Editorial: Don't blame us - we only live here

Photo / Supplied

Opinion

As the acronym Jafa suggests, Aucklanders do not, in general, enjoy the esteem of the rest of New Zealanders to the extent that we would like. We do not have to travel far beyond the Bombays or the Waiwera River to encounter the sense that we are seen as a breed apart.

At worst, we will detect a curling of the upper lip in contempt when we admit where we live; at best, the non-Aucklanders will shake their heads in pity.

Pronouncements such as the one favoured by former Auckland City mayor John Banks - "There are only two kinds of people in New Zealand: those who live in Auckland and those who wish they did" - are not exactly going to endear us to our cousins in the provinces. They sound arrogant and are hardly calculated to make people like us more.

But the release of a survey this week lends weight to the idea that, rather than hating us, the rest of New Zealand ought to feel sorry for us. Any dislikeable traits we may exhibit are down to the fact that we're stressed to the max.

The national online survey, conducted for the Southern Cross Healthcare Group, found that 60 per cent of us are overworked - and it's a fair bet that the other 40 per cent are looking for a job.

Given the gridlock we have to negotiate on the daily commute, it's a surprise that only one in three of us feels stressed - Cantabrians were worse off in that regard, but if the survey had been taken before the ground started shaking they would surely not have been.

We're not eating our greens, other than the lettuce in the hamburgers taken at the desks we're chained to and we're not exercising enough (who has time for exercise? Have you seen the size of the mortgage?) or sleeping enough (ditto) and we're overweight (see above).

We smoke less (we're not allowed cigarette-break time) but we drink more than anyone except Wellingtonians (who have a good reason to drink a lot: they have to live in Wellington after all, which is a fate worse than Auckland).

Taken all in all, it's a dirty job being an Aucklander, but someone has to do it. We don't expect the rest of the country to thank us for it but a bit of sympathy wouldn't go amiss.