Beating New Zealand
It is part of the psyche of this country, it is part of the essence of Australia to have a rural community. Not only would we lose massively from an economic point of view [but] we would lose something of our character. We would lose something of our identification as Australians if we ever allowed the number of farms in our nation to fall below a critical mass.
(John Howard)Making Holden cars in Australia used to be part of our national psyche (or at least part of the mythology that makes up a national psyche). That is no longer the case.
(Senator Andrew Bartlett)It’s just not fair,
But I don’t care,
As long as we beat New Zealand!
(The Live and Sweaty team, several years ago)
That Live and Sweaty anthem captures something very basic to the psyche of this country. If, Wisden forbid, we ever send an Ashes team to Old Blighty whose batting, bowling, fielding and sledging are so woeful that they don’t bring the Ashes triumphantly home as a matter of course, we won’t really worry about it. As long as we can beat New Zealand – even if we have to switch to lawn bowls in the last over of a test match to do it.
If our rural community’s in for a nasty time thanks to global warming, it doesn’t really matter, as long as we have more farms than New Zealand. And if we’re no longer producing Holden cars in Australia – instead buying re-badged Japanese and German cars – it really doesn’t matter. As long as Australians have better cars than New Zealanders.
Since 2002, under the Howard Government, there’s no doubt that we’ve comprehensively beaten those vawel minglars fram ikrass the Tismin – and not just in any sport that requires more than an affinity for shapes and shape dags. In global politics, we’ve been punching above our weight, while Shapeshiggerlind still hesn’t gat eaver thit solf-enflected weaned un the loft fat thet the Lange Government gave their country when they banned nuclear powered military vessels from New Zealand ports. Thanks to our involvement in the Coalition of the Willing, we have a Free Trade Agreement with the US. They don’t. And economically – well, let’s take a look at some trade figures for the past three years.
Table 1: Total Trade Deficits by year (AUD)
| Financial Year | Australia | New Zealand |
| 2003–04 | 23,030,000,000 | 4,080,359,130 |
| 2004–05 | 24,491,000,000 | 5,720,060,870 |
| 2005–06 | 16,516,000,000 | 7,185,678,261 |
Now that’s impressive. While New Zealand’s Total Trade Deficit has been steadily climbing, ours took a dive in the 2005/2006 financial year. We kicked Shapeshiggerlind’s arse in international trade too.
The figures still look damn good for us on a per capita basis:
Table 2: Per Capita Trade Deficit by year (AUD)
| Financial Year | Australia | New Zealand |
| 2003–04 | 1151.50 | 1020.09 |
| 2004–05 | 1224.55 | 1430.02 |
| 2005–06 | 825.80 | 1796.42 |
That last row says it all, doesn’t it? While your typical Aussie was only spending around eight hundred bucks and change more on imports than we were making back on exports, your typical Shapeshiggerlinder was splashing out over twice as much!
But what about those Holden cars – and the Arnott’s Tim Tams, the Simpson washing machines, the Victa lawn mowers and that quintessential symbol of modern Australia, the Nokia mobile phone? And the rural products that come from the rural communities that are so much a part of the nation’s psyche? How do the two countries compare when we take mineral exports out of the figures, and concentrate on rural products and manufactures? I’m glad I asked.
Table 3: Rural & Manufacturing Exports – Total (AUD)
| Financial Year | Australia | New Zealand |
| 2003–04 | 59,116,000,000 | 23,769,398,261 |
| 2004–05 | 63,142,000,000 | 24,429,353,043 |
| 2005–06 | 65,720,000,000 | 25,639,580,000 |
Is that economic performance or us thet ickanamuck parfarmince? Even without the mining sector, our annual exports over the three years were more than twice Shapeshiggerlind’s. I’ll bet it looks great on a per capita basis too.
Table 4: Rural & Manufacturing Exports – Per Capita (AUD)
| Financial Year | Australia | New Zealand |
| 2003–04 | 2,955.80 | 5,942.35 |
| 2004–05 | 3,157.10 | 6,107.34 |
| 2005–06 | 3,286.00 | 6,409.90 |
Oh, bugger – I went a table too far! Never mind – there’s some big international Dance Sport championship coming up around Christmas and there’s no way they can beat us in the Asia Pacific lawn bowls next March.
Note: the tables above are based on trade statistics from the ABS and Statistics New Zealand. New Zealand dollars were converted to Australian dollars at the rate $1 (AUD) = $1.15 (NZD) – a figure I got from a quick Google search. Per Capita figures are based on Australia having approximately 5 times the New Zealand population of around 4 million people. Anyone who wants to work out more precise figures or present other comparisons is welcome to do the googling and spreadsheet calculations. In the meantime, the comments thread is open for the usual shower of lazy reflexive abuse.
The easiest way to answer the question “are we doing better than New Zealand” is to look at the net migration between the two countries. As long as they are still flocking here I’m guessing we’re doing ok.
The kiwis really do punch well above their weight in sporting terms though, considering the population difference not only with Australia, but with the other countries they play against (England, South Africa, India), they do pretty well.
Even in cricket they are probably Australia’s toughest rivals after England and India. They are top class competitors in pretty much every sport except soccer. And if you go to any pub in Perth, it won’t be long until one of the 300 kiwis there tells you so.
Oh Howard’s just worried that when he’s celebrating his 48th year as PM, if the rural economy has continued on its drought driven journey to oblivion, even the rabbits will have migrated. & where will he get his Akubra then?
Oh what a load of nonsense – the old tosser’s going potty. First his laughable Quadrant rant & now this – most urban Australians treat the countryside as a convenient place to throw their MacDonald wrappers. Are they engaged with the water rights issue? Water useage? Land degradation? Rising salinity? Plummetting rates of land fertility? Its hard enough getting farmers to take note – Mr & Mrs Suburbia are probably quite happy for their nostalgia, their national character to pop up as a nice sunset shot of the Yass Valley screensaver on the DVD player in the four wheel drive.
Its a pity that Howrad didnt give a shit about the manufacturing industry that also used to be part of our national psyche.
Hang on, they were unionists who voted Labor!
Oh well, I guess that’s OK then…
I think you have it the wrong way around: NZ are obsessed with Australia and it’s not true in reverse unless you’re a Kiwi with a chip the size of Brian McKechnie’s bat on your shoulder. The L&S thing was a cheap wind-up that had an entire nation bristle and write hand-wringing articles on National Identity – and no, not this one.
I’ll reconsider this position when:
* some vengeful Aussie goes into some decrepid NZ nursing home and pushes Colin ‘Pine Tree’ Meads off a cliff for what he did to Ken Catchpole, or
* the Aussie netball team get a ticker-tape parade for beating theirs
* Fisher & Paykel actually advertise the fact to Australians that they make stuff in NZ
And the West Indies. And Pakistan. And South Africa. And, on their day, Sri Lanka. Admit it Yobbo, they are a useful Pura Cup side at best.
I agree with Andrew E; (too many) of “us kiwis” are obsessed with Australia, wheras Australians don’t really give a rat’s arse about their smaller sheep-infested neighbour. Hell, our major opposition party spent the last election campaign whining about the need to “close the gap” with Australia economically – without of course considering for a moment how their policies had created that gap in the first place.
As for farming and droughts, many of us are taking quiet pleasure in the fact that while climate change is going to hurt us, its going to hurt the Kyoto-withdrawing, climate-change-denying, US-sucking-up-to Aussies more. That’ll teach you to burn coal!
Leaving aside the question of national obsessions there is one substantial issue that, maybe, arises from that last table – when non-mineral exports are compared on a per capita basis (a rough and ready way to compensate for the differences in the populations and the size of the economies), NZ does much better on exports than our land of ragged mountain ranges etc. Assuming, of course, I did the numbers right.
And while Fisher and Paykel might be keeping quiet about where there washing machines are manufactured – it’s only the Australian manufacturers who play the nationalism card in marketing to the Australian market – the situation there is fairly typical. They buy steel from Bluescope (I presume) and turn it into washing machines to sell back to us. Who gets more out of that deal?
So what’s this economic gap, exactly? Without that big windfall on commodities prices in 2005/06, the Australian trade deficit would have continued to climb. Then there’s the whole issue of the current account deficit.
Days like today, I start to suspect it’s time to give up on the sardonic stuff and start posting boringly earnest didactic pieces. Maybe I could put irony tags atound that title or something.
Gummo: the difference? Why, we have water, and lots of it, which makes agriculture fairly profitable (we don’t do much manufacturing here at all).
Really? Agriculture is 3% of our economy and about the same percentage of the workforce. If every second farm in Australia shut down the economic impact would be minimal, while to do the same in NZ would be to cut the national throat.
NZ national motto: it could be worse.
I’ll throw this in from left field. Could it be that Australia has an edge on NZ partly because it was colonised earlier? There’s a study reported in Slate that suggests that the longer an island has been colonised by Europeans the higher its standard of living is, provided the colonial power was a post-Enlightenment state.
Almost certainly not, in the case of Aust/NZ rivalry, because the dates of colonisation are very close and there are too many other relevant variables. Interesting article, though.
Wouldn’t you expect a smaller country to have more imports and exports as a percentage of GDP than a larger one? I don’t think the last table is surprising.
Do you think NZ gets more out of selling washing machines to Australia than we get out of buying them? If so, what makes you think that?
No, I don’t agree Andrew. NZ are a much tougher outfit than Pakistan, Sri lanka, West Indies and South Africa. Especially when they play Australia.
West Indies are a joke for a start, they haven’t been good for 15 years and may never be again.
NZ is ranked 3rd of all 1-day playing nations after Australia and South Africa. Their test ranking is quite low at the moment but they played 10 fewer test matches than most other countries this year for some reason. Even so they are still above the Windies and even with South Africa.
And this is despite the fact that their best fast bowler has been injured for 5 years. I think they go ok.