with great interest. It has always irritated me when Australians, who may have spent a few weeks in NZ as tourists, tell me the two nations are “much the same”. Such a judgment is quite superficial. There are in fact many cultural, electoral and administrative differences. There are reasons why they have Jacinda Ardern as Prime Minister and we have Scott Morrison.
Laura Tingle has her own personal and work connections with Aotearoa, but she has gone beyond that to talk to key people and really learn the histories. I am happy to admit (and I think I know the subject better than most) that I learnt a lot from her essay.
My only criticism is that it is sometimes a bit repetitive. A mild edit could have helped.

[Janine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tingle’s essay draws our attention to something almost unremarkable: the similarities and divergences between Australia’s political scene and that of our neighbour, New Zealand. ...For me, the best Quarterly Essays are those that bring to the forefront something that is hiding in plain sight. I don’t think that I’ve read a historical or political comparison of Australia and New Zealand written in this way, and having read it, I don’t know why it hasn’t been done before.

For my complete review please visit: https://residentjudge.com/2020/12/28/...

[Darcy French · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyable. Learn a lot of NZ history that I never new, and the parallelisms with Australian history. Tingle’s basic premise that we have a lot to learn from one another is spot on! The only think I would like her to have mentioned would have been sports. I think it’s an important part of the bilateral relationship, and would have served to strengthen the essay.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this powerful and enlightening. As one of the many Australians who have visited but know so little about NZ, and love Jacinta Ardern, Tingle provides an excellent overview of the recent political, economic and strategic history of NZ. Sharp, incisive and comprehensive, it’s very well-written. If you know very little about NZ politics, you won’t be lost reading this or need to Google things.

[Jacob Langham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this quarterly essay was defined by its succinctness, clarity and depth of historical research. The structure was easy to follow with each section given a corresponding title with a short introduction with adequate flow. The point was clear to compare and contrast whilst also emphasising further areas of research. The historical content was the most interesting as a lot of this information was unknown to me. I didn’t realise the centralised power that New Zealand’s Prime Minister has and how it was misused in the 70s and 80s. My main takeaways were related to the progress of New Zealand in embracing, respecting and supporting Maori rights, recognition and culture. The fact that European descent children know how to do the Hakka from such a young age epitomises this. New Zealand is an example of what Australia could be like for Indigenous Australians if the Government could acknowledge its wrongdoings and was incentivised to create substantive change. Unfortunately however the disparity in the life quality between European Australians and Indigenous Australians is still quite stark. Another key takeaway was the effectiveness in Jacinda Ardens leadership in the NZ Coronavirus response. She was able to control the spread and not politicise the process of adapting the country to a new reality. Her leadership contrasted with that of Scott Morrison whom rather has been too busy at points condemning state leaders and individual interest groups rather than uniting a nation and battling the pandemic as one. Overall it is very clear that New Zealand is a country who doesn’t seem interested in partisan politics and consistent culture wars, whilst Australia is firmly gripped in a reality where political ideology is divided more people by the day. Australia’s reliance on American security and Chinese economic benefits has created a toxic cycle of being in between two rising powers where each Australian move is deemed either for or against the two partners. The decoupling process that New Zealand deployed in this regard and its strong sense of activism has allowed it to be friendly with all nations but not solely rely on one or two dominant powers for legitimacy or economic prosperity. This was a very thoughtful essay which definitely provided fruit for thought surrounding alternative means of governing and politics in current Western democracies. Maybe Australia should start paying closer attention to its prospering neighbour.

[Trish Quirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

When visiting New Zealand you realise you don't really know that much about a neighbour that we take for granted is our closest cousin in both a geographical, political and demographic sense. Part of the surprise and pleasure of visiting is that its actually quite different; it has a indigenous story that is much younger than ours and with strong links to other pacific identities, a colonisation story that's had no penal beginning, but was dominated by people who actually chose to go there, and a flora, fauna and geography that seem to bear no relation to Australia's eucalypt / marsupial dominated flat landscape. I was amazed to find when we toured the Parliament House (the Beehive) in Wellington in 2018 that NZ has a different system of government to Australia, the mixed member proportional (MMP) system. That shows I guess how little we hear about and and follow NZ politics from Australia. This awakening to the differences between Australia and NZ and my admiration for Laura Tingle's analysis were the reasons I wanted to read this essay. I wasn't disappointed. Most interesting for me were the explanation of the how the Waitangi Treaty has led to a pathway for truth telling, reparations and adoption of the Maori language and the different approach to its relationship with the US. These two factors alone are creating a fundamentally different culture that that in Australia. Australia's attitude of superiority over NZ seems misplaced.

[Jacqui · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps a niche read for a Kiwi/Australian but a fascinating comparison between the countries’ economic and political histories.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read comparing the political landscapes of Aus & NZ.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ebriefings@transport.vic.gov.au

[hayls 🐴 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was in part a love letter to Jacinda Ardern

[Dulcie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Precisely as thoughtful as I had expected.

[Jim Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who came at the New Zealand-Australia comparisons the other way (from NZ to Australia), this essay by Laura Tingle is one I would have loved to have written from the other perspective.

We’re contemporaries as journalists. My experience has been more on the financial markets side, but I did start in NZ in political journalism and have seen many of the events described in this book from a Kiwi perspective.

What’s most refreshing in her take is the observation of how unreflective most Australians, including the policy makers, have been about the trans-Tasman relationship - beyond a few cliches about Anzac and shared cultural histories.

We’re really quite different countries and cultures, despite all our superficial differences. Part of this is historical - NZ was settled a century after Australia and by free settlers. Part of it is cultural - a Scottish Presbyterian-dominated rather than an Irish Catholic one. But probably the biggest part - and the one Tingle focuses on - is institutional. NZ is a unitary, unicameral state without the encumberances of an upper house or state governments or a written constitution.

It was this constitutional set-up, combined with a first past-the-post electoral system, that allowed successive governments in the 80s and 90s to basically subject the population without restriction to all the experiments the insane neoliberal right in Australia were baying for over a number of decades.

I recall coming to Australia and wondering why no-one was asking the Kiwis flooding out of their home country what was pushing them to quit. Rogernomics was an utter disaster, a right-wing version of the most unhinged Marxist-Leninist vision of the state. It’s believers were just as swivel-eyed and just as heartless. We escaped in the mid-80s because we could see the pain approaching.

Tingle’s other pertinent observations relate to the differences in the treatment of the indigenous people on either side of the Tasman, the more independent foreign policy NZ has run (albeit in the knowledge that Australia had their back) and, most of all, the lack in NZ of the Murdoch-led culture wars.

Australians of all stripes are only now waking up to how much the vile Murdoch utterly distorts their public policy debate and sets almost unilaterally the media’s news agenda. But it is a sickness.

I guess what I would have liked to see more in this book is a ‘what next’. If Australia has much to learn from NZ, both positively and negatively, how does it go about implementing that agenda?

The implications are there: Move to a proportional representation voting system that makes explicit and open the horse-trading that goes on behind the scenes and which forces the major parties to govern from the centre. Secondly, end the mindless kow-towing to Washington that renders Australia a 51st state of the USA. Thirdly, diminish the malevolent power of Murdoch and his corrupt family. Fourthly, realise that in NZ, Australia has someone it can work with geopolitically to stress the interests of this region independently of those of the superpowers. Finally, embrace a post-fossil fuel energy policy and grasp, as Ross Garnaut has expressed, Australia’s standing as a renewable energy superpower.

[Timothy Dymond · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘The rise of China poses challenges to a really small country with a history so like Australia’s in many ways. New Zealand’s determination not to join the Australian federation and its competitive rivalry with Australia for Britain’s affection in the early years of the 20th century was replaced by a proud assertion of independence from the new global superpower – the United States – in the late 20th century, after it was abandoned by Britain.’

Laura Tingle’s Quarterly Essay ‘The High Road: What Australia Can Learn From New Zealand’ offers a rare exercise of comparative analysis in Australian political journalism. Australia’s island status often breeds parochial commentary Unlike in Europe we don’t share land borders with any other country - leaving us without a range of comparison points. The UK and the US are often referenced of course, but Britain has been diverging from us since the 1970s at least, and the US - despite also being a settler colonial state - has very distinct history and political traditions.

New Zealand, with whom Australia shares the ANZAC tradition (though Australia often forgets the 'NZ’), is in many ways the most instructive and relevant parallel for Australian politics, society and economy. The 1983 Australia–New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement or CER, makes the two countries economies as closely connected as any in the world. Tingle notes they both also share the common experience of Britain joining the Common Market in 1973, which forced Australia and New Zealand to ‘grow up’ and reduce their reliance on agricultural exports to the mother country. After losing the assurance of a British market, both countries have been held hostage to their largest export successes: minerals for Australia; Agricultural products for NZ. ‘Hostage’ is the word because both nations rely on an open global trade system - something that the present international drift towards protectionism and self reliance puts into question. Australia has the problem of its products being associated with rising carbon emissions in a world responding to climate change - although NZ agriculture is vulnerable in this area as well.

As a political journalist, Tingle argues convincingly for the importance of politics and institutions in charting a nation’s economic course. Tingle is also a fan of managerialism and pragmatism in political practice - which makes her every inch the conventional Canberra press gallery commentator when it comes to policy analysis.

So she praises the spirit of the ‘reform’ eras of deregulation and marketisation in both countries - while noting that NZ the Labour government of David Lange (1984-89) was a study in belligerence in implementation compared with the governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. Tingle writes that ‘the extent and speed of change in New Zealand [in the late 1980s and early 1990s], and the havoc it wreaked, would be impossible to defend from an Australian perspective.’ The phases of ‘Rogernomics’ under Labour Treasurer Roger Douglas, and ‘Ruthanasia’, under the National Party's Minister of Finance, Ruth Richardson, left NZ with a far less regulated and protected economy than Australia’s, in a much shorter period of time. NZ’s unitary government, with no constitution and a single chamber of parliament, is often credited with allowing speed of implementation of reforms. However their very harsh impact created a backlash. Tingle admits that NZ’s ‘radical industrial relations change [from 1991] has not provided any panacea’ for its persistently low levels of productivity — and widening income gap with Australia. The ‘consensus’ approach to change by the Hawke government, driven by Australia’s Federal and Constitutional system, had far more ameliorative measures built in such as the creation of Medicare.

In that sense the NZ political system became more like Australia’s, in that it adopted the Mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) system for its single chamber parliament. Tingle argues that this proportional electoral system, because it rarely results in outright majorities for one party (Jacinta Arden’s government is a notable exception), encourages competition for the ‘median’ rather than ‘base’ voter. So there is convergence between major political parties, rather than polarisation. Politicians never know when they might need their opponents’ support in the Chamber. Consensus building becomes basic political practice. By contrast Australian politics looks for differences: there’s advantage in amplification and resentment.

Tingle points out that NZ lacks a News Corporation presence compared to Australia’s Murdoch media domination, thus it benefits from the lack of a relentless ‘culture war’ focus on Climate Change and First Nations issues. Maori culture is more central to NZ culture. The NZ founding document is arguably its treaty with Indigenous people (Treaty of Waitingi) - although this was a far from accepted idea until the 1970s.

The ’neoliberal’ reform era has left both countries with legacies of political and social disruption which are still playing out. Both countries reform era have both arguably failed to deliver on a basic economic goal of having a more diverse industrial base. As mentioned before, Australia and NZ are both commodity exporters who have been selling to China. NZ’s independent foreign policy - forged in its 1980s break with the US and Australia over nuclear armed ships - theoretically gives the country more flexibility. However it also means NZ is ‘on its own’ when dealing with Chinese belligerence.

Tingle’s rundown of NZ political history is certainly illuminating for the Australian reader, who doesn’t get enough information on this neighbour that is extremely important, but rarely reported upon. She doesn’t necessarily provide more than a ‘first read’ analysis, but provides a decent map for further exploration.

[Clinton Hoy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spoiler alert: the difference between Australia and New Zealand is that we have Rupert Murdoch.

[Ron Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quarterly Essays are a most important part of discussions about Australian society and politics. In these times of brief memes, two paragraph reports and mean and meaningless social media posts it refreshing to sit down and read a thousand and more word account of a current issue. The essays on our rivers, coal, China & Scott Morrison clarified and solidified my knowledge and understanding of these issues.
Some people have an expectation for the essays to be polemical but they are not designed for that structure.
I have visited NZ on a number of occasions. It is an absolutely beautiful country, and in my travels in Asia I often tell travellers to skip Australia and head straight to New Zealand. It punches above it's weight in sport, film and music.
The opening pages of the essay deals with the post 1970s political scene in both countries, their similarities and differences.
I cannot give a Kiwi’s view of Australia but as an Australian, New Zealand is just there. A great place for a holiday, great Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc wines and they give us cringe worthy floggings in rugby games, oh and we steal their singers and actors and call them our own.
Tingle goes far deeper into New Zealand’s policies and directions over the last fifty years. She reminded me of that obnoxious prime minister who unerringly resembled his nickname, Piggy Muldoon and his famous quip that immigration from New Zealand to Australia improved the IQ of both nations.
I vaguely remember Rogernomics and reading about the implementation of “economic rationalism” in NZ. Tingle reminds the reader of the devastation that these policies caused to local communities and how, as with every elsewhere it has led to great inequality and the enhancement of the already wealthy.
New Zealand politics is more consensual as all parties are unsure as to when they might next need to work with other parties.
One fascinating aspect of New Zealand politics and society that I was unaware of is the virtual non-appearance of the destructive Murdoch media and its constant culture wars. Tingle refers to comments made in the Australian newspaper critical of Ardern after her conclusive win in the 2020 election.
Where I believe Australia could have learnt greatly from NZ has been the manner it has handled its relationship with China. It was the first western country to negotiate a free trade agreement with China and unlike the American sycophant, Morrison, Ardern has not used megaphone diplomacy in dealing with China.
New Zealanders have been kinder in their treatment of refugees. They have been far more comfortable in the acceptance of Maori culture and language as being an integral part of NZ’s identity.
Jacinda Ardern’s election and subsequent re-election has given New Zealand an unprecedent international profile. She has been perused and praised by many. I often read on social media Australian’s begging to have a leader of her calibre. Her handling of the terrorist attack on the Christchurch mosques would be inconceivable of any Australian leader.
I found Tingle’s essay a refreshing look at a relationship that has been taken for granted by many on both sides of the relationship. On completion of this essay the reader should have a deeper and more perceptive understanding of the relationship.

[Gursewak Singh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Laura Tingle writes a well-researched and compiled essay, undertaking a comparative analysis of New Zealand and Australian politics after they were unceremoniously cut from the UK upon its entry into the European Common Market. If you want to read about that, and want to understand better why New Zealand and Australia are different they way they are, and the ways in which they are similar than this is what you want to read to at least begin that scholarly journey.

However, the text doesn’t quite live up to the title on ‘what Australia can learn from New Zealand’. As a Kiwi now living in Australia, and a citizen of both, Tingle goes over much of how I’ve experienced the politics of both countries while teaching me the historical contexts from which both countries grew. A central point of difference between both countries, and the first that Tingle covers, is the settler governments relationship with the First Nations and the Māori. A lot is covered on this topic but we can’t really take away a response to the question of ‘well, how do we translate NZs success on settler-Māori relations in Australia?’ This was the discussion I was expecting but which I did not encounter. Tingle does a great job in setting up the grounds to answer these questions but they’re not seen through.

Either way, this is a great introductory read on both countries and terrific trans-Tasman comparative analysis.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I seem to collect a Quarterly Essay at each Writers Week I attend and this year was no different. I wish I could afford to subscribe to it. This is a great little history lesson, as well as comparing and contrasting how Australia and New Zealand's policies mostly diverged in the past 120 years since federation written with great insight from one of Australia's most respected journalists: Laura Tingle, host of the 7:30 report on ABC-TV. The Essay begins by comparing how New Zealand was first in closing its international borders, first in providing a huge economic relief package and first to go into lock-down. in 1901 there was talk of the a joint country between Australia and New Zealand, however, the physical distance and length and danger of the sea voyage between the two eventually led to two separate nations. Since then there has been quite a bit of divergence in a variety of issues: Indigenous rights, economic and social support, foreign policy. All of this leads to how as the pandemic hit, how Australia found itself with a born-again Christian who was dragged into doing something about the pandemic, but first had to delay for several days so as to allow an international Christian convention to run its course, while New Zealand came to be led by an agnostic woman leading a minority government in coalition with New Zealand First (a Maori party) and the Green Party.

[Jim KABLE · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kia Ora - G’day

Only someone who knows and respects both parts of Austral-Asia could have written this excellent analysis of our neighbouring lands. Similar - true - but not the same - rivals in some sports - siblings when together in far corners of the world - at times ANZACs together - but then there is Afghanistan... and the contrasts between Morrison and Ardern - so many in Australia wish we were the West Islands along with the North and South Islands. And the Aotearoa Maori and the Australian First Nations souls adding their unique and essential characters. Laura Tingle has teased out aspects of the post-invasion historical political and economic strands - searching for the differences amid the links. My first visit to NZ was 50 years ago in just a few weeks time. I hitch-hiked the North Island - was befriended and looked after by people all along the way - unknown beforehand and with friends of friends in Australia. Are you from Auckland? I was asked. I travelled the South Island on a week-long bus tour - people from Australia, Japan, the US - seeing its beauty through my own eyes and theirs, too. And yes, a perfect landscape for those scenes from Lord of the Rings! Read this essay!

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is surprising that so little policy transfer occurs between Australia and New Zealand. Australians, I suspect, are not particularly intimate with New Zealand's history or politics.

Journalist Laura Tingle's Quarterly Essay on 'What Australia Can Learn from New Zealand' is fascinating and definitely worth a read; the overview of the relationship between Maori and the Crown is particularly insightful, and provides a signpost for the type of country Australia could mature into if it pursues the reforms identified in the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

There is a lot that hasn't gone so well in New Zealand though. Economic policy in particular - dominated by market-driven economic rationalism much of the time - has not served the country well. Per capita incomes are now substantially below those of Australians. This experience too, can provide a lesson for Australia.

Tingle's conclusion is ultimately that Australia should pay more attention to its neighbours, which is excellent advice: 'We have had an experiment, a point of comparison, in all these things occurring across the Tasman all these years, if we just chose to look.'

[Jayden Davidson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Vaguely useful if, like me, you have a limited understanding of politics in Aotearoa. However, there is only so much that can be said about this in such a short space - and I am sceptical that what is said is anything more than a layman’s, reductive introduction. The essay asks: what can we learn from our Tasman neighbours? But it gives very little in the way of answers to this question - and sometimes I wonder (based on Tingle’s description of previous NZ governments) if there is anything dramatically different about their governance to learn from?

Perhaps this would have been better as a comparison of the treatment of Indigenous people in both countries as it seems to be the only place where Aotearoa seems to be superior to Australia (again - based on Tingle’s description, I have read a few times that people hold up Aotearoa as an exemplar but ignore its failures).

[Sam Schroder · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this essay, Tingle examines the ways in which election processes, party lines, leadership decisions and, most importantly, economic imperatives, have shaped Australia and New Zealand in the last four decades.
I’ll be honest, I thought this was going to be all about the last year or two but it was actually a much more historically complex account.
My key take away is that New Zealand is fabulous and there are a few reasons. The main ones are that everyone loves Jacinda Adern and that Ruport Murdoch doesn’t control the media there.
As so often happens with QE, an informative and engaging read.

[Victor · Rating 4 out of 5]

While it lacks a firm conclusion as to what exactly to take away from a comparative analysis of so-called Australia with Aotearoa (New Zealand) besides noting with interest some positives vis-a-vis various issues in comparison to Australia (relations with Indigenous people, foreign policy etc) Tingle’s essay does effectively provide a useful summary of the political shifts and economic transformations the two countries have undergone, what they share and what is distinctive;

particularly in the last 50 or so years, through the prism of a pronounced centrist liberalism, reflecting her social position as an ABC journalist.

[Alicia Gibbs · Rating 3 out of 5]

This essay taught me a lot I didn’t know about New Zealand Aotearoa politics. I realised that I have been holding an overly idealised view of the country based primarily on my love of Jacinda Ardern, NZ’s offer to permanently settle refugees currently held by Australia in indefinite detention, and NZ’s relatively early adoption of marriage equality. However, I can now better appreciate the challenges and uncertainty for workers and communities as the country went through significant economic downturns.

Whilst interesting, I’m not sure that this essay entirely delivered on its subtitle: What Australia can learn from New Zealand. I finished the essay with a sense that both countries had made significant public policy errors that had adversely impacted communities, and that both countries would do well to look across the ditch and see what had worked well and not so well before charging straight into the same mistakes.

I really do hope Australia gets our own Jacinda Ardern someday.

[emily wind · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not knowing a great deal about New Zealand’s politics — especially pre-Jacinda Ardern — this Quarterly Essay felt like a great starting point for me. The two arguements I was most interested in were the lack of News Corp in NZ and how this has led to fewer/no ‘culture wars’ like Australia often has, and the two countries differing treatment of their Indigenous populations (Aus clearly has a lot to learn from NZ). It would have been great to see both of these points expanded a bit further.

[Kathryn Cripps · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent essay which gives a timely assessment of the similarities and differences between Australia and New Zealand. From the 1970s it appeared that Australia and their close cousins across the ditch were in very similar lockstep in so many ways. Our differences are possibly more more illuminating especially in the 21st century. We can indeed learn a lot from each other.

[Greta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some would call this a nothing piece because it doesn’t really make any strong policy recommendations in the vein of a more usual QE, but I really like it when the main argument is ‘well maybe we should try paying attention to something and see what comes out of it’. Really made me more interested in learning more about NZ political history.

[Kerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent discussion of political similarities and differences between Australia and New Zealand in the Neo-liberal era. Well researched and well written by a pretty impressive reporter. I learned a lot and will now pass on to Kiwi colleague to see what he makes of the analysis. Definitely worth reading!

[A.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, NZ is just crapping all over Australia at the moment. And with Morrison as PM, Australia is only going to get worse. We have a weak man with no plan and a giant ad budget at the helm; and it shows.
Also Spoiler alert: the difference between Australia and New Zealand is that NZ removed Rupert Murdoch.
4 stars

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good analysis of the relationship (or lack of) between Australia and New Zealand Oliver recent decades. The author is right - we could learn so much from each either but it seems we just can't be bothered.