What is all the rivalry between Australia and New Zealand?
Question by Black Kitten: What is all the rivalry between Australia and New Zealand?
I recently began watching two new shows on TV that are hilarious, both are from over seas. One from Australia (Summer Heights High), the other from New Zealand ( Flight of the Concords/HBO)
Both make continual jokes at the expense of the others Nationality. I don’t understand most of them.
I think both Australian’s and New Zealander’s seem great.
So tell me what it’s all about? When did it start? How? And is it mostly done in fun or are people really serious about disliking the other?
Best answer:
Answer by Jonno H
Australia and NZ are like big and little brother.
Like Canada and the US.
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Posted in Oceania. 10 comments
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It’s totally all in fun, we’re best mates but we absolutely love to tease each other, it’s kind of like a sibling relationship.
Australians are just really jealous of NZ. But of course I would say that, I am a Kiwi. It is not a Pakistan/India or israel/Palestine. It is friendly banter between two countries very close to each other (geographically) and in some ways culturally too.
Basically its a National Sport here in NZ and In Aussie and in most cases its more in fun but sometimes gets serrious
A Bit like a family we argue amongst our selves But when someone else has a go at one of us things can get interesting
When push comes to shove The ANZACs stand together
However both our countries have some people who go way too far and are insulting
However Sport tends to get kinda serrious and some aussies think cos they are bigger they are better But has we have proven over the years in some cases we are a lot better
They are 20million+ and we are just 5 million
What you see on TV is designed for entertainment and ratings so dont always reflect real life
The Kiwi’s get pissy at us for being better than them. Yes they have 5 million people but we have 10 million Kiwis over here.
It is all in good nature and even though they suck at all sports they can rely on us to save them if those fucking Tasmanian bastards get a little worked up getting picked on because of their multiple heads and other limbs.
Our armed forces are better than theirs, their version of a bomber is strapping a claymore to a sheep and throwing it out the back of C-130. No wait they traded their air force for some decent beer.
Insert Sheep joke here.
Great Brittan FTW
New Zealand love to put down OZ and point out Australia’s problems and issues in any situation that’s what they do best.
Its called Tall Poppy Syndrome.
If you don’t know what it means look it up.
I think QLD Rules has been dumped by a Kiwi girl somewhere along the line as he’s always saying bitchy things about NZ on here in a strange kind of way……..
I hadn’t noticed anything said about NZ in Summer Heights High? So clever that guy, apparently some Australians really beleived the high school girl character he plays in it is an actual teenage girl! It was the actor himself that revealed that!
The NZ & Australian rivalry is just in fun but it used to be a bit nasty in the past. I lived there 13 years ago in Sydney & people would be nice to me & thought I was cool to hang out with, etc, but not once they found out I was from NZ! Then it turned nasty & you’d have things said to you like “you’re just here stealing our jobs”, etc! NZers are known as good workers so I think they felt threatened about the unemployment rate for NZers in Australia being quite low (it still is now too) so maybe that’s what that was about. My older sisters lived there in the 70′s & they got treated like rubbish too. The trick is you hang out with other non Australians, like people from the UK, etc & you try to avoid Australians while you’re there.
It’s all changed now though & they don’t seem to hate us anymore. I’m unsure what changed that, I think it only changed about 5 years ago. Maybe it was Lord of the Rings or something? I just spent 3 months in Sydney & Melbourne & found them really positive to NZers now. Alot of them holiday in NZ & they all say how friendly it is & what a good time they had so maybe that’s another thing that’s changed things. In the past I think they just beleived we were all hick towners or something & but they’d never bothered visiting NZ to find out what it was like or what we were about.
NZ has always been good at sport & I think that rubs Aussies up the wrong way as we’re such a small country with not much of a budget for coaching sportspeople or preparing Olympians, compared to them, so I guess they wonder how we are so good at it. We have also won loads more Oscars than them yet we only have 4 million people here & they have 20 million people so that’s a bit pathetic really!
I like Aussies & I’m glad they treat us differently now & the rivalry thing is just friendly now, but in the past I don’t think it was.
I also love Summer Heights High & Flight of the Conchords (used to go & see them live years ago, before they were famous).
Australians have always felt the need to treat New Zealanders in a particular way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_FAzy_TRzQ
I am an Aussie and lived in NZ for about seven years, copped flack in both countries. It’s all love!
We’re both laidback as with a similar sense of humour.
I don’t think there is any real disrespect.
In fact I think they are the two best countries in the world.
It’s all a case of “nudge, nudge!” really. Kiwis and Aussies are probably among the most comfortably compatible people on earth, and are actually similar enough in many regards as to make life across the Tasman perfectly possible for either.
It’s very much about being a bit too similar for comfort, and being “close cousins” of the late, British Empire.
The claims each side makes about the other are conspicuously similar, and I suspect it’s also a fact that Australians think it’s ridiculous that a country as tiny as NZ should get any equal standing as a nation, and Kiwis think Australia is simply this huge thing which tends to overshadow them.
But it is really all a bit of a laugh, and both sides know it.