For years I had feared it, delayed the inevitable, kicked the can down the road, cast the idea of it into the shadows of my consciousness until I could stand it no more and took the test.
The answer came, unequivocal and ominous, a brook-no-argument, do-as-you’re-told auto-generated response in 20-point font: “You are a New Zealand citizen by descent.”
The news has brought on a personal existential crisis and is a profound psychological blow from which I do not expect to recover. I now have an abiding empathy with Barnaby Joyce, who in 2017 also discovered he was a secret New Zealander and was punted from the parliament, only to be re-elected in a by-election three months later. On the plus side, my rugby skills have gone through the roof.
I am seeking advice from counsel as we speak. I could sue, I suppose, but would have to keep a damages claim to a minimum as New Zealand Treasury’s coffers in the post-Ardern era contain only the equivalent of four Australian dollars, a tiki and some colourful seashells with some shit on them.
I have enjoyed Australian citizenship by birth since birth. I was born in Melbourne. I can name every Australian cricket captain since World War II in chronological order, every Australian prime minister including the stopgap weirdos, and have voted in every federal election since 1983.
I speak fluent Strine and feel uncomfortable around linguistically challenged Aotearoans who pronounce every vowel as an E except the letter E, which they pronounce as a soft I.
But, and it’s a very large but, New Zealand doesn’t care about that. My mother was born in Invercargill, a place known to residents and tourists alike as windswept and uninteresting. In 1965, Mick Jagger is said to have opined that the city New Zealanders claim is the southernmost city in the world (it’s actually sixth) was the “arsehole of the world”. It’s not, but if you drive out to Bluff on a clear day you can see it from there.
It is not the case that the Kiwi powers that be, or were, looked at my mother and said, “This woman is such a fine model of New Zealand-ness that her progeny will always be welcome to call the Land of the Long White Pavlova home forever, whether they like it or not.” Rather, New Zealand offers citizenship to just about anybody in an emotionally needy, vaguely creepy way.
It’s a form of invisible global stalking, as if to say, “We don’t know who you are or what you’ve been up to but please, please come on down and help yourself to all the flightless birds you can eat.”
Realistically, I have only three options available. Lie low and wait for New Zealand’s collapse as a sovereign state, renounce my New Zealand citizenship or join the cult and play along.
Here’s where those pesky Kiwis have got me over a barrel. It costs a mere $NZ204.40 ($184.90) to register citizenship and enjoy voting rights, represent New Zealand in sports, stand for parliament and carry a black and silver passport (for an additional fee of $NZ215) but a relatively whopping $NZ398.60 to forswear New Zealand citizenship.
As a card-carrying cheapskate, I have little choice but to pop on the jandals and embrace my furtive Aotearoan ancestry. The flag is easy. Same, same.
I don’t yet know the words to God Defend New Zealand but can only presume the second line in the Kiwi national anthem runs: “because since we left ANZUS no one else will”.
I didn’t smirk when HMNZS Manawanui sank off the coast of Samoa last week, leaving the New Zealand Navy with just five operational vessels. I merely mused that with the Danish-built ship abruptly decommissioned, it might lead to an arms race with Fiji whose navy boasts the same number of seaworthy ships but have two Guardian-class patrol vessels under construction in Australia.
Oddly, voting is voluntary while registering to vote is compulsory. The New Zealand electoral system is an abiding mystery to all but three Kiwis and they’re not letting on. It is part Australian Senate proportional voting with a little Tasmanian Hare-Clark thrown in where voters vote not once but twice. Donald Trump would be apoplectic.
There is no capital gains tax in the Shaky Isles. The big-spending Ardern government went to not one but two elections with a CGT as policy but gave it a swerve when normally polite New Zealanders reached for their cricket bats.
The almost shiny new Luxon government (New Zealand’s next election will be held on October 11 next year) is a different beast to the Ardern government. It has promised to reverse a ban on oil and gas drilling but in true New Zealand style hasn’t got around to it yet.
Mining projects are set to be fast-tracked overlooking some environmental checks but the legislation has yet to go through the unicameral parliament in Wellington.
The idea of raging conservatism has upset Americans who fled to New Zealand when Trump was elected in 2016. In a desultory think piece for the Washington Post, one American emigre announced he was packing his bags and going home. “Since the (2023 NZ) election, it seems like all the values we admired New Zealand for are going the other way. It doesn’t feel like the forever home we hoped it would be.”
Fewer Americans and, importantly, fewer cycle-riding, Lycra-wearing American enviro-blowhards would be like a nationwide lick of paint to New Zealand. And let’s not forget they, sorry, we won the Paris Olympics. Pound for pound, New Zealanders are the best athletes on earth. I will not be taking questions. In fact, the more I think of it, the more I find myself pining for the fjords.
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