Sigh I wish I didn't know this, but... NZ's surveillance state is completely minuscule compared to Australia (which is outsize, for the actual size of our population), as is their military. As a result, I'm not sure they would be stupid, or at least competent enough, to turn their military on their own citizens, like Australia has...
I've met a former New Zealand, let's say, spy... While obviously he couldn't really tell me anything much, it was fairly apparent that NZ just... Doesn't quite fear its own citizens in the same way Australia does. Or at least they didn't, a few years back. And again, from talking to him, it was immediately obvious that the technology their navy has, for example, is way, way behind "us"... So that was enlightening.
But the other thing is that Australia has a MUCH higher level of immigration than NZ, and always has had. Where do most of those immigrants come from, right now? Fucking China and India, plus South Sudan to a lesser extent.
Do those new immigrants, in their hundreds of thousands, care about the massively increasing surveillance state, or the fact that whatever "freedoms" they imagined Australian society might bring are rapidly disappearing..? Lol, are you fucking kidding me??
Finally, while NZ superficially appears to be more "feminist" than Aus, right now, I'm not so convinced it is... Maori society is one of the most patriarchal and aggressively... Warlike, in the world. Traditionally at least, they don't have a terribly high tolerance for umm, let's say modern "intersectional" Western feminism. So that, at least to some extent, provides somewhat of a counter to becoming full "Jacindastan"... Whereas in Australia, there are so few full-blooded Aboriginals left, and they are so... Thoroughly demoralised, amongst other points, that this same "counter" just doesn't exist, I suppose...
That's my take, from wondering about this for the last 18 months, anyway.
However the Northland funeral thing, where the man wasn't allowed to be part of his own wife's funeral (last week, I think)..? That's more fucked than even what we have in Australia, rn, IMHO...
Sigh I wish I didn't know this, but... NZ's surveillance state is completely minuscule compared to Australia (which is outsize, for the actual size of our population), as is their military. As a result, I'm not sure they would be stupid, or at least competent enough, to turn their military on their own citizens, like Australia has...
I've met a former New Zealand, let's say, spy... While obviously he couldn't really tell me anything much, it was fairly apparent that NZ just... Doesn't quite fear its own citizens in the same way Australia does. Or at least they didn't, a few years back. And again, from talking to him, it was immediately obvious that the technology their navy has, for example, is way, way behind "us"... So that was enlightening.
But the other thing is that Australia has a MUCH higher level of immigration than NZ, and always has had. Where do most of those immigrants come from, right now? Fucking China and India, plus South Sudan to a lesser extent.
Do those new immigrants, in their hundreds of thousands, care about the massively increasing surveillance state, or the fact that whatever "freedoms" they imagined Australian society might bring are rapidly disappearing..? Lol, are you fucking kidding me??
Finally, while NZ superficially appears to be more "feminist" than Aus, right now, I'm not so convinced it is... Maori society is one of the most patriarchal and aggressively... Warlike, in the world. Traditionally at least, they don't have a terribly high tolerance for umm, let's say modern "intersectional" Western feminism. So that, at least to some extent, provides somewhat of a counter to becoming full "Jacindastan"... Whereas in Australia, there are so few full-blooded Aboriginals left, and they are so... Thoroughly demoralised, amongst other points, that this same "counter" just doesn't exist, I suppose...
That's my take, from wondering about this for the last 18 months, anyway.
However the Northland funeral thing, where the man wasn't allowed to be part of his own wife's funeral (last week, I think)..? That's more fucked than even what we have in Australia, rn, IMHO...