KEY POINTS:
One thing that's sure to make headlines in New Zealand is a sneering broadside at Godzone by an international celebrity.
Most recently it was acclaimed British writer Duncan Fallowell, who most New Zealanders hadn't heard of until his book, In Going As Far As I Can, was published this year.
The book is mostly a fond reflection on New Zealand's charms and foibles as experienced by Fallowell, who plays the louche dandy in his multiple travels here. But the most-quoted passages were ones like this: "I'm fed up with people being fat and ugly and covered in tattoos. I'm fed up with unwashed hair and spotty complexions" and "The girls can be outrageous, rushing at you while waving a chunk of fast-food, squealing inanely, and lots of them have lesbian haircuts and they don't do cleavage" [did he not make it to Hamilton?]
Perhaps it delivered such a sting because Brits are New Zealand's biggest single immigrant group. At the last census, 244,800 New Zealanders were born in Britain - equivalent to two Hamiltons. The second-most popular birthplace outside New Zealand was the People's Republic of China, at 78,117, followed by Australia, Samoa, India and South Africa. More than a third of people who lived in the Auckland region were born overseas, compared to about one in 13 in Southland.
If our self-PR was a video, it would look something like this: verdant, pristine Elysian Fields dotted with grazing cattle and sheep and coursing with a thousand start-ups, those thrustingly optimistic mini-hives of industry. The women glow and men plunder, but politely and in an egalitarian spirit.
We know that just out of shot are the knots of bowed heads fretting about national identity over soy lattes, massive lawn-clippers floating about lopping off the tall poppies, and the creeping darkness of destitution and violence.
Kiwi ex-pats who return after years abroad can be better at seeing the full picture. A 54-year-old expat sounds a typical lament about our parochialism. "We can't help it, it just comes out of us like perspiration."
He describes Kiwi friends' eyes glazing over on trips home as he and his wife talked about their adopted country. "We learnt very quickly the best way to deal with them was to change the subject back to them."
Other deficiencies frustrate him more now: our inferior public transport; our interminable road works. But he also appreciates the same things that attract immigrants: the outdoors, the village intimacy.
What about overseas-born New Zealanders' experience of this country? And do they like us?
The Herald on Sunday polled a few. Their response: they love us, they love us not. Our schools are great, except perhaps for the slack discipline and an inclination towards political correctness. Our women are confident but not particularly feminine, our men are macho but will still help in the kitchen. Our dating rituals are about as sophisticated as a rugby maul.
New Zealand society is an odd but generally attractive mixture of liberalism and conservatism: on the whole, we're more morally conservative than our famous liberal social policies suggest, but at least you can debate politics here and not end up in A&E, or worse.
Says Hong Kong-born Aucklander Bevan Cheung: "In terms of sexual and ethnic identity, New Zealand is more liberal, but in terms of how we treat outsiders, it's still very conservative."
People from non-Anglo-Saxon countries observe similarities with Maori culture in family and social life.
We are friendly, but, some add, only to a point. We have more to offer than we realise, though young people from big Asian cities may disagree. Cheung: "In Hong Kong, there's an impression that there's nothing to do in New Zealand, that it's really boring, somewhere for the oldies, retired people."
As a young, still-forming nation, we are brimming with potential and insecurities. Says English-born Aucklander Alec Roxburgh, "New Zealanders take New Zealand very seriously. There's this desperate insecurity about what other people think of New Zealand, your place in the world, how important you are. It results in this inability to be properly self-critical."
Cheung: "New Zealanders think we're not up with the international standards, but I don't know what international benchmark we're comparing ourselves to. So why are people thinking that they're not good enough?"
Research shows how formidable the barriers are to gaining employment, especially for non-Anglo-saxon immigrants. A Massey University study of 23 migrants published last month confirmed highly skilled immigrants are finding it hard to win acceptance from recruitment consultants - much less find jobs in their fields - because of their overseas qualifications, skin colour, accents and ethnicity. Their former occupations included judge, economist and psychologist.
Other research is more encouraging: a 2006 study by Massey's Paul Spoonley and Andrew Butcher reported migrants overall found their New Zealand neighbours helpful and friendly. An exception may be Asian international students, with 40 per cent of Chinese students in an earlier study reporting people had behaved negatively toward them.
The main reasons immigrants come here, says Butcher, are lifestyle - particularly in the Brits' case - and for education. "New Zealand is seen as being a good place to bring up children, with a good education system. And it's perceived as being less racist than Australia."
