CONTRIBUTE

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280 thoughts on “CONTRIBUTE”

  1. New Zealand Really IS a testbed for Progressive(Aggressive) Socialism. When my spouse would call it a “testbed” over the years, I kept thinking – nah, not possible – I know there are power-hungry, greedy globalists, but they couldn’t possibly be using this little nation down here to test out their plans, could they? (/sarcasm)

    So here’s another example. Lately, you can’t read two seconds on the net without reading/hearing about the “Bathroom Agenda” in the USA. Hilariously, I’ve heard some Kiwis slag off Americans because we’re having to deal with an issue like that. But here are two articles from LAST YEAR (2015) – and have we heard a single peep from the Kiwi Sheep in this country about it? Nope – they will happily cave in, bend over, bow down, and give up all freedoms, in total silence it seems.

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=11483849

    http://www.newshub.co.nz/nznews/gender-neutral-fitting-rooms-just-unnecessary-2015072109#axzz4957Oxz9p

    Further to this – how comfortable can one feel going to change clothing in a Farmer’s dressing stall – only to find that they have replaced latches with a weak little Magnet – so anyone can just come up and easily pop the door open while you’re half naked?

    Seriously. Disgusted. Fed. Up. When will people wake up? Hey America – please look over here at all the issues, have a look at New Zealand’s totalitarian Agenda over the last decade, and realize… it was a testbed now being put into play in the good ol’ USA. God help us all.

  2. Please stop..I can’t stop laughing !!

    This makes me wonder how many miljons were paid to publish this article ?!

    Yes indeed so this is how nz keeps making miljons on the tourists. There was an article about that too not long ago. Miljons and miljons and miljons…. John key knows businesses

  3. guy’s were thinking kiwi here…I would not be surprised if the “hairdressers” had their experience at an doggie trim saloon…hahahah
    Good you mention it . I have given up a long time ago about this. Was already quite concerned for them messing it up and YES so they did. I still get irritated sometimes because I got quite some hair missing. Which will show when I wear an braid even after two years on !

    This guy was no pro I could have done it better myself ! He MESSED UP BIG TIME ! I had cut it myself the same night because it was totally ruined ! Right now I won’t take the risk anymore and I cut it myself. hmmm

  5. To E2NZ,

    I notice you haven’t included the “Tax Haven” news. Not something I lose sleep about but I do point out that until the new laws came in a few months ago that New Zealand had unmonitored and untaxed international property speculators operating rampantly in the Country. Although NZ has now clamped down on the property traders there is still no stamp duty, capital gains tax, inheritance tax etc Therefore still an attractive tax haven. I think people saying that NZ complies with International disclosure laws does not change the fact that NZ is still a haven to park assets to take advantage of tax laws. On another matter, NZ has the lowest interest rates in its history but floating home loan rates are still at 5 to 6%.. This implies that the banks collude to fix the rates or the money supply is totally out of Government control. As most of the banks have decided not to pass Reserve Bank cuts on, there must be collusion which in most countries is illegal.

    • Yeah, the whole experience was even more appalling than I described, actually – here I was, standing there dumbfounded and demanding an explanation – the other customers just sat there as if I was crazy – and all the hairdressers silent like some Stockholm-syndrome slaves. BTW this was after I agreed to wait by walking around the mall for 45 minutes just to see that same hairdresser – and I was still denied seeing him when I got back, as another woman became free – so she and the manager kept talking down to me as if I were a servant that needed “getting back in line.” Honestly, a chain like that in the USA would have ..I don’t know how many lawsuits. Anyway, thanks for allowing us a voice, it means a LOT… 🙂

      • Have been reading with amusement at you’re comments on here , must say very good and agree totally, as for the star’s ” you get 10 at Mc Crap burgers LoL…..

  7. (Mods, feel free to mask the name of the hereto mentioned business, if you need to? I’m still hoping you will share this story as it is one that may not seem important to some but I find truly disgusting)…

    “Just Cuts” AKA Communist Cuts…

    Here’s a little tidbit that Freedom-loving Americans might be slightly appalled at.

    I learned to cut my own hair several years ago…and I do it quite nicely now, and here is why….

    There is a Kiwi-Aussie haircutting Chainstore called “Just Cuts.” I once had a haircut from someone, I liked the job he did – so I came back another day and asked for him. I was told I was “not allowed” to choose my own hairdresser, and that it was against their rules – that it’s not fair to a hairdresser who may be standing around; and that they “guaranteed” all the hairdressers could do the same job. I wasn’t even allowed to ask for his personal info, to get him to cut my hair outside his work hours…. blink blink

    Totally appalled at what I was hearing…but it dawned on me why all of them looked so glum, and why no one tips in New Zealand, and why Customer service is in the crapper. So I wrote to the head office to find out if this was really their policy. Oh, it doesn’t state it on their website, but YES they told me it is true, and sorry if I don’t like it. (Anyone else experience this feel free to vouch that what I’m saying is true!)

    I understand that a business should have the right to run their business the way they wish… but seriously, at the expense of such a common customer wish, to choose their own hairdresser???
    Well they continue to succeed, because there are enough mindless sheep in New Zealand who don’t question it and happily wait in line to be shorn.

    But needless to say, I’ll keep my dignity, thanks…never went back, bought a good pair of scissors and watched a few haircutting videos… and have saved thousands of dollars in haircuts ever since.

    Thanks, Commie(I mean “Just”) Cuts!

    • P.S. I think another reason “Just Cuts” continues to survive, is that to allow customers to choose their own hairdresser would mean that the hairdresser would make their money based on Merit, skill, and achievement – which obviously are not valued in New Zealand. It’s yet another example of how the individual no longer matters here.

    • Happy to go on. Your comment is typical for Nz. I find the name of the brand rather ridiculous: ‘Just Cuts’. This name shows me a very narrow minded way of looking towards new customers and the rest of the world. Just as the slogan ‘Kiwi owned and operated’. The same discriminative, stupid and narrow minded way of Kiwi style business thinking.

    • Ah! Just cuts…. I remember going to them few times and always returning back with a different hair cut (while the instructions remained same).

  8. Note to the mods: I wasn’t sure where to post this so just putting it in a comment here, please put it in a better area if you wish.

    I took some time and thought before writing this – let me first say, in the year or two since I found this site, I have felt SO much better knowing it “wasn’t just me.”

    For Migrants to NZ…You’ll think something is wrong with you…but it’s not you.

    Came from the USA, to New Zealand Years (far too long) ago and got permanent residence, married a New Zealander.
    I came for love, and am very lucky to be with a New Zealander who is one of the more open-minded sort, who has travelled, and doesn’t walk around with a chip-on-the-shoulder. Thank God, we are soon to leave and start a new life in my country – and I am so profoundly grateful we’re leaving.

    When I left the USA, I had a successful career – was an optimist, reasonably outgoing, and well-liked at my job – I worked very well in a team. But…Aside from a relationship with a really good soul, I have suffered a lot in New Zealand.

    I managed to make a few friends here – but they were either immigrants or kiwis who had travelled – and they all ended up leaving the country. Attempts to befriend locals never worked – either we had very little in common, or people would start to distance themselves from getting to know me as soon as they heard my accent, or that I was American. I was ok with it, as I like to do things besides just barbecuing, talking about Rugby, gossiping, talking about random shallow topics. Anything that required deeper thought was shunned – and I’m not even a terribly ‘intellectual’ person. Any emotion, passion, or enthusiasm (unless it’s about rugby, or about how horrible OTHER countries are (especially how awful the USA is)) is looked at with disdain or ignored. To be fair, you do run into some who are not like this, sometimes – but in general it is like that.

    Most peoples’ tastes run in second-rate media from the USA (rap, filth-mouthed toilet comedy, farts/farting is a source of endless entertainment (sure, I can chuckle at a ‘wind’-joke or two but its unbelievably central to the humor here) as pornographic and misogynistic humor, B-grade films that showcase the WORST of Hollywood). Television or radio is the most mind-numbing, droning, I.Q.-dropping experience – and even tv shows really shocking stuff.. NZ has adopted the worst of it all. The strangest thing is they claim to be feminists yet display the lowest common denominator – all sense of right and wrong has departed. Prostitute houses next to schools, topless parades in downtown Auckland, Pride in acceptance of your teen daughter to have “friends with benefits,” and how dare you question that! Saying it’s ok to frequent strip joints and talk about some strange woman’s exposed private parts at a tattoo parlor…though you’re married. Talking about sex in front of family members, incessant use of F word even in front of little kids. WTH… Yeah seriously, twisted, warped, no morals, some of them (and probably that way in all countries these days too – but still; Have no illusions about there being very many “Gentlemanly” Kiwi men left.) These are experiences with seemingly “normal middle class” families too. If you have morals (even if you are NOT someone that ‘bangs people over the head with morals”), some of them will look at you like you’re a leper – morals just aren’t cool at all here.

    Moving on… Career was in the toilet too. After a few years, and countless applications for employment, which were never even responded to; I began to question myself (what’s wrong with me?) – so no matter what I was coping with (lack of career and all the other issues), I tried so hard to ‘fit in’ and “Harden up.” I came to accept that I was just not going to get work in anything remotely related to my field, and took on various low-paying jobs that I found unbelievably frustrating and shocking – especially in the safety and standards. Attempts at getting a business going also failed miserably – the support for any small business is abysmal or non-existent (unless you want to sell junk on trademe, or unless you have tons of capital of your own to start off with – but I wouldn’t recommend ANY investment here).

    Despite the facade of “democracy” and “a free, first world country,” Abuse of welfare, socialism, oppression of individuality, booze, drugs, violence..these reign – and though subtle at first, even within middle class (and probably upper class) neighborhoods. There is no sense of community (I understand what a real sense of community is, as we had it when I was growing up in the USA) – Very few clubs or activities, very little to do outside camping/fishing – and what there is, is so poorly put together it’s depressing. What they call a “convention” is a side-alley swap-meet, OR a Rich-only club gathering. Try going to the beach, it’s dirty, there are creepy people hanging around after 3 pm, and you can’t swim areas unless you ignore the fact that sewage is being drained into it (but they post no signs, wouldn’t want to hurt the “clean green” image). Even if you could swim, if you go alone, there are no lockers to put your stuff in – anywhere, at any beach I’ve been to; very minimal facilities. Security is not an issue for them – not because you won’t get robbed, but because they just don’t care. Noise complaint? Low frequency vibration, incredibly loud obnoxious music in the middle of the night? Good luck.. Repeated calls to Noise control get you nowhere. Cops do utterly nothing if your neighbors harass you, no joke..they’ll just call it a “domestic issue” and tell you to file a report. Otherwise you are told to move. (But where? Everywhere suffers these problems.)

    People let their kids run totally wild thanks to the hideous “anti-smacking” law – and don’t teach them respect for others, even adults. With what I’ve seen, I shudder to imagine these kids when they are adults – the drug problems, the crime…will be utterly apocalyptic. They will even harass you outside our own home, and act as if your front/back yard belongs to them – no concept of law, or private property.

    The “Good” Neighbors mostly keep to themselves, no one trusts one another (and I don’t blame them). The govmt shut down all the mental institutions years ago, so there are MANY mentally ill drug addict/bums who suddenly are renting the house next door… They are users, no matter how kind you are to them – you will be used and once you stand up to it, they will become loud, vicious, and violent.

    It’s also true about housing – they haven’t got a concept that insulation is important, even in the damp, moldy, subtropical humid heat up North or extreme cold of other areas (unless maybe in hotels and tourist areas where they want to keep up the illusion for visitors). Some days you can hardly breathe, it gets so humid, with zero wind; your clothes stick to you; the carpet is damp…the mold constantly grows. No concept of air conditioning, can’t even get ice in restaurants – even in the worst of the heat. In many places they don’t bother with things like screens for windows or doors, despite all the bugs that grow in this swampy climate – including white-tail spiders, whose bite is poisonous and at the least gives you a nasty swelling in your skin (or worse if you have a reaction). Instead of screens, you have to spend money on a special household spray, and refills for it, which are expensive.
    The money that could be saved in the long-run with insulation and screens would be incredible – and there is really no logical reason I can see for not using these things. Just mentioning them dubs you “complainer.” It is typical of the “She’ll be right” attitude – that has unfortunately devolved to mean “Who cares, deal with it.” They are proud of their ability to pointlessly suffer with issues – crap homes, things falling apart with duct tape fixes… The sense of pride in this is staggering. To them it is a way of life, a national “pride” but to a practical outsider, you eventually realize how wasteful and ignorant it is.

    On that note – they sneer at Americans a lot, view us as weak and spoiled. In a way we ARE spoiled – but at least our sense of pride (for most of us) comes with real accomplishments – which is precisely why we have come to have the abundance we have (or had). Kiwi pride from the older folks (those around WWII generation) was in their ability to survive and keep a chin up even in the face of having less to work with – but it has morphed into a very skewed version of this with younger generations.

    Newer Kiwi pride is in mediocrity, oppressive socialism (everyone has to be “equal” so don’t ‘accomplish’ too much! – tall poppy syndrome). It’s reflected in the way they dress, the lack of manners, the run-down state of …many things, many places… The unquestioning acceptance of the status quo – exhorbitant prices, unfair/biased politics and business. Unfortunately these attitudes are beginning to infect other countries, including the USA – but our hope lies in our willingness to stand up for individuality and real freedom. Kiwis once had this, at least to some degree (esp the WWII generation) – but this is rapidly being lost.

    For years I battled depression in New Zealand – and I’m actually an optimistic person, or used to be. I find it interesting that I cannot find any exact, “official” suicide statistics for New Zealand. I bet the truth would be astounding…. The only thing that got me through is having a closer relationship with God (that’s personal so I’ll leave it at that). Eventually I woke up enough to say, enough is enough – we’re OUT of here. I’ll be so happy to be back home where people actually are interested in problem-solving, and don’t just tell you to “Harden up.” One thing I can say, is that I am a better American for having suffered all this – when I get back to my country, I will be aware of how easy it is for society to degrade, how utterly dangerous socialism/marxism is… And will stand up for Freedom, maybe moreso than I ever would have, had I not left. Thanks for “listening” … And if you come here, keep your eyes open.

  9. I had a good lough last week talking to a kiwi colleague when he spoke in his arrogant manner about “kiwi ingenuity” whilst he told me how high the level of education at schools and universities here in NZ is compared to other countries in Europe etc (lol!) and I asked him how many nobel price winners NZ actually has produced? He said, well enough he bets, I said google it…. The answer is nil! hahahaha Total loss of a sense of reality.

    • [Deleted, no Kool-Aid. Btw, Earnest Rutherford was British, in the same way that Lydia Ko is a Kiwi. Admin.]

    • Silvie111

      Your colleague should have checked before he put his foot in his mouth. I’d still nominate Rutherford as NZ ‘s only Nobel Laureate, with some qualifications. He would have probably been regarded as ‘British’ in those days, I’m not sure that NZ citizenship existed in Rutherford’s time.
      Still, at best, only one Nobel Laureate in more than a century isn’t impressive.

        • Safe from new Zealand,
          Hey supposedly everything according to most NZ locals that looks differently like a sheep is a thread. So it figures the xenophobic attacking in traffic behaviour. If any Nz’er ever makes a comment on foreign drivers I’m going to ask them howmany Kiwi’s they think cause accidents compared to foreigners? (And then perhaps I will add that shit drivers can’t teach others to drive well so they need to learn to drive! Moreover that they first need to take there little baby comforter out of there mouth before judging others.) Lol

  11. Dear e2nz readers, here is my story of my short stay in NZ.

    Short version: Married to New Zealander man, miserable 3 months, shortly returned to my country.

    Long Version: I really want to share my story because, I am back in my country now and even though I tell people have they have no idea of the hell i gone through as they have this “amazing country” of NZ in their minds.They just can not understand me. I feel miserable of my decision to go to NZ and trying to get back my life now. After 1 year of dating, where we actually saw each other only 10 weeks, being madly in love I made the decision to get married to him. I read about all these nice things about Nz. Quit my job, rented my flat and went to be with him. I now hate the word kiwi, so saying New Zealander instead. So my New Zealander husband and i couldn’t make it. won’t get into details as this is not a relationship solution website.

    The thing is apart from my relationship where i was mistreated, my whole experience was terrible. We were living in the south of Auckland in the same house with his mother that treated me like shit. The only place i could go by walking distance was the supermarket. The NZ goverment didnt give me a work visa although i had a big experience back my country. So there was no way i could get a job.( i needed to wait at least 6 months to apply for work visa) I had to depend on my husband which was terrible as i was living alone and earning my own money before. Looking back now i am questioning if the NZ culture has a bad effect on adult man. Would be a cliche and you might argue i was too naive to move there without knowing him well but as soon as i was there he kind of changed. I find myself as a woman who needs to get happy just becouse his husband come home in the evenings, I like to think i was brave enough to follow my love and try but didn’t work.

    End of three months i couldn’t take it anymore. I am just glad i met wonderfull expat friends there. Saw nice places and amazing views. And really thats it.

    The other things that made my life terrible in NZ:
    1) Getting cold even in summer night. Can’t imagine the winter.
    2) 30 hour train is 5$ something, life without a car is tough
    3) Not felt secure as a women after it gets dark walking from train station to home.
    4) What we could afford to eat outside was only burgers.
    5) Being corrected all the time to use certain phrases or words they use in NZ, like they sea “tea” for dinner etc.
    6) Obvious bad hygine in food places that receive “A” grade in hygene.
    7) I could not afford to go to culturel things like concerts, theathres so i can not comment of these.
    8) Eating healthy ( fruit and vegetables) crazy expensive.

    Unless if you have money to afford things or live in a nice place, I would say NZ is a terrible place. I saw that people are so in debt they can not get loans from banks and getting loans in unbelievable interest rates from non bank places. This is illegal in my country.People are desperate and in the supermarket we go they would ( well us too) choose either not to buy any fruits for example or only get 1 kind.
    Being so isolated and away from your family and friends and rest of the world, you expect a kind of quality of life. But in my opinion this doesnt exist in NZ.

  12. I have Lived in Wellington NZ my whole life (since 1975) and in that time pretty much since Robert Muldoon left office (a much denigrated man who was scuttled by the big banks from making NZ a self sufficient power house with its very own refinery capacity) I have seen the area be totally De-industrialised .
    Wellington city is nearly dead, unless you want coffee or micro brewed beer, a pop up shop in a shipping container, or a job spraying green paint on the road for a cycle lane, because at this rate no one will have a car in about ten years due to layoffs.
    Lower Hutt city should be used for post apocalyptic films.
    Today I was chased by a Maori in a Falcon with an intergenrational chip on his shoulder because I made in my opinion an educated gap selection turn at a roundabout. he was blocked by a car turning left in front of him, so I turned left.
    So he shoots up my arse doing the fingers while tail gating me to a service station (the only road law broken).
    At the service station he makes it clear that he is troglodyte pond scum in front of his blonde troll of a girlfriend and that he may be a gang member, so I had better watch out. I am a 40 year old Caucasian and drive a Toyota so I am an oppressor.
    In my forty years of life the lions share of people who have threatened me or attacked me have been Maori or pacific Islanders, their are racist people of all races in this country, but never do I hear of an educational campaign telling Maori or islanders to stop racism against non Maori or non Islanders.

    Anything that happened before I was born has nothing to do with me.
    New Zealand is F**king backwards my girlfriends Australian sister says.
    Its true.

    • I could have better summed it up by just saying the roads are full of A holes of all kinds here.

  17. Admin have you seen the facebook page Positive Papakura? They recently got front page in the courier.

    While I can agree with some of their ideas on what a community should be like, they are making the classic kiwi mistake of downplaying or outright ignoring the real issues, just like the local MP office who ignore my emails.

    The courier article says the group was born from someone reading negative comments online (probably mine LOL) and is sick of ‘moaning/complaining’ about the negative aspects of this town.

    This is what I mean, that classic kiwi attitude condemning anyone who points out anything wrong as just a moaner. They go on about this ‘fantastic’ community but offer no actual reasons as to what make sit fantastic.

    I have heard from workers in Countdown supermarket that it isn’t safe to go to their cars at night, and the security do nothing. One staff member was beaten trying to stop some young punks. She was probably sick of security doing nothing.

    This ‘fantastic community’ is full of thugs and deceitful beggars blocking entryways, multiple beatings, the list goes on. None of it is addressed.

    Just like NZ is all about image, so it is all the way down to the smallest towns.
    If this Positive Papakura group could actually focus on the negatives, we might have a chance of actually changing something, then there wouldn’t be a need for a positive would there?

    • Hi Shan . I actually noticed some chance for the past weeks..am not sure it is because of this website but could very well be of course ! I also strongly agree when kiwi’s become more conscious about their behavior there is an big chance they will start to chance. I am sure they pull each other down. Let’s just start to build them up. It will make things better for the immigrants that come after us I hope.

      There is ALWAYS hope ! Also for New Zealand. I do see many kiwi’s that for sure have the potential to make an change around here. And starting out with youth programs is an great initiative. Because this is where most of the problems in NZ start with. An unmotivated bored to death youth..

      There is an international organisation that does wonderful work for problem youth around the world.
      They start up youth lounges for teenagers with an professional youth worker in charge.
      They focus on gang members and other troubled youth but all is welcome. They are strict with drugs and alcohol and of course this is not allowed. They organize youth events with music and games for them. I visited once to have a look and the place was packed with youngsters.

      Just think of it as an “burgers and beers ” but then with an pool table and DJ. Cheap snacks and the community might donate to keep theirs youth out of the street making trouble. Simple idea but at least they won’t be bored anymore.. I have seen the kids having so much fun there in my home country. I was so impressed that I joined their new years party…and it was a blast. many local students visited the party too and it was great to see young people from all sorts of races backgrounds and social standard talking to each other having the time of their lives !

      I believe NZ youth is in desperate need of places like this where they can keep their youth being entertained and supervised at the same time , especially in CHCH !!
      Perhaps I should contact this organisation to start one up here and Dunedin so students and school youth have safe places to hang out besides their room. Would any of you be interested in something like this ?

      Recently I was sitting on a bench outside and there were some teenagers that passed me saying good morning and an other one smiling… I see more people acting friendly also toward foreigners. Could be an coincidence or not…Yes this is normal in most western countries but not in CHCH NZ. After years residing here this is the first time they’d ever done that !! I was shocked but happy with the improvement. So are we actually making an chance here folks with contributing to this website ? Admin you could actually be changing NZ society here !? You have set up an brilliant site and I am thankfull !

    • Hey Shan,

      Thanks for your comment. Typically ‘positivism’. Wellall the optimism in the world can’t hide the fact that NZ is a second world country. Somebody told me once…just look at the signs! It’s a pitty for young people to grow up in this country. But (with respect mentioned for those who haven’t) everybodie can change their lives. I hate the NZ commercials, greedy insecurity and stupid layed back attitude.
      Admin, cheers for posting!

  19. Massey University discriminates against asians. Or at least the aviation section does.
    I know a young boy who wanted to become a pilot and was refused by the interviewers because he was ‘not motivated enough to become a pilot’.

    It was his dream actually. When he walked into the room he saw surprise on their faces, like they had never seen a Chinese person applying for such a thing before. He knew what the outcome would be after seeing their reaction.

    One of the interviewers however, actually emailed the family to say she didn’t agree with the others, but at this point he had given up and is now studying mathematics.

  20. The New Zealand story ends for this mathematics professor – ‘You are not welcome to live here because you have a disabled child’.”http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11589222

  22. Admin exuse me can you please remove my comment with ******again. I have changed my profile name on WordPress so won’t happen again.

    Sorry for the inconvience

  23. Featherston youths storm home

    Featherston hitting all the wrong notes again.

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/wairarapa-times-age/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503414&objectid=11583390

    ‘A Featherston man is vowing to stand against more than 20 drunken teens who laid siege to his home — smashing windows and threatening violence — in attacks linked to the deaths of two boys in a Masterton crash at the weekend.’

    ‘At noon yesterday a group of about 15 teens again appeared at his gate, he said, and were wearing gang colours and “threatening to run me out of town and kill my daughter”.’

    • totally wasted shitheads. The teens stole car and were speeding, what else can anyone expect when the youth is influenced with drugs & alcohol. On top of that there’s a clip on One news site about the grieving “friends” who looked sad not for the act of drinking, driving & stealing. I wish the so called friends left a message to wider teens that doing such acts were wrong.

      Riots by their friends is just taking this matter way beyond the tolerance levels now. Will anyone give them a whack and ask them to behave as people do in civilized world?

      • Man you can consider yourself lucky to still be alive on the roads here. Funny how kiwi’s comment on shit driving skills: ‘it’s those bloody foreigners!’. I always think the next time I hear somebody saying this I’m going to say: ‘ well do you know how many kiwi’s cause accidents very week? I don’t care who it is…

  24. New Zealand: A 20.000 km’s away and 20 years behind bitter sweet symphony.

    My thoughts why people can go on a holiday to New Zealand and should never move there. (Unless they are convicted criminals.)
    I will be brief.
    So why should people go on a holiday to New Zealand?
    1) Beautiful sceneries! Yes true. The only thing is that you have to travel (in our case 20.000 km’s) and pay a huge amount of money to get there. And then that’s it. Then the money leeching drag begins.
    Well that’s it really. Now I will share you why people should never move to New Zealand.
    1) There is no work.
    2) Life is very expensive.
    3) The people act (and look) like Cave Orc’s. Really, you don’t have to go to the movie set in Matamata to see orc’s, there everywhere over here. Man that Peter Jackson is one smart bloke.
    4) You likely to live 15 years shorter due to being bored, get an overload of Smurf kind talk, grumpiness, (dust) poisoning, develop alcohol addictions, Astma, Artritis enz. enz.
    5) The houses suck. (Unless you like watching your lawn grow true the floor when you lift op the carpet.)
    6) The people…… Well you know… doesn’t need explanation unless you want to graduate in Rugby science.
    I can go on and on….
    Don’t want to. Just looking forward to get away in a few months and forget it all.
    Man what a Joke!

  25. This is a HORROR Story – A Migrant Tale!

    The Robinson family arrived in NZ in 2005, they immediately purchased a beautiful lifestyle home near Kerikeri in Northland and briefly enjoyed NZ. They completed the property, installed fantastic equestrian facilities and a swimming pool complex. They loved the house, full of their imported furniture, antiques and artworks.

    After a few months they got ill, strange since they had all been stunningly healthy for years, all very active, their only contact with medics due to minor accidents due to riding horses, offshore yacht racing and gliding.

    After 4 years, Chris was so ill he had to stop playing golf, endless tests showing some strange heart disease.
    The whole family were ill, guinea pigs died, dogs grew lumps the horses all became impossible to train and ride! They put the property on the market thinking the problem was the pollen that covered their vehicles everyday. They would get an offer of $2.995M in 2010, it sadly fell through due tot he Mortgage conditions at that time.

    Eventually they worked out the water was polluted, they reported it to the the Council who eventually did some tests – Nothing wrong, the water was fine!

    It got worse, they had independent testing done, the water was found to contain ARSENIC at 10 times the statistically deadly dose. (Any exposure to arsenic can kill you, they just do a statistical evaluation of the risk to set a level that the Government says is OK.)

    They publicly complained, publishing everything on the WWW. The local Newspaper supported initially but a backlash occurred, property owners in the area felt the publicity would affect local land values. They discovered the Estate Agent that had sold them the house knew about the pollution at the property and sued him in the High Court. They also sued the NZ Government, they had after all come to NZ mainly due to the 100% Pure message, the NZ Immigration site stated ‘There is NO Pollution in NZ!’ Misrepresentation.

    However their specialist came up with a solution, the house had originally had a bore and this could be reinstated to give a clean water supply, they started to investigate this option and a company was to drill a test bore.

    On 9 September 2011 they went on a trip to Hamilton to visit their son at Waikato University. They got a call the next morning, the property had been totally destroyed by fire. Little did they know that this was just the beginnings of the horror story.

    On return to the property the Fire Service told them that the fire had been caused by VANDALS, everything was destroyed including all the evidence for the court cases which had to be abandoned immediately. They had $3M equity in the property which due to their illnesses had wildly inadequate contents insurance and the policies were of the ‘Full replacement’ type committing the insurance company to REBUILD the property. Cash payouts would not cover the substantial land value and in any case were at the discretion of the insurance company. These policies were introduced to remove any possible advantage to an arsonist.

    State Insurance refused to accept the claim, the investigation went on for ever and in April 2012, Chris was arrested and charged with ARSON and insurance fraud. Tricky to understand since the family were 400Km away and the investigation found nothing in the debris that suggested how the fire started. IAG immediately declined the claims due to his arrest for Arson.

    In 2013, 18 months after the fire, the investigators images were released. They showed clear evidence of intruders, a break in, items removed, vandalism with rocks thrown through the windows and found on top of fire debris, DNA of the intruders and beer bottles containing gasoline but at a Pre Trial the investigators blatantly lied to the Court, their evidence ignoring the facts recorded in their own images and the notes they made at the fire scene to FRAME Chris for the fire and most importantly enable IAG, the group that owned State Insurance and AMI to continue to avoid paying the claim.

    It took another two years before Chris was acquitted of the charges, there was NO evidence!

    I have now published the full story of the actions IAG undertook attempting to FRAME Chris and avoid paying the claim – a series of videos on YouTube – https://goo.gl/IHBFVo

    The situation is on-going, IAG still refuse to meet the claims, the Robinson’s live on benefits in rented property without medical insurance, bankrupted all due to the action of an AUSTRALIAN Insurance company and an AUSTRALIAN Bank that do not respect NZ Law, Courts or honor the contract of their policies.

    The Police and legal system just assumes these major companies are honest, whilst the claimant are crooks that deserve to suffer for what they are accused of, even if the evidence is obviously falsified and the policyholder totally innocent. Many others have come forward telling the similar stories, this could happen to you.

    Chris is now very ill, unable to fully defend himself in the Courts. IAG’s actions are beyond belief as you will see at https://goo.gl/IHBFVo but in New Zealand this is what they call JUSTICE!

  26. Sorry for the typos. I have many more stories to share regarding this country. If you’re thinking about moving… Don’t. I thought I had done my research. But it simply is not the way it is here. 3rd world and ego maniacs about their beautiful country.

  27. I am a 42 year old mom of two teenage girls that moved to Auckland from the states in November. I’m a physio with more education than most physios here yet the NZ Board of physios makes it nearly impossible to begin work quickly. It costs $1500 to submit and if one check mark is missed than your application is returned and non refundable. When you reapply then you pay $1500 again. I had 180 points on my EOI for skilled migrant but I still don’t have a skilled migrant visa to work. My husband died a couple of years ago so I thought this would be a great move to the “3rd safest country in the world with the nicest people” for my kids and a lifestyle change. The only rental I could find is $900 per week in a leaky building. We have all been sick for 2 months and despite the rental agent acting like I was a horrible American hypochondriac I finally pulled out the carpet to find black mould everywhere. After filing an application with the tribunal the agent finally had someone come test the air and carpet. The report states it is not safe to live here but the agent won’t let me reduce my rent or pay for a place for me to stay. She has lied to me and I have proof via email. My daughter is on an asthma inhaler and we are on antibiotics. I’m running out of money but I’ve been screwed at every turn. I could go on and on. Kiwis are incapable of handling a confrontation. Eye contact is difficult for them and they have a huge problem with interrupting. I’m so exhausted my defeated. The only people that are been friendly are other immigrants. I’m literally so over it. I just want to get some money back from this horrible lease and move back to the states.

    • Hi there ! Sorry to read your awfull experience. And yes I totally agree it would be best for you to leave as quick as you can ! We arrived in Auckland about 4 years ago and regret it very much we stayed for this long and wasted an incredible amount of money ! It is very unlikely your situation will not get any better.. Unless you go home ! It certainly didn’t for us. Although we are resident and are working. This place is just way to expensive, corrupt and isolated. Beside I have tasted their hatred against anything american. I have a bit of an american accent and we drive an american car. Great car fell in love with it in the states last year. But ours has been ruined buy some haters and there are scratches everywhere. Besides our tyres have been flattened several times . Absolute crazy here ! You won’t miss anything when you leave believe me ! Where in the states are you from ? All best

  29. So… after some wonderful feedback and encouragement from you, I would like to contribute further to this great site, this time I would like to share my experience wih tertiary education in the vast well of ignorance which is NZ.
    As we all know NZ likes to take advantage of unwitting foreign students and parents alike, claiming world class facilities coupled with amazing lifestyle to give those with enough money the chance to advance themselves and obtain qualifications that will allow them to be competitive anywhere in the world… What an utter load of codswallop.
    After suffering through high school (please refer to my first contribution for some examples of the horror that is NZ schooling), I took some well intended advice and applied to attend a course in Electronic Multimedia.
    All I needed to do was apply for my student allowance and then of course the infamous student loan, a $10000 millstone tied to my neck, haunting me for years to follow.
    I moved to Christchurch with my then girlfriend and three cats in tow and settled into a new beginning.
    I had applied with a private training institute called Carich Computer Training. A small company founded by a Maori couple, Caron and Richard Taurima, they were lauded for being innovative and inspiring with Caron winning the Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award not to mention all the other hype they would recieve, particularly from the Maori corner because… when a Maori actually achieves anything in life (other than a criminal record) it becomes quite a newsworthy event.. Suffice to say, with credentials like that, what could go wrong? Those of you familiar with this site will all be leaning closer to their screens thinking, here we go… sock it to me baby!
    I can’t say that doing this course with this company was the worst decision of my life, that dubious honour belongs to my decision to live in NZ… but it was a decision I regretted for a long time.
    So, being a reasonably talented artist and possessing a vocabulary that consists of more than just single syllable utterances, I thought doing this course would stand me in good stead. Upon completion, I would aquire national certificates one and two in electronic multimedia, giving me proficiency in programmes such as Adobe photoshop, freehand, dreamweaver, 3D Max and an understanding of web development yada yada yada.
    Well the first week started with a whizz and a bang with the course co-ordinator apologising for the fact that our first week we would be doing nothing as they were having issues with aquiring a suitable teacher to take us… Alarm bells should have been ringing from day one. After failing to obtain said teacher, the course coordinator deigned to share his limited knowledge of Freehand with the already unimpressed class.
    Next came the Photoshop segment and of our course Carich really went to great lengths to ensure excellence with this teacher. His name was Keri and he bore a striking resemblence to the company owner so I would hazard a guess and suggest he was a cuzzy bro or something. He openly admitted that he had absolutely no credentials in relation to the software or teaching for that matter and had gained his vast knowledge from tinkering around altering naked photos of his ex-wife. To him this was a great joke and he relished showing the class these aformentioned naked photo’s of not only his ex-wife but other conquests foolish enough to allow him to photograph them naked. This was turning out to be a wonderful way to spend $10K of my yet to be hard earned money not to mention interest… *sigh
    So.. then came the Dreamweaver segment, and at least this teacher was qualified, and he was a very nice man, I can’t remember his name but a very lovely nature, unfortunately he was Chinese and his English was absolutely deplorable. Try as hard as you might, he was impossible to understand so each and every segment became increasingly frustrating. The final segment, 3D Max was taken once again by the course coordinator but after the previous tutors, we were just relieved to get someone we could understand who performed with some modicum of professionalism!
    As you can imagine, our class collectively had become quite fed up with this joke. Really. We were coming to the end of the course and were hit with a real punch to the guts. With only weeks left, Carich were asking for a $500 administration fee as there had been (apparently) some sort of oversight in the initial fee provided and our certificates would be withheld until the fee was paid in full. I refused to be held to ransom and to this day, have not paid a single further cent, in fact I felt a refund was in order… That $500 fee soon made sense when Carich made national headlines again, not for being amazing super Maori’s but because their sorry excuse for a company was going into recievership… Yay! Karma wins again…
    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=3533121
    I didn’t intend on this entry being a long one but let me take the chance to tell you a little bit about Christchurch while I’m at it. Firstly, part of the reason I didn’t pay that surprise fee was because I was so bloody poor! I was on the bones of my arse. So much so that I had to go to the city mission to get food to survive. I lived in Pines Beach at the time situated some 26 KM from the city centre. I did have a small scooter I had bought from a father and son who appeared trustworthy at the time, lo and behold they sold me a lemon and the motor shat itself after a week and they were never to be heard from ever again. So I had to ride my bicycle some 52 km every day, wind, rain, hail and on some occasions with two weeks of groceries obtained from the city mission hanging precariously from my handle bars, the odd tin of tomatoes or beans escaping en route. I can tell you it’s a degrading experience waiting in cue with homeless drunkards and dead beat maori’s for donated food… But certainly character building…
    Christchurch is a weird place, foreigners are despised in New Zealand but in Christchurch, they are at least held in higher regard than Aucklanders. In fact this is a sentiment shared by everyone who doesn’t hail from Auckland where they are called JAFA’s… (Just Another Fucking Aucklander). Australians are even held in higher regard than Aucklanders!!!
    I learned this very quickly so when asked where I came from, I would always say I was Australian, my girlfriend however didn’t have such luxury so no matter how hard she tried, for that entire year, she could not find a job and believe me, you would never have found a more honest, hard working friendly person. It didn’t take long for her to become depressed, thankfully she found a way to distract herself from the misery of day to day life by volunteering at a nearby animal shelter.
    There isn’t such a large Maori/Pacific Islander population in Christchurch yet the Mongrel Mob and Blackpower gangs are still very strongly represented. After getting fed up with riding my bike to Pines Beach every day, we ended up moving to a street just off Linwood Avenue. We soon discovered we were now living around the corner from a Mongrel Mob pad (gang house) which was heavily fortified with 3 meter high fencing and believe it or not, sentries posted as look outs, partially looking out for enemies (Police/rival gangs) but more importantly to sell drugs through a small hole situated down one side. So at all times of the day and night there were all sorts of scum bags and filth hanging around. Very intimidating.
    Skin heads and neo nazis have a large presence in Christchurch so daily existence with these shining examples of humankind make for interesting experiences.
    Christchurch itself was once a pretty town until the earthquake struck. I was a Police Officer in South Auckland at the time and I was part of a group of emergency responders sent down to assist the stricken city to guard and cordon the city centre to prevent looting and provide support. Who knew that there would be looters amongst us dressed in uniform. It was very disapointing to learn that whilst there, certain uniformed individuals were stealing sunglasses and other sundries from the ruined stores during the night shift. There was one occasion where a Police officer thought it would be funny to take a blow up sex doll from one of the stores and place it in the driving seat of an unattended fire truck. This was amongst the ruin and rubble of this city and the smell of death still pungent in the air… Such reverence!!! This typifies the maturity and sensibility of your typical kiwi.
    Another example of the kiwi attitude was their reluctance to rebuild the fallen landarks that made that city famous. Case in point, the Cathedral. A majestic building heavily damaged in the Earthquake. The resounding attitude was… Naaaaaahhhh, fuckit… too difficult, too expensive, lets just make a cardboard church instead, she’ll be right mate!!! (for those with knickers twisting in their office chairs, I am being flippant and I am aware the cardboard church was always only meant as a temporary measure), but that magnificent church will never stand again. Let me share a German example for comparison, in the town I live in now, 80% of the city was demolished in the second world war. When the war finished, the woman rolled up their sleeves and rebuilt this town stone by stone! Just think about that. It would be a cold dark day in hell before a kiwi dedicates their time, energy and resources to something for which they wouldn’t gain from financially.
    So in summary, you want to get a world class education for yourself or your children, for heavens sake stay away from NZ.

  30. Hello everyone,
    ,I have discovered this website before i even moved to NZ. I told my story i am marrying a New Zealander and coming to nz but i have some doubts. They wisely advised me to stay away and rethink my decision. But I thought “well i love him , yes this country has downsides but where i live has really a lot too” We can be happy together in this far away land. I was so excited and had dreams of the new things i will try and experience.
    Well after being here for 3 months, i am absolutely hating Auckland. We live in the suburbs, i dont have a decent job, i only have expat friends, my husband changed so much since we came here. Can not understand the relationships here. All people seem to live very solitary in a solitary country. I am unable to drive so i have to take the train if my husband not taking me and to go and come back city is 12 nzd.
    I am planning to leave in a week until i get totally stuck here and lose my savings. I already spent quite a lot of money to settle.

    Funny thing is the first time i came here i needed to get a visitor visa and while europe, australia etc are all giving visas in just 3-4 days. It took 1 month for me to get a visa. When i call they said this is the normal time. ( mind you that it was not christmas time or anything) Then i should have understood what kind of place i am coming to.

    Sorry if i am writing very mixed . I really would like to write more when i am back, less stressed and my mind is more clear.

    Recently i had to go to a doctor because i get sick. health system doesnt cover me here. So i paid all of it ( here you can not go to hospital directly. you go to some kind of doctors office in every neighbourhood) So i needed to have some tests and i was given the test tube to take to the labratory myself. Oh also let me to say this is not the first time i had a test and the test tubes and everything were from a century ago. I might be wrong but i hope someone shares their experience too.

    In my opinion hospitality doesn’t exist here. What they understand about being nice is saying good morning and hello to each other when they meet. Just on the surface.

    And one thing i just found out, people watch the world news and they get happy to be away from the terrors, etc happening and how awesome new zealand is. This is ridiculous. Yes there are terrible things happening around the world but it looks to me like the media is trying to convince living here is heaven because no terror attacks here.

    What i really hate here is people do not know what they do not know. Majority of people accept whatever. Oh the train and food is extremely expensive to what people earn. The answer is this is new zealand, its how it is. I think the government should put more and more taxes and make things less affordable. They accept everything.

    Any people thinking to live here should go to a pack and save in the south of auckland. And they will know the situation of the country.

    I am leaving because I have no hope left about my future here and i want to get away as early as possible. Will be sorry to say goodbye to the expat friends i made in a few months but i guess they would leave eventually and we can meet somewhere again.

    And lastly let me say something about the outdoors and scenery.Maybe where i live is not this green. We do not have this much parks. We do have corruption, we do have lots of problems in my own country. jobless is higher than NZ. But you know what I rather struggle with problems in my own country where living is more affordable, people really care about each other,weather is sunny, good food is not a luxery instead of struggling here lonely and miserable.

    The reality of NZ is so harsh when you actually start living here. I guess i was a bit naive thinking i can make it here. So disappointed.

  31. Hello everyone… I suppose the best place to start, like so many other contributors to this site, with a big thank you to the administrators and contributors to E2NZ. I left NZ nearly a year and a half ago with great resentment and malice in my heart, vowing never to set foot in that miserable country ever again… (to which you would hear the catch cry of millions of kiwi’s “GOOD! You are not welcome here!) This sounds strange but after reading so many horror stories here, I found a sense of relief and justification for my negative attitude. Please don’t mistake this for Schadenfreude, or the pleasure found in the suffering of others, but the fact that I have finally been vindicated, that it wasn’t me who was the problem, I wasn’t the arsehole and yes, it is in fact, NewZealand is a country full of arseholes. Violent, aggressive, ignorant arseholes.
    So let me begin my story, it’s a long one, and I don’t want this to be an emotional rant but I have been waiting for the energy to write this because I know it will be cathartic and a great way to finally close a chapter in my life that I will never want to revisit… And if it helps others, and more importantly, deters others from even considering moving to NZ, then the effort will be worthwhile.
    I was born in Namibia as a Dutch citizen at a time of conflict and uncertainty, we moved to England where my sister was born and by the early ’80s we had moved to Australia where I spent my formative years. My life in North Queensland was idyllic. Golden beaches, warm sun and bronzed healthy happy people living in a true paradise. My Grandparents had a station (1000 km2!!) and every year we would spend months in Australia’s outback where I had the most amazing adventures which I still reflect upon fondly.
    My life changed when my Mother divorced my father and she soon met a Kiwi. They decided that it would be good to live in NZ and in the early 90’s we moved to a small remote town in the central plateau, North Island NZ. I was excited and looked forward to my new life in a new country, I was excited about seeing snow and great mountains so I certainly had a positive attitude towards the move…. How naive…
    So… my first experience of life in NZ begins in a very remote valley, an hours drive from a very small village. My stepfather had a house in this village which had tenants so he had arranged to stay with an old friend on a farm in this valley whilst the tenants were given a fair and reasonable opportunity to find new accommodation. My parents agreed to pay this “friend”, board to cover the costs of our family living there… What can I say, this family could have come directly from a Stephen King novel, or a grindhouse movie… My stomach turns as I relive this experience. These people lived in squalor, the man, around 65 at the time was an illiterate psychopath, he left school at the age of 12 to tend to this farm. His first wife committed suicide by shooting herself in the head with a .303 rifle. He then met his second wife at a party, she was perhaps 30 years old, lucky if she was 155cm tall and two grown men would struggle to touch hands if they attempted to encircle her girth. She had a bald path on the crown of her head and what little hair she had was always greasy and lanky, her skin oily. She could easily have weighed 300 kg. She was a grotesque monster. He slept with this woman at this party and subsequently she fell pregant. Naturally they married and she gave birth to a hideous little creature. This boy was 3 or 4 years old when I met him and he was an awful little animal, filthy, swore like a sailor, tortured animals, pissed in his bed and not once did I see any of these people shower or bath. The house was a despicable bomb site. My parents paid a considerable amount in board which was to include food. The evenng meals in this household were the same every night. This woman would cook a shoulder of mutton and it would be left on the table and reheated every night until the thing was nothing but bone and grissle. This typically lasted a week. Flies would crawl on it throughout the day and occasionally you would see flies eggs on it which she would flick off with her filthy fingers.
    The man was equally disgusting, unkempt, wild. He scared the hell out of me. He only had one set of clothes (to my knowledge) which he wore every day. Jean shorts, an orange woollen cardigan (the shorts held up by suspenders) and steel capped boots. One day, he kicked me up the backside with these boots so hard, directly on the coccyx, I couldn’t walk for an entire day I was in such pain. On a hot day, he would drop his pants around his knees and lift his top over his protruding belly and walk around in this fashion, however he didn’t wear underwear so he would expose himself to my mother and my 9 year old sister. I could continue, I could write a small novel on this first experience alone but I guess I should continue with the rest of my NZ experience…
    SO… we eventually escaped this deliverence style nightmare to move to this little one horse town. The house was horrible, mouldy, cold and damp. the tenants had let the place turn to ruin… After our first experience we were already beginning to feel disheartened but then to move into this miserable cold house didn’t help matters. The tenants were known drug dealers (and burglars and violent thieves) and a newly aquired pet kitten soon discovered $20000 NZD worth of cannabis oil stashed in our shed which had apparently been forgotten by the ex-tennants. The police happily recieved it yet no further action was taken… (?!?!?!)
    The summer holidays finally came to an end and so the time came for me to finally experience schooling and education in a rural community. Wow… what an experience…
    Before I began schooling I was asked to sit an exam to establish which grade would be best for me. I sat the 5th form certificate exam which I passed with flying colours yet was still made to enter the year as a 4th form student, the reason given that the teachers thought it would be best for me to begin the year with students my own age… So basically the education I had recieved in Australia had given me a two year advantage over my NZ contemporaries… and to this day I still believe I was forced to join the 4th form so as to not highlight this embarrassing fact to those around me.
    I reflect on my education in Australia and it was an environment that encouraged healthy competition. I recall my 9th grade Dean addressing my class at the beginning of the year. He asked us to look to the boy to the left of us, and to the boy to the right (I was very lucky to attend a prestigious boys school), he then suggested that those boys, although they are our friends, we will be in competition with each other for the best jobs and the best things in life for the rest of our lives… So you must always work hard and do your best…
    Cue NZ…
    Tall poppy syndrome is an expression used heavily on this site and I can vouch that it begins as early as school. I was immediately ostracised, mocked and bullied. Any efforts I made to excel in my schooling was met with contempt from my classmates. If a teacher asked the class a question, she/he would be met with silence, uncomfortable silence, and when I would put my hand up to answer, students would yell and mock me, sometimes agressively, I even recall seeing a smirk on my science teachers face when met with abuse.
    I would be mocked for wanting to answer questions, I would be mocked for not knowing the Maori word for vagina, I would be mocked for not wanting to play Rugby and they thought I was weird because all I wanted to do was lock myself in the artroom during lunch hour to escape the cretins surrounding me. I went from being a bright student that excelled in all subjects to being withdrawn and sullen and eventually I too became a “troublemaker” in an effort to fit in… Yet I dare not tease or mock my fellow students for fear of more bullying, it was my teachers who would recieve my scorn when I would consistently draw attention to their ineptitude and backward ways… SO soon enough I was getting bullied by the teachers as well. I was in a living hell. Groups of boys would follow me and threaten me, and they would ambush me in corridors to fight. I would be tormented by them on the bus ride home and they would wait for me at the bus stop to contiue fighting. I would have to run through the back entrances of shops on the main street to make it to my parents business to escape them only to be mocked that I was a pussy and a coward for not wanting to fight five kids at a time. The kids attending this school were tyrants, smoking and selling drugs, drinking alcohol, teenage pregnancy, violent crime and burglars. One boy who was a member of a very prominant Maori family in the area took a particular disliking to me, he was a black belt in karate or some such martial art and I was constantly trying to avoid him. One day he had his friends hold me whilst he beat me mercilessly yet nothing was done. Two years later he was involved in a violent home invasion where a wealthy market gardening family were held ransom, threatened with an axe, rumour has it that one of the women had been raped whilst one of the accomplices took another family member to an ATM to withdraw cash. This boy recieved four years in jail for this horrendous crime and I later learned that since he has been in and out of jail for domestic abuse.
    When I was 17 I left home to return to Australia. I immediately got a well paying job and started enjoying life again. One would say too much perhaps and after a year of youthful exuberance and excess and one or two complicated relationships, I longed for the serenity and peaceful life I thought I had in NZ. I was exhausted and perhaps I wanted to regale the few friends I had with my tails of debauchery with the beautiful girls I had met in Australia. (I can personally state that Kiwi woman are generally quite Hideous) It didn’t take me long to regret this decision. To this day I am baffeled as to why I returned, perhaps with my new found sense of worth, higher self esteem and greater confidence that things would be better. Wrong… I had established myself in a small apartment and it wasn’t long before my house had been burgled and I had been completely cleaned out. Everything I owned that I had worked so hard to aquire was gone. TV, stereo, VCR… family heirlooms my mother had given… gone. I was 18 and didn’t have insurance and I had reached a new low in my life. The Police investigated, they new who it was and nothing was done. I had my TV returned but that was it… I wanted to leave this house as soon as I could because I couldn’t face living there anymore, my landlord who was a supposed friend of the family and a devout Christian refused to give me my bond because a few breadcrumbs were found inside the oven… that really added insult to injury. I was now in a profound state of depression and suicide played heavily on my mind.
    Suicide is an all to real problem in NZ, particularly rural NZ, with many farmers, youths, even professionals taking their own lives. Furthermore, the NZ lackadadaisical approach to everything means that there are many industrial and farming accidents resulting in death… Then let us not forget the Kiwi’s attitude on the road. I have driven all over the world, all over Europe, through Italy during rush hour, through Soweto in South Africa, the maniacal roads in Turkey, yet I have never come across a bigger bunch of aggressive wankers then on NZ roads. The attitude there is that they own the road and anyone in any close proximity is an enemy who must be overtaken at all cost, and once overtaken, held up in an effort to be the most pig ignorant, arrogant and dangerous obstacle possible. They will swerve at you or cut you off in an effort to intimidate. They will gesticulate and swear at you threatening to kill you, their faces contorted in an utmost grotesque rage. Their resentment, jealosy and self loathing brimming over for all to see but heaven forbid if you get stuck at a traffic light with one of these sociopaths close behind. There have been numerous occasions where I have had to escape dangerous situations when an enraged intoxicated Maori or other has exited their vehicle desperate for a fight. They drive dangerous shit box cars without insurance or licences and some would seem to have nothing but the intention to kill on the road.
    My point being, is that life in NZ means having to come to terms with death and violence but I digress.
    I battled through this depression and managed to save enough to leave NZ again where I lived in London for three years. I had a kiwi girlfriend (she was also half Dutch), and she had saved my life. Together we found focus, we worked and saved and travelled and I had a wonderful three years in London but our Visa’s ran out and it was time to return to NZ. We had significant savings and decided to try out Auckland. The taste of big city life still sitting on the pallet and my miserable experiences in NZ a distant memory.
    I soon joined the NZ Police… to begin the next chapter of my life.
    To be fair the first few years in the Police was fun and interesting, but it also gave me a whole new insight into life in NZ… So much so that it inspired me to call my mother and thank her for being the most wonderful mother I could have ever hoped for. She and her husband had returned to Australia after they themselves had given up trying to make it in a system designed to make you fail. They had started a small business in this small town and after a few short years they had to declare bankrupcy. They were repeatedly targeted by burglars and thieves and were met with petty backstabbing and dishonesty. My mother was also working in the ministry, she is now a priest and she is the most dedicated and self giving person I have ever known and after constantly being let down and betrayed, they left NZ heartbroken and penniless. After a few short years in Australia, they bounced back, owning a wonderful big house, a number of rental properties and a life full of friendship and joy. All they had to do was leave that shithole country behind.
    In the Police, I worked in Counties Manukau… The most wretched, miserable, impoverished and violent part of New Zealand… This really opened my eyes. I am not so naive to think that other cities in the world don’t have their troublesome areas but they don’t promote themselves as the clean green and safe haven NZ purports itself to be. Add to that that most jobs are found in Auckland and the only affordable area to live in Auckland for unsuspecting migrants is of course, Counties Manukau (CM). CM has a predominantly Maori/Pacific Island population with ever increasing numbers of Asian, Middle Eastern, Indian and South African immigrants. These new comers are sitting ducks for the disproportionate number of criminals living in the area. They specifically target certain ethnic groups thinking they have lots of money (and in relation to them you could say they do), and they take advantage of the fact that some groups distrust the banks so keep their wealth in gold hidden on the property. The Maori and PI population is an overwhelmingly dangerous and violent group of people, particularly the youths who are heavily involved in drugs, gangs and violence… Exacerbated by the methamphetamine pandemic, the violence is reaching horrific levels. In my 8 years of the Police, the last few years in the CIB including the Adult Sexual Assault team, I saw violence and deprivation that caused Post Traumatic sress on a number of occasions. From the top of my head, a young Vietnamese girl, 12 years old raped and repeatedly stabbed whilst she slept in her bed, left to die, a constant stream of domestic violence and rape which is considered a normal way of life. Drunken parties that escalate into riots with police having bottles and bricks thrown at them. Gangs selling Methamphetamine, getting young girls addcited and forcing them into prostitution. Older motorcycle gangs kidnapping girls to put them on the “block”, where they are fed drugs and alcohol and kept in a stupor while they are repeatedly and violently raped by any gang member that should feel so inclined, for as long as a week, just for their entertainment during one of their infamous parties. Drunken idiots driving high powered cars through urban areas and crashing into inocent vehices/houses/pedestrians. I recall attending one accident where a 15 year old boy had been driving a Holden Commodore through a residential street, 150 km/h, the posted speed limit was 30 kp/h as the street was undergoing roadworks. The teenager lost control and crashed into three houses, completely destroying the facade of the third house. He walked away with a small scratch on his nose, however he had killed his girlfriend who was sitting in the back seat. A fence pale had impaled her neck, she was a beautiful young 15 year old girl with a life of promise ahead of her. I had the unenviable duty of informing her parents. They were English immigrants who had moved to NZ six months prior with the hope of giving their children a dream life in NZ. I will never forget the unearthly howl as her mother collapsed to the floor weeping. She then insisted I take her to the crash scene where her daughter was still in the demolished vehicle. She crawled into the back seat, and cradled her dead daughter in her arms and wailed while her father walked up and down the street in total disbelief. He looked at the skid marks left by the vehicle, over 100 meters in length and he asked me how fast the boy had been driving… What happened to the boy you ask? Not once did he show any remorse, he was filthy scum who got away scot free due to his age and went on to continue a life of crime while her broken family returned to the UK totally destroyed. Once again I can continue with another novel about my experiences alone in the NZ police, I haven’t even touched on the squalor these people live in, the welfare state providing homes at tax payers expense for generations of lazy ill educated animals who do nothing more than rut, consume drugs and alcohol, and express their undiagnosed mental illness in forms of gratuitous violence while the children they spawn are forced to live in houses with holes punched through walls, broken windows and shards of glass on the floor vying for real estate amongst used nappies, take away cartons with uneaten food, bone aching cold, dangerous mould, no food in the kitchens, attending school without shoes, jackets, normal things normal people take for granted in life. The poverty and desperation is rife and the system only provides an opportunity for this behaviour to continue in an ever growing cyclical fashion as each generation spawns more and more of these dead beats.
    Once again I digress.
    So after a number of years in the Police, I took the chance to take two years leave without pay and used the opportunity to return to London where I lived for another two years where I met my beautiful girlfriend, a very talented and creative soul. She was a fashion designer from Germany. We fell in love, my leave period had ended and once again I had to return to NZ. Shortly afterward my GF followed me where we excitedly began our new life together.
    If you are still reading this I thank you for your persistence and I promise I am coming to the end of my short Novel!! This leads me to the last five years that I spent in NZ.. This time with my German girlfriend.I returned to my job in the Police and she began searching for a new job in fashion… which in NZ as you can imagine provided very few opportunities but it wasn’t long before she found a job in a small fashion label. She was very shocked at the very small amount they offered her in the way of renumeration considering her European experiene with some of the most famous names in fashion. Regardless, we continued. In the 5 years we were there, we could not make any friends. The only friend we did make was from Holland and she is truly an amazing and supportive friend.
    So let me tell you about the kiwi attitude and their small mindedness when it comes to meeting new people. So now we find ourselves rubbing shoulders with the Ponsonby elite. A bunch of hipster wankers who insisit that NZ is the center of the world… If they had more imagination they would consider it the center of the universe but their little brains fail to see beypnd their back yard. Two-faced people who when face to face, tell you how cool and wonderful you are and how great it is to meet you and then they will suggest to catch up for drinks or party and that we should see more of each other… only to never hear from them again. Ok, so friendship is a two way street you think so maybe the initiative should be yours? You invite these people to your house for a BBQ or a meal and they accept your invitation, and after great expense and effort to make your event special, you will wait hours to discover that these people won’t turn up nor even give you the common courtesy of a call or even text explaining that they can’t make it! Only to bump into these people a year later where they go through the same pantomime again! Oh you are so cool we should catch up blah blah blah. These people are rude, inconsiderate and egocentric. Their jealousy is palpable, their ignorance extreme. My girlfriend found herself being used as a general dogs body, paid a pittance and expected to do everything but what was provided in her job contract. Her boss was a pathetic man-child who had absolutely no talent whatsoever yet he was very capable of accepting all the praise for my girlfriends amazing work. After three years of use and abuse she mustered the courage to leave this dismal label and was quickly snapped up by another only to find that she was surrounded by another bunch of lazy talentless glory hogs. The then married couple who owned the label were the total personification of dysfuctional. She was a hormonal psycho partial to getting drunk at work and attacking her staff, biting one of her staff in a drunken rage during one disagreement, he was a 45 year old child who dressed as a little homie complete with baseball cap and board shorts who would run around hitting male staff in the balls and causing utter chaos… they often brought their children to use staff as defacto babysitters and these children were obnoxious, destructive chaotic spoiled brats. (not to mention their disgusting mutts that shit all over the place) My GF was really regretting her decision to join me in Retardicon 6…
    At the same time I found myself in a horrible situation. The NZ police found itself in a crime epidemic and the people were getting fed up. Helen Clark announced her panacea.. to introduce 300 new cops on the streets of South Auckland. Rather than paying a decent wage in an effort to retain experienced staff, they would merely drop the recruiting standards and employ an influx of incapable idiots, often with criminal connections or dubious character. I found myself surrounded by immature 18 year olds or individuals with questionable motives and I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. Methamphatmine was being stolen from evidence rooms, complaints were being made about cops making sexual advances on young victims whilst on the job or after hours, money was being stolen from locker rooms, cops were aranging to buy stolen cars after hours to sell to wreckers… I was in total disillusionment. I decided to join the CIB and get involved in a more rewarding area of crime fighting only to find myself the victim of the most extreme bullying I have ever suffered, ironically from a woman. I was used to bullies in the Police, there is a lot of Macho testosterone fueled bullshit and one upmanship that you learn to deal with, but this was on another level.
    She was my Detective Sergeant, a woman in her late forties, desperately single, desperately incompetent and convinced that every man in the office wanted her. She had mood swings that were unpredictable and dangerous. Numerous complaints had been made from many staff members about this woman, ranging from racism, homophobia to just downright unreasonable bullying. She was a Sergeant at the Royal New Zealand Police college and she had been kicked out for having sex with one of her recruits. She was the most emotionally unstable person I have ever met and unfortunately she had set her sights on me. I was the new kid on the block and I believe she wanted to break me. I would walk in the office and be met with a barage of insults, accusing me of one thing or another with wild eyes and even wilder gesticulation, I would stand there and take the abuse in front of my colleagues who would drop their heads in an effort to avoid her attention. I would return to my desk and within minutes she would come and sit on my desk, practically on my lap, laughing and giggling telling me how drunk she got the night prior, flicking and playing with the peroxide mop of straw she would call hair. She would wear tight satin pants that would show off every cullulite dimple in her collosal ass and a blouse with plunging neckline, her grotesque leathery udders bulging which she took great pleasure in dangling in front of your face. Complaints had been made about her before I joined the team and within the first week of joining, I had to attend a meeting with my team mates where a detective inspector made it quite clear that he had no intention of doing anything about the complaints and that we were to just suck it up and not make any further complaints which I am sure is against any workplace manuel found anywhere in the world. After suffering constant psychological abuse, I was approached by a number of other Detective Sergeants who had assured me that they had personally witnessed the way she treated me and that they would offer their support in any way possible. She went on a weeks leave and my team mates held a meeting where they decided to enter a report of no confidence and bouyed by the new found support I was recieving, I decided to enter a personal statement to highlight what I was going through personally. Oh boy did the shit hit the fan. By this stage I had decided to leave the Police and didn’t care anymore so I was going to take this as far as I could. What a total waste of time and energy. She was removed from the team only to return a year later, whereas all of my team mates left to join the Police in Ausrallia. I had been betrayed and let down, I was advised to see a Police psychiatrist and he was a total joke. He had no skill, empathy or interest in what he did and any advice given was pathetic at best. The only saving grace I had was knowing that I was leaving not only the Police but NZ as well where I vowed never to return as well as my GF. We hate New Zealand, plain and simple. Never have we been met with such horrible, dihonest, devious, decietful, lazy people.
    We are proud clean intelligent people, artistic, creative and we take pride in our home yet in the five years we lived there, we got kicked out by the only two tenancies we occupied. The first, we lived in a little cottage close to the sea. The house was grossly overpriced and had poor ammenities yet I chose this place because of its romantic location and I thought it would be a perect wee love nest for my girlfriends arrival. My girlfriend decided to paint a couple of feature walls in the sea of boring beige, a lovely slate grey in the lounge room, and an Aubergine in the bedroom, we also had a lovely modern chrome and crystal chandelier installed in the dining room. A short time later the waste disposal unit broke down. I informed the landlord and he duly replaced it, leaving the bill with me on my dining table. I contacted him and told him that I shouldn’t be expected to pay for what was the chattels. The very next day we were contacted by the real estate agent giving us an eviction notice, the reason being we had painted two walls and had the chandelier installed without his permission. We took him to the Tenancy tribunal and thats where he really showed his true colours. He asked for thousands of dollars in damages including reimbursement for the venetian blinds I had thrown away. Whilst in the tribunal I left him red faced when I showed him the reciept for the blinds which I had bought… he was claiming hundreds of dollars for something that wasn’t his!!! And despite me showing without doubt that he was lying before the court, the Justice of the Peace found in his favour although we didn’t have to pay for the ridiculous amount he was claiming, only $500 to cover the cost of repainting the two walls. We would have won had we refused to leave the property yet we moved within a week solely out of pure insult and indignation. This decision basically rendered any complaint we made to the tribunal as null and void however there was no way we were going to give this evil horrible decietful piece of shit any penny more of our hard earned money.
    The second issue with our next tenancy happened after we moved into the next home. We loved this place, it was a small apartment situated at the back of a large property shared by our new landlords. They were a married couple with a young daughter and two cats. We lived there for four years, our schedules and lifestyles meant we didn’t see our ladlords often but when we did it was always friendly and cordial. The one bedroom flat cost $360 a week, a ridiculaous amount to pay for such small accomodation but it was nestled in the bush and truly was an idyllic paradise. We shared gifts and compliments, where we were often told that how happy the landlords were that they had taken us as tenants and how cool and wonderful we were. Their cats loved us as well, a little too much, and they ended up adopting us as their own. They slept with us every night and spent every waking moment with us. One day I was talking to the woman and discussing how we were coming to the end of our lives in NZ and that I would really miss the house but even more so how much I would miss the cats as we had truly fallen in love with them. They had become our children when the woman cheerfully remarked, “well you can keep them if you like! They clearly love you more than us!” I was flabergasted and overcome with joy, I called my girlfriend at work and shared the good news, we were both crying with joy. Now we could really look forward to leaving NZ because the one thing emotionally tying us there was actually allowed to come with us! We couldn’t have been happier. Then, two months later I bumped into the woman. We had just come back from two weeks holiday… “Sorry” she says, “but while you were on holiday we got really attached to the cats again and we want to keep them…”
    My heart broke. “Please don’t be dissappointed” she says in a pathetically deprecative way. All I said in response was, and in a very calm and reasonable manner “it’s OK, I understand, I just wish you had never offered them in the first place because now I have to tell my GF that we can’t keep them and she will be heartbroken”. The womans face twisted in guilt and she walked away.
    A week later we recieved a one line email informing us that we were being evicted… We couldn’t believe it! We had three months left to live in NZ and this is what they do to us. I called her on the phone and asked what was wrong, she claimed a load of bullshit how they were uncomfortable with us living there and that they needed the space for some bullshit reason. I pleaded to let us stay for the last three months to which she agreed but only after bumpin the rent up to $400 a week. But before they had even agreed to let us stay we had decided to leave regardless. This was the final insult, the last knife in the back and the absolute epitome of everything that is wrong with NZ.
    I have never met a bigger bunch of horrible, souless, classless, rude, selfish and decietful people in my life. There are very very few exceptions, in my count, four genuine kiwis who do not represent these qualities, otherwise the country is a shithole full of horrid horrid people.
    There are no redeeming qualities that make NZ an attractive place to live. The cost of living is ridiculously high, our one bedroom studio appartment cost $360 a week, power in winter cost $350 a month, groceries for a young couple for a week cost between $200 to $300 although we enjoyed the finer things in life. Windows were constantly covered in condensation, resulting in mouldy window seals and carpets, our clothes would get mouldy and smelly in the wardrobe, we were constantly cleaning.
    People ask why I left NZ and remark how beautiful it is… Bullshit. Ok a few nice beaches here and there if you are prepared to drive forever, otherwise a crowded Auckland beach will always be over run with Maori’s and Pacific Islanders who stake their clames and spend the entire weekend entrenched, intimidating normal people, looking for fights, smashing glass, stealing and mugging and harrassing the young girls. Mountains, yeah guess what, Europe has some of the most beautiful alpine regions in the world. I now live in Bavaria and have absolutely no problem finding places that equal if not exceed NZ in natural beauty, the only difference is in Europe you will be subject to culture, wonderful food, gorgeous architecture, genuinely friendly people, outstanding natural beauty. NZ Pure? NZ Pure bullshit!! The country is being raped and pillaged by huge corporations with no sense of social or environmental responsibility. Fracking, open strip mining, drilling for oil and gas, coal burning power stations, effluent and fertiliser run-off from the dairy industry and farming and other industries resulting in incredibly polluted waterways! Guess again if you think you could take a refreshing gulp of water from that pretty stream! Nearly all of NZ’s lowland waterways are polluted, some so much so you can’t even swim in them let alone drink… And so I believe all the highland waterways contain at the very least Giardia, so you cant even drink the water from alpine streams. Go to any city and the rivers and streams will be choked with shopping trolley’s, car batteries and car tyres and general filth and waste. The natural beauty that we as civilised people love, appreciate and cherish is wasted and abused by these people. They don’t care. They really don’t. The beautiful landscape? Most of the countryside consists of farmland that has been cleared of all native flora to make way for grass to feed cows and sheep. When you do find forest, don’t be surprised to find illegal dumping sites where people are too cheap or too lazy to deal with their waste responsibly, and rather than have the crap removed immediately, people will see it and decide fuck it and add their own crap. New Zealand is a paradox, there is a self defeatist attitude coupled with a refusal to accept that there can be a better way to do things or a better way to live life. It is like they are addicted to misery, and misery loves company so if they aren’t happy, they will do everything in their power to make sure you too share in their misery yet they will try and convince you they are living in Eutopia. They are pathetic and immature and relish childish gossip and small talk. Don’t ever think you will get a rewarding conversation from a kiwi and if you use words with more than one syllabel you will be met immediately with distrust and skepticim.
    Let me finish off with summing up my last year. I have been living in Germany and I have never been happier. I have made more friends in the past year than all of the years combined living in NZ. The German people are fantastic, welcoming, open and honest as the day is long. They don’t take bullshit and if they like you they will let you know. If they say to you, “we should go out for a drink”, you can put money down they will contact you before the week is through inviting you to something. They are fun loving people who enjoy a drink yet you will not see the sullen violence that accompanies Kiwi’s and their parties. German people are intelligent and you will never find the malicious sarcasm that accompanies Kiwi’s. They think that by making friends you have to insult people as much as possible and if they can “handle it” then they are worth their time. This sarcasm stems I believe from a deep rooted insecurity and a need to prove themselves to other people, which ends up reulting in a never ending pissing contest which is totally exhausting.
    So in summary, NZ is a total shithole isolated in the arse end of the world. The people are miserable, many are subuman. The government and everyone else panders to the Maori’s in an attempt to redeem themselves for any percieved wrong doing during the colonial times yet they are a despicable race. Dirty, lazy and their concept of ownership is laughable… Basically if you’ve left your front door unlocked… actually forget that, you could lock your house up like Fort Knox and they will still find a way to run off with your prize possessions, only to be cooed by the Justice system and set free straight back into the community they terrorise. It’s been this way ever since the treaty of Waitangi, selling the same land multiple times to different buyers, murdering at will, selling their own women into prostitution and slavery and 200 years later they are still just as savage. They will gouge you at every opportunity, they sell out their own culture yet in the same breath accuse Europeans as being uncultured. It is a country of double standards and little to no opportunity. Injustice is rife, a violent muderer could get as little as seven years in Jail, out in 5. A young Maori broke into a campground in Tauranga and got into a camper of a Belgian couple with a small child. He raped this five year old girl while her parents were only meters away, he didn’t even get a custodial sentence however people all over NZ sent the poor family mountains of stuffed toys and a pittance in cash with the sentiment that please don’t think we are all like this filthy little rapist! If you are considering moving to NZ, DON’T…. I implore you, it will be the worst decision you could ever make and to those who would reply otherwise, I would humbly suggest that you are just trying to convince yourself because you have no other option. To do so would drive you insane. NZ has an uncanny way of trapping people, you get there, you get bled dry and then you are too impoverished to leave. I was fotuntate in that I could escape. Why then do you ask did I return so many times? I really really tried to give NZ a chance. Really!! I am a positive person with a positive outlook with a love of Nature… I kept looking for excuses to be wrong and to give it another chance. Never again will I ever set foot in that country. I will never have a good thing to say. If you want to live there, more fool you, if you want to go there on holiday, you take your life in your own hands and run a very serious chance of being targeted by a filthy violent criminal.
    If you must insist on spending a fortune on travelling to the other side of the world to experience nature and another culture, please visit Australia, it has everything NZ has and a million times more, the Aboriginal culture is far more interesting and unique and the people are friendly.
    Thank you for reading and I hope this enlightened you.

    • Thanks for sharing your experience, most of the people reading this will find similarities and relate to your experiences, unfortunately it’s due toe the set of thugs that are largely same in this pond.

      I have realized the so called “landlords” show their different sides as soon as they realize you would want to move to other property, country or simply vacating the property for some other reason. One of our ex-landlord was similar scumbag who despite having 3 or 4 large properties acted in such a petty way which was beyond our belief. During the final clean up we asked him to bring over his preferred cleaners and we would just handover whatever the invoice was for such a cleaning (considering we would not have to go to/fro at the last moment), the landlord had the audacity to flip a handcrafted rug which was worth over $200 and when questioned he claimed it was never there. We had called the landlord which the cleaning was underway to which he said he kept it on a side and all he showed was some useless piece of shit, papers, door mats etc which we wanted to throw anyway. We lived in 2 of his properties for 5 years and realized that he was only interested for people who would pay for his mortgage (and inherited properties).

      On the road – I totally relate to your sharing of these road warriors. These bunch of nincompoops will do anything to even overtake/undertake 0.5 cm of a vehicle without thinking the amount of risk they put other drivers in. Since last couple of years I have seen another trend in driving here, when there is no scope of overtaking or undertaking these idiots will speed up towards 5 vehicles in front of you and end up in front – seriously that’s a great achievement!

      Overtaking & Breaking – There are so many drivers which I come across everyday that will switch lanes to avoid applying brakes and they don’t mind if people behind them have to apply brakes.

      Indicators – most of the drivers here have not heard or read about the 3 second rule. They will hardly show half a second of indication and switch lanes

      Rotten cars – After a recent trip to Dubai I realized the junk that’s on NZ roads is actually J.U.N.K defined. I failed to see the Japanese junk which people still drive on NZ roads, seriously these cars will fit in a museum and not on a road.

      Attitude – Driving after Otahuhu (towards south) gives me jitters with the fatsos overtaking and undertaking from wherever they can make space.

      Surprised am I? (about the growing road fatalities). No I’m not, innocent fellow drivers will be suffering till these sick morons are on the road legally causing serious road crashes.

      Switch on the TV news and see for yourself, at least half the news is about how many people are killed, how many are injured, who got punched, whose murder trial is underway, accidents (basically negative news), some monkey illegally gets on a kauri tree & gets free media coverage for 2 weeks. I hardly find 10% of the news which covers a innovation, creativity, good news in general or useful achievement – unless its not happening in this la la land (and no where in the world)

    • thank you for your story, it really touched our heart and we respect you for what you went through and got out of it. RESPECT

  32. A warning to tradies and construction workers thinking of moving to NZ.
    We moved to Christchurch 2 years ago on sponsored visas to help with the rebuild. I left much better paid work in the UK partially out of desperation, having seen the mess the UK has become – or should I say, with hindsight, the mess I thought it had become.
    So I get a job offer in the UK from the NZ company, and the company said “We have a sister company that does immigration forms so you don’t have to worry about it, for a fee of $1600 each ($3200 for me and my wife)”. That isn’t even including the actual fee for the visa or health checks. I declined and downloaded the visa application expecting it to be an ordeal for a layman. It took less than 15 minutes to complete them, add a police check, 2 passport photos and a medical check and we just saved a small fortune. Not one to listen to alarm bells, I head off to Christchurch.
    We arrived at the airport expecting to be met by the woman my employer had set us up to live with for the first 2 weeks. She didn’t turn up, so we got a taxi to her house, where we were greeted by a miserable older woman with these words “We are going in the car to the cash machine. You aren’t moving in or getting a key until I have 2 weeks rent up front”. We’ve since realised that this is normal “kiwi” etiquette.
    I started work on multimillion Dollar project. The site manager was under 30 years of age. I’ve never seen a site manager that young; his assistant site manager was also under 30. Okay, they must be mavericks that have excelled from carpenters to site managers ‘double-quick’. It turned out they were local “kiwis”, and yes, they were completely incompetent, but they have that leadership trait that is highly sought after in NZ: blind rage and an ability to scream in migrant workers faces, knowing that anyone that throws a punch, will be on the first flight home.
    Two years into this experience and I can confirm that they are all like this. They can’t handle pressure, and have a rigid thinking whereby they assume NZ is a world leader in construction and training construction workers, and they will explode with rage if any of their methods are questioned.
    The building standards and building techniques/ methods are shocking. They are not behind Europe in terms of years, as Europe has never had such poor building practices. They are lazy people that have no pride in making quality buildings, with quality methods and materials. The amount of times I’ve worked with “kiwis” that say “This isn’t England, we do it this way here”, whilst doing something totally inefficient, often going 40% over budget on spoiled materials. But it doesn’t matter, as the workforce is fully unionised and doesn’t really care. There is no competition from better skilled foreign workers as it is a rigged against them. There is no competition from superior product manufacturers as a certain company has a national monopoly, and there is no necessity to develop better houses/ buildings as “kiwis” don’t think there is anything better than they have now.
    You cannot make it in this country, unless you give up what is distinctive to your culture and become like them, which means never talking about politics or substantial things, and to merely engage in the most banal, crass/ crude ‘banter’, and to always slavishly pander to their nauseating nationalistic insecurities. Nothing says one is deeply insecure and without a healthy cultural identity quite like “kiwis” having to mention their home countries name in every single sentence.
    The kiwis are such dullards with so little to say, it does make one wonder if this is the model society the ruling class want. Perfectly docile, impulsive, short-sighted, uncultured and without any understanding of the world outside of their perspective, which is “What do I get out of it?”
    The entire economy operates as a massive price-gouging system, with 30% added to everything imported, and everything is imported as they do not make anything other than “milk solids”. I’m sure the clothing and goods they import come from Chinese factories where the rejected items, too inferior in quality for the North American and European markets, are just dumped onto NZ. Though I cannot understand who designs them, as it appears they have been in storage for 25 years. The only clothes they sell are grunge or (c)rap music clothing.
    The people are so dishonest that online stores do not list prices, so when you phone them to enquire about prices, they can make a price up depending on whether you are a local. Everyone is dishonest and two faced. But they are like those stupid people that are manipulative and they think you don’t see it – like children lying to adults. If you are from any of the English speaking countries, don’t be fooled, NZ is not like your culture. It is the gutter of the English speaking world.
    Don’t be fooled by the propaganda. The countryside really isn’t that great. The Lord of the Rings was initially going to be filmed in the Scottish Highlands, but the Highlands Council rejected the application, so they ended up in NZ, even though it is a poor imitation of Scotland’s Highlands, not to mention the French Alps or US/Canadian Rockies, which are leagues above.
    If you are from Europe, you’ll go into the countryside and in the middle of nowhere, and you’ll invariably stumble upon some countryside restaurant or pub. There is nothing like that here. The countryside is just a barren wasteland. It only has one advantage over North America or Europe, and that is as a bolt hole in a nuclear war.
    I have to add the obligatory driving complaint. If you drive at the speed limit, someone will tailgate you. If you overtake a slow driver on a 2 or 3 lane road, they will get angry and chase you, then overtake, and every single time you are at traffic lights, someone will rally ahead when it goes green. They will jump out at t-junctions as if they are in competition with people, and make the craziest u-turns. They think the roads are some kind of dog-eat-dog world of survival where blind aggression wins. They are the most insecure people I’ve seen, but they try and hide it by being loud, crass and aggressive, in everything they do.
    By the way, single lads, do not come here. The local women are really ugly – seriously they are naturally ugly. They are definitely the most unattractive of all the European types, and they are completely down with the hyper-feminism psychosis, which is basically that they want a male host to prey upon, some stupid, docile beta-male to sap the life and resources out of. It is better to be MGTOW than be victimised by them.
    If you are stupid enough to make the move, given the horror stories on this site, make sure you buy an open dated return ticket as you are going to get cleaned out financially, that much is certain. Just remember, “kiwis” hate you, envy you, want to rip you off, want you to be as poor as they are, and if you complain about anything, they’ll hate you much more. Horrid people.

    I’m out of here asap.

  33. Polish girl moving out – I am so happy!
    First of all, I would like to thank you for creating this website and making such a huge effort to provide people with the real information about this ‘pure’ land! I have been in NZ once before me and my ‘Kiwi’ husband decided to move to NZ from the UK, where I was a successful woman. My first visit was almost, as drastic, as the following 6 months (because that was all I handle), living in NZ. My husband is half Maori, and I am from of course country where we don’t have many majorities or minorities. I wasn’t aware of many things from back of my husband background, but I guess we all getting know each other during the years. So we were together 3 years before he proposed and than we traveled to NZ to pay the visit to his parents. OMG! The thing is that his father didn’t even want us to stay in his house, not mention that the parents were separated and he has all his house to himself. At first I didn’t understand why we are staying in my boyfriend at that time, friends house! That was only beginning. I must admit I loved the mountains and the beaches and the access to the ocean, but when we were visiting the people, it was so strong bad experience I was just crying in the bed, as I knew I will have to hurt someone if I want to be myself. I need to speak about my impressions. So we visited mother which was 1 of 17 children, the family was living in very basic houses, plus some of them which were living in Auckland were so poor that I was just almost having problem with my face when I saw: 10 people in two boxes (home) from wood, plus mothers with their beers and cigarette while the children around or on their hands, this was all appealing the home and the behavior. I must say, I am average looking girl but I had this kind of impression from them – I don’t know why – woman looks on my like they would want to say, you stupid bimbo!!! hahaha and it was me who was feeling intimidated because I have some kind of empathy. This very much gave me a mental shock, I would be than talking to my boyfriend at that time, that I am really sorry but I didn’t have the best impression on the all NZ. I am actually glad I did have the fast acknowledge of the culture there. This probably contributed to my quick decisions after our movement there. Anyway, each time I was trying to go back to the way I was feeling about the place, we would be arguing and he would called me racist and superficial. I should leave back then, but I was feeling guilty for maybe my way of perception. I must admit I believe that in a healthy body lives healthy spirit, and I had so bad impression of those all people, moreover there were all fat (sorry to be so precise). They also almost all had cars and they would be driving for a bread five meters to some local shops…anyway. After three months from this visit he proposed to me and I seriously had a big hart to this person. I see in people good sides and I do believe in people good sides, so I did decided that why not, we were happy back in the UK. I must point out here, that being in the UK I was on a higher wage as I have an engineering background and I am highly qualified, so I have never been dependent on him in terms of finance. We got married and he started pushing to going back to NZ. I must admit I had a mix feelings. Anyway I like taking a challenge so I said to myself if I wont try I wont ever know. I invested in all the transfer, all the visa and papers which probably all cost me around 1500 pounds, but this was only my beginning of spending money. Thanks God I had so much savings. Once we arrived to this shit land, it appears that we will leave in the camping as we didn’t have any history record of renting in NZ and we didn’t have a job – yet. I got to know in the meantime that mother of my husband had some financial problems and he himself did not paid his loan from the University, and it came to me that he has around 64000$ debit and owns this to the gov hahah WTF!!!!! Next it appears that there is no jobs in NZ specially for a white woman with my qualifications and the background and thanks GOD because it made me want to go out of this place even sooner. I was unaware so many things!!! My husband didn’t want to go to Auckland, as he said there are snobs living there, despite the fact I would have probably the best opportunity there, but the worst was that he would force me to work physically because – you should work hard and get any job – what do you expect in NZ. So after three months of working with some criminals and losers which would tell me how their sex life looks like after for example a night work, because we were working night shifts in packhouses, I had enough. I would just talk about this to my husband but he was even more accusative. He told me I am using him and I used him (????) and I am abusing him hahaha. I was so depressed at the end of this six months that I was crying all days, while siting on the internet and looking for a jobs. I had actually few interviews, two of which were in a good companies, but they turned me down. I had also very professional experience where the guy sent me an email that they actually reject my application a minute before my interview, and he did go through this interview with me, only when I left I saw the email from him from an hour before hahaha. The attitude of people, while I thought it can’t be worse than in the UK when you are Polish 😉 it was so bad! I had to escape, I told my husband I am not going to survive like this, he anyway was sorting my food and just yelling at me that I am still not working, as I refused after those three months to go back to this shit work. I had 7 years of University education and 7 of work experience!!! Now I was just nothing. He would not let me go back, he said that I am crazy. When I found you guys I was so so happy. I was on an age of my strength, and believe me I have been through a lot being alone and starting from 300 pounds in the UK few years before. I had many hard situations but I have never felt like in the prison more than in NZ. It was not only my husband attitude, it was very expensive compare to the UK and yes the houses OMG! We were siting in the jackets in the winter in the house! I couldn’t believe this. The houses cost fortune but they are so poor quality, almost like everything there, the ozone layer is another thing, you coming to this called ‘paradise’ for its lifestyle and than you actually can’t get out on the sun without 50′ cram, otherwise you will have cancer probably soon or later. I had also pleasure to talk to the locals at this my work. I heard stories of rape, killing by knife children, prostitutes, gangs I was just amazed for such a small society how often people had those common experience. The funny thing the family violence, it appeared now that my husband mum was molested while she was young ( what a surprise) and it is not the end and his brother is smoking weed everyday hahahaha, Where the hell I came to!!! To be honest I came back to Poland and I feel like in heaven, I am afraid so many people also in my country believe this propaganda created in media about the beautiful country. I want to share the story as this is good we can talk about our experiences, It is good to warn people before they will regret some life changing decision. I would never want to have kids in NZ and moreover I am happy on a way this all happen to me. It at least didn’t last for long. Now I am wondering if marring a white woman as a Maori man is something prestige because I could feel the misalliance in some circus of people. I know my bad experience is related with the person my husband become in NZ, but I am also aware he exactly don’t see nothing wrong with all this society. Once we were on a rugby game and someone said a joke that if the All Blacks will loose there will be a lot of broken jaws tomorrow at work!!!! At the end of those months I was at stage where it was just a simple little step from depression or worse, I knew I had to get out. Thanks God I had a lot of money on my account and I have never shared them with my husband, even though he persist before the arrival. That would have killed me, I would be stuck there and I think I will lost my mind. Thank you so much for this website. It was you who also convinced me in those dark days I am not the one who is crazy!!! This was form of abuse and now I understand that, but it’s not so easy to get out if you are in the middle of the manipulation. God bless.
    Justine

    • I just don’t want to go back to those memories and wrote as quickly as I could to get those bad emotions out, I didn’t edit it and sorry that there are some mistakes in the text 😉

      • I will soon send you the edited version, plus some additional little story, like the car accident I totally forgot about it, that for me was just only a drop in the ocean…

        • Hi, below please see the amended version, and thank you for your patience.

          Polish girl moving out – I am so happy!
          First of all, I would like to thank you for creating this website and making such a huge effort to provide people with the genuine information about this ‘pure’ land! I have been in NZ once before me and my ‘Kiwi’ husband decided to move to NZ from the UK, where I was a successful woman. My first visit was almost, as drastic, as the following 6 months (because that was all I could handle) living in NZ. My husband is a half Maori, and I am from, of course, a country where we don’t have many majorities or minorities. I wasn’t aware of many things from back of my husband’s background, but I guess we all are getting know each other during the years. So we were together 3 years before he proposed to me. Just before that we traveled to NZ to pay the visit to his parents. OMG! The thing is that his father didn’t even want us to stay in his house, not mention that parents were separated and he has his entire house to himself. At first I didn’t understand why we are staying at my boyfriend’s (at that time) friend’s house! That was only the beginning.
          I must admit I loved the mountains and the beaches and the access to the ocean, but when we were visiting the people, I had so strong bad experience I was just crying in the bed, as I knew I will have to hurt someone if I want to be myself. I needed to speak about my impressions. So we visited also the mother which was 1 of 17 children, the family was living in very basic houses, plus some of them, which were living in Auckland were so poor, that I was just almost having problem with my face, when I saw: 10 people in two boxes (homes) from wood, plus mothers with their beers and cigarettes while the children around or on their hands, this was all appealing the homes and the behavior. I must say, I am average looking girl, but I had this kind of impression from them – I don’t know why – woman looks on my like they would want to say, you stupid bimbo!!! The irony is that, it was me who was feeling intimidated because I have some kind of empathy, and I felt sorry for those people somehow. This very much gave me a mental shock, I would be than talking to my boyfriend at that time, that I am really sorry but I didn’t have the best impression on the all NZ. I am actually glad I did have the fast acknowledgement of the culture there. This probably contributed to my quick decisions after our movement there.
          Anyway, each time I was trying to go back to the way I was feeling about the place, we would be arguing and he would called me a racist and superficial. I should leave back then, but I was feeling guilty for maybe my way of perception. I believe that in a healthy body lives healthy spirit, and I had so bad impression of those all people, moreover there were all fat (sorry to be so precise). They also almost all had cars and they would be driving for a bread five meters to some local shops (what I am trying to say here is that they were lazy or extremely lazy plus they don’t appreciate the nature at all)…anyway.
          After three months from this visit he proposed to me and I seriously had a big hart to this person. We spent few nice years together and I loved him. I see in people good sides and I do believe in people in general, so I did decide that why not, we were happy back in the UK. I must point out here, that being in the UK I was on a higher wage, as I have an engineering background and I am highly qualified, so I have never been dependent on him in terms of finance.
          We got married and he started pushing for the idea of going back to NZ. I had a mix feeling. Anyway I like taking challenges, so I said to myself if I won’t try I won’t ever know. I invested in all the transfer, all the visa and papers which probably all cost me around 1500 GBP, but this was only beginning of me spending my money. Thanks God I had so much savings. Once we arrived to this shit land, it appears that we will live in the camping, as we didn’t have any history record of renting in NZ and we didn’t have a job – yet. I got to know in the meantime that mother of my husband had some financial problems and he himself did not pay his loan from the University, and it came to me that he has around 64000$ debit and owns this to the gov WTF!!!!! Next it appears that there are no jobs in NZ especially for a woman with my qualifications and the background and thanks GOD because it made me want to go out of this place even sooner. I was unaware of so many things!!! My husband didn’t want to go to Auckland, as he said there are snobs living there, despite the fact I would have had probably the best opportunity there, but the worst was that he would force me to work physically because – you should work hard and get any job – what do you expect in NZ (when I am talking about this with him today, as I want to take divorce – he is claiming he recommended, not force me). So after three months of working (with some breaks, because picking kiwi fruits depend on the weather) with some criminals and losers which would tell me how their sex life looks like after for example a night work, because we were working night shifts in pack-houses as well, I had enough. I would just talk about this to my husband but he was even more accusative. He told me I am using him and I used him (????) and I am abusing him. I was so depressed at the end of these six months in NZ, that I was crying all days, while sitting on the internet and looking for some jobs.
          I had actually few interviews, two of which were in good companies, but they turned me down. I had also very ‘professional’ experience where the guy sent me an email that they actually rejected my application a minute before my interview, and he did go through this interview with me, only when I left I saw the email from him from an hour before!!!.
          The attitude of people, while I thought it can’t be worse than in the UK when you are Polish 😉 it was so bad (this time not because I am Polish, because most NZ not recognise anything except UK, USA, and Australia or maybe Asia as whole, but because I was stranger!)! I had to escape, I told my husband I am not going to survive like this, and he anyway was sorting my food and just yelling at me that I am still not working, as I refused after those three months to go back to this shit work. I had 7 years of University education and 7 of work experience!!! Now I was just nothing. He would not let me go back; he said that I am crazy (again he is claiming he do not recommended me to go back)!. When I found you guys I was so happy. I was on an age of my strength, and believe me I have been through a lot being alone and starting from 300 GBP in the UK few years before and before that in USA when I was 24. I had many hard situations but I have never felt like in the prison more than in NZ. It was not only my husband attitude; it was everything around me.
          It was very expensive compare to the UK and yes the houses OMG! We were sitting in jackets in the winter in the house! I couldn’t believe this. The houses cost fortune but they are so poor quality, almost like everything there. The ozone layer is another thing, you coming to this called ‘paradise’ for its lifestyle and then you actually can’t get out on the sun without 50′ cream on, otherwise you will have cancer probably soon or later. I had also pleasure to talk to the locals at ‘this’ my work. I heard stories of rape, killing by knife children, prostitutes, and gangs. I was just amazed (read extremely scared) for such a small society, how often people had those common experiences. The funny thing the family violence, it appeared now that my husband mum was molested while she was young (what a surprise) and it is not the end, and his brother is smoking weed everyday!!! Where the hell I came to!!!
          Once I was driving to work it was late around 7pm, I actually wasn’t the driver, but my German friends from the same camping (as except travelers, and mentioned earlier losers and criminals no one else was working this way). We were driving while on a sharp corner (with the speed limit 40), someone pushed us off the road. We were lying on the side, and the car which pushed us off, was converted. We than checked if everyone is alive and get off to confront the idiot. The guy turned out to be drunk and he also was going to the same workplace. The thing was fortunately we took the pictures because he just drove off to work. We called the police and they took the report, but he never suffered any consequences and he was working there ever since, even though you have a HSE statement that it is prohibited to be drunk at work!!! Anyway I guess they are waiting for a killed victim.
          To be honest I came back to Poland and I feel like in heaven, I am afraid so many people also in my country believe this propaganda created in media about the beautiful country. I want to share the story as this is good we can talk about our experiences, it is good to warn people before they will regret some life changing decision. I would never want to have kids in NZ and moreover I am happy on a way this all happened to me. It, at least, didn’t last for long. Now I am wondering if marring a white woman as a Maori man is something prestige because I could feel the misalliance in some circus of people (but I guess they were just curious). I know my bad experience is related with the person my husband becomes in NZ, but I am also aware he exactly doesn’t see anything wrong with all this society. Once we were on a rugby game and someone said a joke that if the All Blacks will lose there will be a lot of broken jaws tomorrow at work!!!! At the end of those months I was at the stage where it was just a simple little step from depression or worse, I knew I had to get out. Thanks God I had a lot of money on my account and I have never shared them with my husband, even though he persist before the arrival. That would have killed me, I would be stuck there and I think I will lose my mind.
          Thank you so much for this website (I am not sure what drives you to create it, but I have an impression that we all shearing something as we want the true to be out there). It was you who also convinced me in those dark days I am not the one who is crazy!!! This was form of abuse and now I understand that, but it’s not so easy to get out if you are in the middle of the manipulation. God bless.
          Justine

    • Great story and a good escape. If you would have had kids there things would have been worst good luck with your future….

      • Thank you, I know I am terrified when I am reading stories when people can’t get out until kids are 16!!! I am just thinking you can maybe somehow try to survive there, but only if you can live in total isolation, from the society too, and with kids it could be so hard, I will be suffering so much I am not even able to imagine this!

    • Thank God you survived. Many white women are duped into marrying those savages and end up in lives of horrific domestic abuse, or worse (a crime stat Maori men proudly lead the world in).

      • I am so happy I am out of NZ, I am so sad for all those who did not make it on time, and for all those who spent there years!!! The thing is that I loved my husband and I have never ever thought people can be so withdrawn and dual personalities at the same time. I know, I want to believe not everyone are like this, but to be honest this place called NZ needs help, really they are degenerate to such a huge level, only special society program for each of them separately could help them. I am sorry for kids born in NZ.

  34. I’ve only been here for four months and I’m already having some very serious second thoughts about having accepted a full-ride scholarship to be here from California. The first thing I noticed was how bad the drivers are. Pedestrians, beware! Seriously, what is wrong with these people!?

    The other thing is that prices for everything is ridiculous. They even charge for condiments, lol. I have never experienced such a miserly culture in my entire life and I have traveled all over the world. As for etiquette, there is none – these people are down right rude and have no culture or sophistication whatsoever. The people seem green with envy when they find out that you are American and though they feign a desire for diversity, the people I have met are racists, bigots and xenophobes – and I’m white! It’s all for show – feel good sound bytes.

    Ever aspect of life here is half-baked. Mediocrity is accepted as quality. A premium price is charged for substandard work and products.

    Kiwis are proud of their All Blacks, and quick to judge the U.S. on its gun violence and crime. However, they run around listening to our music, watching our films and television programs, and basically try to be American. To be sure, they are not and will never be like Americans. It’s a totally different culture in New Zealand where quality is a foreign concept, achievement is scorned; particularly, academic achievement, price gouging is the norm, buyer beware (especially automobiles) is the legal framework, and slum lords are allowed to rent out dangerous and unhealthy houses that would be condemned in California.

    The only redeeming quality here is the beauty of the environment but they are destroying that too by polluting their rivers. Litter is everywhere in Christchurch and they couldn’t be bothered to get off their lazy backsides and pull the litter from the rivers and creeks. These people are just about the laziest slobs I have ever seen! I cannot wait to be finished here and get back to civilization. I’ll risk the gun violence over this dysfunctional society any day.
    Trying to find a job here is darn near impossible. I’ve applied for dozens of jobs and received one rejection letter after another. I really do feel that there is an underlying dislike for Americans here and I believe it is due to envy and the tallest poppy syndrome others have alluded to. Kiwis, for the most part, seem petty, immature, and lack any appreciation for innovation, quality, or progress so it seems. They are happy living in squalor and in using duct tape as a method to repair just about everything. It’s not resourceful, it’s just plain laziness and an acceptance of mediocrity. I don’t think anything will change this hillbilly type culture.

    • I so agree…. Mediocrity…no work ethics or pride in any of their trades…It does not matter in what job I am, I always want to give my best and deliver high quality, just because I am proud of what I am doing. And this is not because I am German, I have worked together with many different nationalities from Thai to Brasilian and there are work ethics everywhere on this planet. Look at a proud Italian cook, he would never sell his soul for using second grade ingredients. In NZ it is the opposite…just get the job done as fast and cheap as you can, no matter how, and never, ever think twice! And whenever someone comes and is questioning a kiwi what they are doing the answer is: Why do you live here if you don’t like it? Go home where you came from! What a great place to live….

  35. I moved here 16 years ago from California. At that time I was 49 years old and getting married to a New Zealander and buying a rural home in the south island. I was and still am a professional artist and writer.
    I am glad I moved here but am also very disappointed in much that I was surprised about starting with the political arena. Politics here is bleak and not inspiring and partially corrupt with unhealthy connections with many mega-corporations wanted to use and abuse our resources. Rural farmers are not as friendly as I would have hoped with a new dual citizen especially one from the states. Class status and racism and poverty and suicide high rates are also high and disappointing as well as the clean green image that is a fallacy for the most part. I did not experience as much racism in Hawaii as I have here from many Maoris. I never liked to be called pakeha and do not like that term at all. Health care here is mediocre and much better if you have insurance. Dentists here are a major rip off and only a few charge fair prices and offer quality work.
    If you are a vet, do not count on this govt. as their priorities are elsewhere like military spending etc.

    It is different for those migrants that move to the country vs. the cities, I believe. You have more options meeting more open minded and educated people culturally in the city but in the country, the farmer mentality leaves much to be desired and was unwelcoming to us and still is. They seem to tolerate us rather than welcome us into the community. We are slowly loosing our beach access and that is heartbreaking.
    The food and utilities pricing are way too high here and unfair and I believe that the people in NZ are being taken advantage in these areas. They send the top quality products over seas and sell us the seconds for the most part. The price of lamb and fish is beyond the reach of most and we do without most of the time.
    The govt. is very out of touch with the people of this country.

    The thing that bothers us most is the false image that is being sent out into the world of NZ being so friendly and clean and green. Many people here are not friendly and most rivers are so dirty that they can not be used for swimming. Drivers here are often insensitive and aggressive and there seems to be an underlying anger and depression in many people here. I would not recommend NZ to migrants now after being here this long and in many ways, I wish we had not decided to settle here. There are many more disappointments here than either of us expected but living in the country has been very good in some ways for us and our lifestyle. I guess there really is two sides to every coin. The empty beaches here in the south island and the bird life are a few our special treasures.

  36. Check out this “quality” reporting. There’s a link to the report on that page but it’s the comments you need to see. Mind-boggling.

  37. I just returned to the us after 9 years in NZ and despite the problems the US has, it still offers better opportunity than NZ will ever have. So the deal is I grew up in what is now Silicon Valley. After my wife died I decided to quit the rat race and move to NZ where the promise of better work/life balance a more laid back approach to life and the beauty were a real draw. I found a job in biotech and was made an offer. So the process to migrate began. I should have known from the very start when my case officer screwed up my application that this attitude was endemic in NZ. Bottom line is don’t drink the NZ 100% pure kool-aid. NZ does a great job of marketing, but there is little substance to what is there.

    When I arrived it was clear from the beginning that there is a habit of new people going to NZ full of promise, ideas, energy and such. But after a few months of hitting brick walls, people saying “go back where you came from, being robbed and generally finding the cost of living to be much higher than the government sites would have you believe, the blom was already of the rose.

    That’s okay, I have lived in many states in the US and in countries, so I am no stranger to adaptation. But what I did find was gross racism, nepotism, an attitude of “we don’t care” and having time off is more important than working. Unfortunately I didn’t learn that until I started a biotech company and couldn’t find talent, and the “talent” I did find was under qualified and not willing to work very hard. On top of that the investors I had, farmers and property developers, were expecting to get returns like they had with farms and housing. To top it of the government gave us a grant, but applied compliance terms that were unprecedented. It is no wonder there is no biotechnology in NZ (Sorry, that’s not true. they consider new forms of grass and breeds of cows and sheep to be biotechnology! What a joke!) All the talent we did find was imported from overseas and the resentment of the locals was palpable.

    so now I have acquired the rights to the technology I had in New Zealand and brought it home to the US where the talent, resources and capital are literally falling at my feet! But wait, now my former company is not honoring my license, so what am I to do? Sue? Yeah, right. As others have posted the NZ courts are more like a criminal day-care system. After being burglarized twice, robbed three times and my son being mugged I found little to no solace with the police or courts. So I would rather live in the US where criminals are actually held to account, rther than NZ where crime is merely a way of life.

    When I was recently asked what I missed about NZ, it came down to one thing: the scenery and being able to be in the country after a ew minutes drive. I don’t miss the attitudes of (most) Kiwis, I don’t miss the high cost of living, I don’t miss the BS of “clean and green,” I don’t miss the horrible food, and I don’t miss the fact that Air New Zealand has a monopoly on air travel and will cancel you flight at a moments notice and not give a toss. As a business owner there are many other things that after 9 years I won’t miss. Lazy workers, high cost of materials, clueless investors who only want quick returns, difficult working conditions imposed by “partners” the previously mentioned lack of qualified talent, etc, etc.

    Oh and to those of you who are thinking of getting an education in NZ, the educational system is also horrible. For example, my daughter, who attended a high school in the US ranked in the top 1% was told she was not qualified to graduate because she didn’t have all the UK and Maori historical BS. This despite scoring very high on her SATs. The solution? An online GED that allowed her to get into a top US University. To top that of, the university my labs are at ofers a “Biotechnoloby” degree they proudly tout as the first “named Biotechnology degree in the world” Yeah? So what, when you idea of biotechnology is brewing beer! The “biotech engineers” I hired had never even seen a bioreactor. The university system is merely a Ponzi scheme by the government to indebt students through student loans for degrees no one gives a toss about because the degrees are useless. This is why most University professors are home grown. All the good Kiwi professors I have worked with are overseas at real universities.

    So farewell NZ. Nice to visit, will never live there again.

    • @Tracy: I am sorry to hear about your experiences, as predictable as they might have been. I had the misfortune to have spent three years in Retardicon 6. I can relate to the mendacity of the locals and the terror and jealousy they experience when encountering foreigners with far superior capabilities.

      I am not living in Switzerland surrounded by far more competent, intelligent, and welcoming people. There is nothing in New Zealand that justifies the stultifying experience of having to live there.

      I wish you good luck.

        • A British fellow that wrote a Migrant Tale about living in New Zealand titled “Escape from Retardicon 6” coined it and I now refer to New Zealand as Retardicon 6.

  38. I grew up in New Zealand as the child of two people who immigrated here when I was only a toddler, I’ve lived in different areas and my experience has been pretty consistently negative. I haven’t seen a lot of stories from that perspective so I wanted to share mine.

    I was born in Scotland, prior to moving my parents had spent some time living in South Africa before moving back to Scotland and then they decided to move to NZ as they had heard that it was a good place to raise kids and they had recently had a lottery win. Moving here used most of that win and they were never well off in the first place.

    Upon arrival, they stayed in the North Island, somewhere near Orewa. While living there they felt very excluded, in general having children will help you to connect with other parents, but my parents never got that, they instantly felt as though they were outsiders. At first they made a big effort to do things the “kiwi way”, my Dad prefers football to rugby, but watched it all the same to try to fit in with the nation’s unhealthy obsession with the sport (which is for many people a way to disguise their racism as “competitive spirit”), both parents were working and attended their work parties, and they would act in a way that they hoped would allow them to gain some sort of network. They went on like that for a long time but were never accepted because at the end of the day people still saw them as the foreigners who spoke funny. It didn’t matter where they were living either because we’ve tried a few places and it’s always been the same.

    Before I started primary school, we moved to the South Island, more specifically the Dunedin area. Both of my parents continued to work although getting a job here was harder for my Mum as she was unable to transfer or be referred on like my Dad did because she was just a cook in a local McDonalds when we lived up north. Dad was working at the local Fisher and Paekel factory. Now, I feel I should mention that in the UK and South Africa my Dad had trained and worked as an electrical engineer, but his certificate wasn’t accepted as relevant here and due to the cost of studying, he has had to work in factories ever since which meant he was more or less taking a double pay cut. He had had several jobs in between but they were either unsuitable for a family man or the place would shut down or pay people off. He worked there for many years and even got my mum in there, we were scrimping and scraping to get by but it was better than nothing. As another article has said, the making do attitude is not a choice.

    At the same time I started school and it was hellish. When I was five years old I had a Scottish accent like my parents, people don’t even TRY to understand, they hear the accent and stop listening, I know for a fact that this is worse if you aren’t white, I’ve seen it happen on an almost daily basis. I was bullied right from the start they told me to go back to Scotland and found a million other things to pick on me about. One kid even practiced his wrestling moves on me, but the kids were never punished and I was merely told to harden up, they literally teach “sticks and stones etc” as part of the curriculum rather that don’t bully. It got so bad that after the first couple of years my parents had to move me from one school to another. This school wasn’t much better, but compared to what would follow it was paradise. I still didn’t have any friends even though I had began mimicking the NZ accent when I spoke to Kiwis, to this day I do this but if I’m by myself or talking to someone else with a Scottish accent I default back to my Scottish accent. My parents got us all our citizenship, I think they had been hoping that it might make things a bit easier for me, but kids were still terrible and the one time I told someone to leave me alone, he told his Mum that I was “mean” to him and she came in and told me off, the teachers still did nothing, in fact that one kid bullied me right up until I changed schools for my last year of high school. There’s a lot of the “harden up” “kids will be kids” mentality going on so from day one bullying is rife in schools.

    After primary school I went to intermediate. My intermediate was combined with a high school and it had a bad reputation, but my parents couldn’t afford to send me to a better school because the transport costs would be astronomical and the better schools cost a fortune to attend. It was also at this age that it became apparent that I wasn’t okay. As it turned out I suffer from depression and anxiety and intermediate/high school worsened this exponentially. The students were even worse and at this point the teachers were too afraid of the students to do anything about it, students would do terrible things to me right in front of the teacher and if it was a nice teacher they’d look at me with pity in their eyes and if it wasn’t they’d just walk away, a few times I even got told off instead since I was an easy target. Hearing these things one might assume I was in one of the lower classes with the “naughty kids”, but I wasn’t, I did pretty well in school and was in the advanced classes, this was just the norm. I had issues with self-harm due to my mental illnesses no one knew this for sure as I kept covered at all times, but because I had dyed my hair black to try to stop them picking on me for having a slight ginger tinge to my natural hair this led to them assuming I was what they call “emo”, I had sharp objects thrown at me, and people told me on a daily basis to kill myself. My parents tried to complain once, but they were ignored. Bullying is such a problem that even the teachers get bullied; one teacher I had was Chinese and had a thick accent while also being rather soft spoken a lot of the time and not only the students but also the teachers made racist remarks about him frequently.

    These things have side-effects of course and I was impacted by them, New Zealand’s youth suicide rate is appalling, my parent’s used to comment how it seemed that everyone knew someone who had committed suicide, in fact, my first love, committed suicide at the age of 15. He had been in foster care as his own parents were abusive (the system is very broken and abuse is a big problem here), he had been through a few different places and had been treated poorly, when he attended school he was bullied. He ran away and started dealing drugs (something else that’s absolutely rampant here) and after several months of that he committed suicide. In schools you aren’t taught about these things, and little help is provided to those who are struggling, in fact a lot of the time mental health related issues are treated as a joke or a reason to treat someone like something you’ve trodden in. I had one teacher who told the class that “being different in any way means you’re asking for it” and that’s a disgusting thing to teach youths. If you are struggling and need to see a professional you need a referral from your doctor to a mental health clinic and it takes several months to actually be seen by anyone, then when you do there are very few people available to speak with, so if your counselor is unsuitable (and there are many reasons why they could be) then you basically have to either give up or go through the entire process again. Plus a lot of employers won’t take you if they look at your medical records and see that you have a history of mental illness, even if you are otherwise capable of doing the job, NZ isn’t a great place to come with mental illnesses.

    Another contributing factor is that children are forced to grow up in a hurry because parents are mostly living a bare bones existence and there’s also a weird mentality relating to growing up. For instance, I was helping out at a garage sale and a woman and her child came in, the child couldn’t have been more that 4 years old, most likely younger and they were interested in the soft toys that were for sale, the mother barked at her child that they were too old for those and the child looked really sad. Now these toys weren’t expensive in the first place, but I thought maybe it was a cost thing so I said that if they liked they could pick one soft toy for free, just because they looked as if they were about to cry, then the mother turned on me and told me that the child was far too old and needed to grow up, suffice to say I was disgusted. If a child doesn’t get to be a child, then how can we expect them to be a reasonable teenager or adult? This also contributes to the teen pregnancy rates and binge drinking culture as well as the high prevalence of drug use in youths.

    In my final year of high school I changed schools because I had met someone online and wanted to be with them so I moved up to Northland while my parents moved to Southland and into the Clutha district. The school I attended was a lower decile but the teachers and the education they provided was far better than it had been at the high school I had attended prior to that and I graduated with decent marks. I still had no friends because I was always “other” so other than dating I never got to connect to anyone, to this day my only friend is my partner and this can be rough considering my family is all overseas now. I went through phases where I’d try to fit in but the hyper-competitive attitude meant I just never did because I wasn’t interested in competing and I hated sport and my mental illnesses made me incredibly shy. I tried joining in, I tried acting like I didn’t care, but simply being born elsewhere and having different interests was enough to leave me a total outcast and when living in smaller towns and cities in an already small country joining a club relevant to your interests usually isn’t an option even if you could afford it. I was living in Dargaville and poverty is positively rife there, there were children with no shoes and their clothes were ratty, the school had to start offering breakfast free of charge because so many kids showed up starving in the mornings, John Key can deny it all he wants but I’ve seen degrees of this all over the country, my own family had weeks where we could barely eat because landlords would decide to sell their property and give us a couple of weeks to get out of there unless we could afford to buy it off them ourselves, which we never could, especially since the factory both of my parents were working at closed down while I was attending high school so for a while they both had no job and they basically had to take the first thing they could find.

    I moved back south with my then partner once we graduated to attend university which cost a fortune. During this time my mental health continued to decline since the care I received was inadequate and by the second semester I had to drop out because I couldn’t handle being around people and I couldn’t get out of bed. I was barely eating because I couldn’t afford to since rent in Dunedin is absurd when you consider what you’re actually getting (the rent prices here have worsened since and there are no jobs, most people my age are unemployed until they move elsewhere which costs money of course). So now I have a $22,000 student loan and nothing to show for it. I decided to get a job while I tried to get professional help and moved back in with my parents, we made plans to return to Scotland at this point as none of us could stand it anymore for various reasons. I had been looking for work since my last year of high school since I wanted to work part time in the hopes of being able to reduce the amount I had to borrow for university, it took almost two years across two cities to find a part time job in the bakery of a grocery store. I took on a lot of cover shifts and most weeks I could scrape up full time hours, however, it was very poorly paid (minimum wage) and sometimes they had me working seven day weeks in hours that contradicted my natural sleep cycle. I tolerated it as long as I could, but because I was still waiting for my referral to go through to a counselor I ended up breaking down. I went to the doctor to see if she could help, this doctor consistently runs at least an hour late and seeing her costs a fortune even if she doesn’t actually help, she panicked and sent me to the hospital and I was treated abysmally there, the lady I saw was rude and harsh and made things worse considering she was supposed to be a “mental health crisis team professional”. A lot of doctors and counselors are like this when it comes to mental health and again it comes back to the “harden up” mentality which is inherently dangerous.

    Once I had quit that job I then had to deal with WINZ. If you quit your job there is a 13 week stand down period, during this time you aren’t entitled to any support and they assume that your parents will support you, this was hard on my parents as they were also supporting my brother who was still in high school, but planning on dropping out in the hopes that he’d find a job instead (he did not find a job in the two years that he was looking but within a month of returning to Scotland he found a job, a month later he quit that and within another month he had found another job that was willing to train him up). I applied for hundreds of jobs, most of which I knew were going to make me miserable, but it was a means to an end and I just wanted to get my ticket money to get out of there. In NZ there is a general mentality among employers that if they can get away with not training someone, they will; so as a result, most of the time they won’t hire you unless you have a year of experience in that specific area, this has lead to an ENORMOUS youth unemployment problem, particularly in Dunedin, because they’ll only hire people who are older and have been working already, it can be nigh on impossible to get your foot in the door of a job you don’t want let alone a job that you do. Dunedin is as bad as it is because the PM is intentionally trying to kill it off by moving everything away from here, Dunedin doesn’t even handle its own post. Dunedin is generally a Labour seat due to the high number of students and unemployed people hence the National PM won’t help here at all and is more than willing to actively worsen it.

    Eventually WINZ began paying me a benefit, which was and still is embarrassing to me, it was barely enough to get by on and I was told that if I wanted things to be easier I should get rid of my cat (out of the question entirely because she’s family) because a lot of people view animals differently here, as you might expect this means that there is a big animal abuse and abandonment problem both in terms of livestock and pets. I have had WINZ employees refuse to believe that I have mental health problems and get rude about it, I have been shouted at and called names, they have been terrible and very unhelpful, even though I do what I’m supposed to do and I don’t take advantage of the system (even though doing so would mean I would be able to buy things like fruit).

    I was unemployed for almost 3 years and even now, I’m only working part-time in a job I hate and still having to deal with WINZ because I wouldn’t be able to survive off of my wages alone. My work place could close down in the next few months because the owner is totally inept, this is a trend among a lot of places, the “higher ups” do as little as they possibly can to generate themselves income, so many workplaces are disorganised and barely functioning, not to mention that unions are becoming less and less common so very little protection is afforded to employees of these companies, but you can’t just quit because there are so few opportunities going otherwise. People graduate university and can’t get jobs without going overseas, people with a ton of experience struggle (like my parents did on multiple occasions) and then you have people who are trying to enter the workforce who lack experience and can’t even get into any training because that costs money and volunteer work and internships are a rarity.

    Recently I attempted to return to university, getting into university isn’t the hard part I had that sorted, but Studylink has set things up to make things impossible. My entire family now lives in Scotland, I am the only one here because I need to stay with my partner and I’m willing to sacrifice things for that since love has always been the most important thing for me even if this place makes things very difficult a lot of the time, you would assume that this would mean that Studylink would not consider your parent’s income when deciding what you’re entitled to since your parents can’t support you. I got a letter from my doctor to advise them of this and they said that unless my parents were dead or had officially disowned me (and I’d have to prove it) they would still include my parent’s incomes. That might’ve been okay except they calculate everything before tax and convert directly from pounds to dollars, not allowing for different tax rates or expenses or anything so I wouldn’t be eligible for any of the student allowance at all (that’s the money you don’t have to pay back) which would mean borrowing over $100 a week on top of the existing loan and the rest of what I’d have to borrow to cover tuition and course related costs on a degree that’d take four years to complete meaning I’d owe probably well over $100,000 by the end, and then to make matters worse if you leave the country for over a year and have a student loan that loan begins accruing interest at a ridiculous rate so you basically can’t leave unless you’ll have enough money to pay the interest and the loan itself in order to try to avoid potentially being arrested and deported from wherever you are. The government did this specifically because people were moving overseas with their degrees at too high a rate, but they didn’t then generate jobs for the people who are trapped here to work in to pay off their loan before they’re dead. Before I even got to the point of finding out that no matter what I couldn’t afford to study here, I had to make several trips to the doctor ($45 each) to prove that I dropped out last time due to mental health issues and that therefore it was beyond my control, they didn’t even want to give me a loan at all at first.

    I haven’t been to the dentist since I finished high school when it was free so I have tooth and jaw problems. It is just too expensive to eat, rent a place, pay bills and then go to the dentist. Expenses are shared between two people and our flat is on the cheaper end of the scale, the bath is rusty, there is no insulation or heating, the kitchen isn’t even big enough for one person to cook in because there’s no bench space, the other rooms are also small, however, there are fire alarms and it gets some degree of sun (which will hopefully help keep mold at bay) which is an improvement over a lot of places I’ve stayed. I’d say that 90% of the houses I’ve lived in since my parents moved us here have had damp and mold problems, and we have lived in a lot of different places. I can’t swim so all of the water related activities and boating is lost on me and even if I could most of the waterways are unsafe anyway. One of only two dreams I’ve consistently had since I was a child is to travel and due to how isolated New Zealand is it is hard to get anywhere and the job situation makes it impossible to save to get away at this point anyway. We can’t even go on a weekend trip within the country because if we take days off then we can’t afford to eat. We don’t have a sofa or a TV or anywhere to sit and eat. This is considered average among a lot of our age group unless you’ve had some good luck somewhere. This isn’t something that people choose, this is just the way it is and no one will do anything to change it because a lot of people are afraid of change or progress.

    Having no degree and next to no experience (none in anything that I might not hate working in) means that it’s harder to move overseas and harder to get my existing student loan paid off since it’s impossible to step from this situation into a job that’d allow me to get a job that’d pay enough in relation to the cost of living to also pay down my student loan. For years I have been working toward learning Japanese because I had wanted to move there, but you can’t move there without a really good job within Japan and a four year degree. Things are arranged so that it’s hard to get out of here when you want to because they tie you down with expense after expense and then pile additional financial complications on top of that then tell you that it’s entirely your own fault. You aren’t even offered the comfort of this being a friendly place because it’s harsh, rude, racist, sexist (to literally everyone) and insensitive. Granted, not everyone is bad, my partner is a New Zealander, but in my experience most people are exclusionary at best. When explaining NZ to people I’d say image a small rough village, rife with small mindedness, inadequate facilities, and lacking entirely in opportunities or forward thinking where most people are racist and very selfish, there you have New Zealand.

  39. Another fine example of New Zealands’ corrupt and failing court system…

    My husband previously owned property in Auckland which he rented out to what turned out to be a dodgy tenant. It wasn’t long before he stopped paying the rent. My husband is a kind and reasonable man and kept offering this man chance after chance to catch up. Eventually the property got sold and the rental arrears had mounted to 6000 dollars. When seeking help, my husband was told he had to go through mediation with the tenant. Erm, yes, like that would help. Not.

    Anyway, to cut a long story short, the tenant was summoned to court and ordered to pay back the outstanding amount in monthly payments, 200 dollars per month, starting last October. Bearing in mind the property got sold a year before that. You can all guess what happened, after one month the payment stopped. My husband got in touch with Civil Enforcement at the Ministry of Justice asking what had happened, after all, an automatic payment had been set up. And here follows the exact content of the email he received in reply: “Automatic payment was from debtor’s account and debtor has access to this account. If the payment has stopped, it is the debtor who has stopped it.” And that was it.

    What the hell?! The sheer incompetence and unwillingness of the Ministry of Justice is unbelievable. What makes it even worse, is that the tenant – who is a property developer – has owned 13 companies over the past 10 years which have all gone bust. No less than 6 months after the previous company went into receivership, he set up a new company.

    How on earth is this possible? Why is it allowed to happen and why do the bad people go unpunished?
    We are disgusted and count our blessings we got out of that arsehole nation.

    • How very true. My tenant did not pay rent for three months and it took another three months to get the bailiff to evict him. Then he stole my dishwasher and sold it. The police caught him and the court ordered him to pay $500 (when the dishwasher cost $1,200) and he paid $10 per month and only for the first month. When I contacted the court, those idle people told me I have to find out his new address as he had moved out from his mother’s home. Only then could the bailiff serve him a new order to pay the balance $490 @ $10 a month! What the f…..???
      I contacted BayCorp, the people who will recover your money for you and charge a high commission, and gave his name to them, Jason Sutherland (P.S. -Dear Ed, you may or may not publish the real name, it is up to you) and BayCorp told me there are 20 others in their bad debtors’ list??????
      I gave up.

  40. Jobseeker benefit for cancer patients ‘ludicrous’

    http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/286914/jobseeker-benefit-for-cancer-patients-'ludicrous‘

    Hundreds of cancer patients are being placed on the Jobseeker benefit while they are getting treatment.

    ‘The Cancer Society calls the system ludicrous and says it forces people with the disease to jump through hoops to pay their bills.

    One woman, who does not want to be identified, applied for a benefit when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
    She was put on Jobseeker Support, which replaced the sickness benefit after the 2013 welfare reforms.
    She said she had to pay for a medical certificate every month to prove she could not work – even though her surgeon insisted she would be off for much longer.
    “The letter from the hospital wasn’t sufficient. I then had to go back and get a doctor’s note to keep them happy, just to prove the fact that I was going in for surgery,” she said.
    “Then I also had to, on the day of my surgery, get someone from the hospital to fax through that I had been operated on.”
    Cancer Society chief executive Claire Austin said the woman’s story was common, and the system lacked common sense and sensitivity.
    She said many cancer patients had never been on a benefit before, and deserved help while they were going through an extremely tough time.
    “The situation really is ludicrous. We’ve got people who are already in work, who are unable to work because they are either sick and have to go through treatment, or have surgery.

    “They have to then apply for a benefit, which is a benefit that requires them… to be available to work.”‘

  41. Yes there are these crimes in NZ but because of a smaller population there are less than elsewhere.but if you want to survive you adapt to your surroundings. NZ is a good place to bring up a family, if you / they do not venture into unsavoury areas,and never go out alone.

    • When my family came to New Zealand in 1963 there was a lot of talk about “Whinging Pomms”. I went to work in an uncle’s orchard and asked a fellow worker what this meant. He said to me that there were two types who come to New Zealand (1) those who think everything will be the same as home, but better; (2) those who think everything will be similar but different! The first group give up and go home; the second group love it and stay.
      As a 14 year old my main concern was the astronomical prices for model trains and the poor quality because they were made in NZ! These were the days of import licensing, VERY old cars, 6 o’clock closing and 1 television channel to name a few. In the 1960s if anyone dared to put tables and chairs on the pavement outside their café, someone would have called the police, yet it was still called “Gods Own Country”.

      In the intervening years. A lot has changed: it takes 24 hours to have a phone installed, not 6 months. Japanese imports have brought the prices of cars to very low levels. The internet gives us 00’s of TV channels. A passport can be obtained in 3 days. Letters are delivered overnight. There are literally ‘000s of restaurants and bars open to the small hours, despite the headlines in sync with the rest of the World crime levels have fallen and annual road deaths dropped from almost 1000 to 300 or less.

      American, German, Japanese and Chinese friends living in New Zealand are amused to listen to radio talk back hosts in the US denouncing Obama Care and say the only option to avoid it is to emigrate to New Zealand! They do not realise we have had a public health system for 56 years! Similarly, there are Americans who cannot cope with gay marriage and threaten to leave for New Zealand, forgetting it has been legal in New Zealand for two years!

      Even model trains are now a similar price to those in Europe. Sure the place is not perfect but it is similar to many other places but a bit different. I love those differences!

      • Obama care was written by and for insurance company’s, and had tripled the cost of health insurance in the US while lowering care to NZ standards.
        Its not free public health.

    • I know a girl, she lives in a decent area, definitely not somewhere you’d normally consider unsavoury, she’s smart and a nice person (one of very few), she wasn’t out alone, but she was raped when she was still a high school student and it changed the rest of her life. So I have to disagree with you I’m afraid, there are countries with a far larger population and lower crime rate. People need to know this so they can go on to make an informed decision because not everyone wants to adapt to the potential of being robbed, raped or attacked, and honestly I don’t think that is a kind of adaptation one should have to make, though I know it is an adjustment to make in most countries. Just my two cents.

  42. Hi everyone. I kind of gathered that this site is more for people originating from the US/UK but greetings from sunny South Africa. I am not a migrant but I am concerned about family who are considering moving to NZ.

    My brother in law and his family (wife plus 3 kids) are in the process of moving to NZ on a work visa. They don’t have enough points for PR but are working through an agency who has assured them that he will find work… He has a masters degree in IT (I think he’s a network administrator). Over here, he has a massive (brick) house with a swimming pool and an expensive car. He is in senior management, earns a fantastic salary and works from home. He works for a Technikon so he studies for free. His wife works half day as a secretary and in the afternoons runs a day care business from their home. They suddenly decided to move to New Zealand after the attack on a friend’s 14 year old daughter who was sitting in a public park with her boyfriend and who got stabbed in the hand by a vagrant for her cell phone. They have a stepsister who lives in Auckland (she moved there over 20 years ago) and she keeps telling them that there is zero crime in New Zealand (as the crime in South Africa is their motivation for leaving). From what I have read on this site, I have to differ with her opinion. She told them that if a house breaking occurs, the perpetrators are not likely to harm those at home. I have found numerous stories on this site that indicate otherwise, including rapes that have occurred during housebreakings as well as attacks on the elderly.

    There is a lot of crime in South Africa, but we are aware of it and we take precautions and measures to ensure our families are safe (i.e. we don’t sit around in public parks). However, after reading through this site, it seems like South Africa has the same challenges as NZ (public schooling is crap, government healthcare is crap, crime, government is corrupt, police force is corrupt, etc.). However, the big difference is affordability. Over here, living is very affordable if you are a professional person with niche skills (over here IT skills are considered to be niche). You can even buy (which is cheaper than renting) a mansion in an estate with its own private parks, if you earn enough. Everyone here pays for private healthcare anyway and private healthcare is great – no waiting lists. Private schooling (if you want to go that route) is expensive but again, you can probably make a plan to afford it.

    I just don’t seem the point of moving from one country to another country which has the same challenges as those you are trying to escape. It seems to me like their quality of life may actually decrease if they move to New Zealand. I completely understand that he wants a better life for his children, especially his daughter – i.e. does not want her to be raped in South Africa, but there seem to be plenty of rapes in New Zealand as well. I read at least 5 posts on this website yesterday about tourists being raped in New Zealand. I even read about a 5 year old girl who was raped in a caravan at a (tourist) caravan park! Not exactly zero crime.

    I just don’t want them to make such a huge life changing decision because they have been misinformed. I would appreciate any comments. Maybe I have a skewed vision of crime in New Zealand and maybe it’s not the norm but I am also not so sure he’s going to get a job… and he’s an Afrikaans speaking South African so he has an accent.

    • I would add: boil the water before drinking. Sounds “third-worldy”, but remember: in most cases, you are responsible for what you put in your body, and your body is 50 – 65% water. Microwave or cook thoroughly.

      e.g.:
      http://www.3news.co.nz/nznews/veolia-to-blame-for-taumaranuis-potentially-unsafe-water–council-2014031411
      “Friday 14 Mar 2014 11:57 a.m.
      An oversight by private contractors Veolia Water means the people of Taumaranui can no longer trust their tap water is safe to drink this weekend.”

      Don’t blindly trust things – let people, institutions and movements … EARN your trust.

    • From what I’ve heard from other SAs that I’ve met, the crime is no where near what SA has, but people do get shoved to the ground and have their ipads stolen [daughter’s Auckland experience], mugged, robbed/broken in to, murdered…NZ is not crime free.
      They will be hard pressed to replicate their life style [house, pool, job…] in NZ.
      There ARE quite a few SA here, not sure as to what their take is, though most seem to like not living behind 8′ walls with guard dogs.

    • Stay where you are, I have lived here for 40 yrs , I contradictory to popular belief, have never adopted NZ as my Country (formerly of UK .
      I hail from a part of UK where we say what we think & mean what we say, coming from somewhere like my hm town I have been pretty much accepting.
      I write this blog to warn off people of the wonderful portrayal of NZ ???? yes without doubt has some beautiful spots but certainly NON that would outway the South African beauty.
      This message also goes out to the English people too, my hair dresser from Leicester, recently had her sister Immigrate 6 mths ago to NZ , I learnt today that she is back in UK ? briefly’ she couldn’t stand the fact that the she was ENGLISH & worked in an environment of TEAM leadership !!!!
      Kiwis’ sooner or later need to open their eyes and say !! wow, we have people more skilled than we are.
      I sometimes get so infuriated about the “she’ll be right attitude I cant stand working with KIWI’s. Some of my closest friends (Kiwis) and my Immediate family (also Kiwis) this has to change , John Key is a total imbecile.
      I only ask that people from other Countries please read this before making a commitment to coming to NZ
      Maybe I am so far away from knowledge that Kiwi’s brush aside ? I have 4 grandchildren & two daughers, non of the six know who on earth is “John Stuart Mill” Heideggger ? or even Neicher all philoshers ?????
      its not all that makes out to be,
      Kiwi’s have this miss conception that peoples from around the world should be a total twat, Kiwi’s without doubt need to grow up ( except those that have done their time in London
      I could tell you some diabolical stories you woudn’t even even believe ,

    • I don’t live in a big city but I know a few people who have been attacked or raped and I’ve had near misses myself it is not safe, especially if you don’t look intimidating. As a specific example, I live in a smaller town that isn’t really known for being dangerous, I used to work in a bakery and would walk to work in the morning which would mean it was often still dark, five minutes before I passed by, only a few hundred metres down the street a woman was attacked with a knife and raped on her way to work and ended up in hospital with serious injuries, I shiver to think that it very easily could’ve been me because it was random, I believe this only made the local paper.

      As another more mild example, my family are quiet and don’t bother anyone, one day my parents had a hammer thrown through their bedroom window around midnight, they don’t know who did it and can’t think of anyone who could’ve however the fact that it was a hammer implies that it was planned because you don’t just carry a hammer around at midnight, they called the cops who took the hammer and said they’d test it for prints and get back to them, they never heard from the cops again but someone kept pooping over their fence into their yard until they moved, that just shows how inept the cops are.

      Lastly, I know a girl who was raped, she was a good kid, kind of shy but very nice, and when she was a high school student some scumbag took it upon themselves to rape her and ruin her life and she has struggled ever since, the cops didn’t get him either.

      There are larger countries that are safer and that are easier to live in financially because your friends would be downgrading a lot, the type of work he’s looking at you can only really get in Wellington or Auckland and both of those places are both more expensive and reported as being more unsafe than where I live and it’s less common to work from home here. Also, they will experience people being xenophobic towards them and not listening the second they hear an accent, I’ve seen it happen so that’s something to bear in mind as well. You might want to suggest that they do some research and help them out to make sure that what they find isn’t totally skewed by NZ tourism.

  43. First it was leaky buildings – now major fire hazards!!!
    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/property/news/article.cfm?c_id=8&objectid=11526638

    Major apartment fire hazards revealed

    ‘Widespread breaches of fire safety regulations are being discovered as multi-storey leaky apartments are pulled apart during weathertightness repairs.

    The discovery of the fire safety faults is a second hit, adding months and millions of dollars to fixes for unwitting owners. The revelation raises concerns about how widespread the hidden problem may be.

    It arises from a rash of shortcuts and shoddy work and a compliance system that was not fit for purpose.

    The Home Owners and Buyers Association of NZ (Hobanz) suspects the majority of multi-storey apartment buildings built between 1995 and 2005 are probably non-compliant and never were.

    Most were ticked off by private certifiers who commonly didn’t have insurance and liquidated their companies during the fallout of the leaky buildings disaster.’

    The kiwi no 8 wire mentality at it’s worst – she’ll be right!! – NOT

  44. We’ve now gotten on unlimited fibre [which is great], but costs us about $110/month.
    I’ve been watching sports [online] and seeing the ads, did a little search. I found some interesting comments, here’s one: “I live in a third world country called Bulgaria and since 2007, my internet speed is unlimited 80mbit/s for about 15$ a month.”
    NZ prices are over 5 times of what “third world country called Bulgaria” has had since 2007.

    • Hi Carpentaro. Just for comparison’s sake, I pay CHF 74 (about ND$120) for unlimited high speed Internet that is faster than what I could obtain in New Zealand. In addition, the package comes with a landline that allows me to make unlimited calls within Switzerland and a television package that provides me with far more options than New Zealand’s Sky. Switzerland is supposedly an expensive country, but it is much better value compared to New Zealand. I also earn triple compared to what my wife and I earned combined in New Zealand. Kiwiland is an expensive place with low wages, but then Kiwis are so useless and unproductive that they could never earn a good wage honestly. The only people on good wages in New Zealand are the well-connected parasites in the private and public sector who would not last five minutes in Europe. New Zealand is for the well-connected dolts as opposed to the well qualified and competent.

  46. Life in Jollie St: [Linwood, Christchurch] ‘You wouldn’t last a week’

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/72095461/life-in-jollie-st-you-wouldnt-last-a-week

    ‘Out-of-control youth, menacing dogs, Mongrel Mob, Black Power. MYLES HUME finds there is never a dull moment for residents living in troubled Jollie St.

    It’s 10am on a Tuesday and it isn’t long before the peace is broken in Jollie St.

    “Put the f***** dog away, I’m sick of it, I’m scared of it. It’s tried to attack me twice. The police are just there put your dog away before I ring the pound.”

    The shouting woman holds her school-aged daughter’s hand as the mongrel dog confronts them on the footpath. It has been locked outside by its apparent owners who deny any link. A man on a bike tries to shoo the dog away, before two police officers emerge from a house across the street and call animal control.

    The woman’s expletives ring out through the neighbourhood. For many living here, such encounters form part of an ordinary day.

    Residents in Jollie St, on the eastern border of Linwood, chuckle at the irony in the name. Each has a story to tell. Burglaries, threats, BB gun pellet holes in windows, fear of leaving the house, teenagers leaping into their property to evade police. ‘

    Sadly all too often repeated in these isles.

  47. Tsunami Arrives in New Zealand – Details from Govt agencies scarce

    http://www.weatherwatch.co.nz/content/pacific-tsunami-threat-nzs-civil-defence-issues-marine-beach-threat

    ‘Updates from various NZ Govt agencies, mainly Civil Defence, are getting lighter as we head through the night, this despite Civil Defence recently confirming a tsunami has hit the Chatham Islands and people have been evacuated.

    New Zealand has a lack of buoys reporting tsunami on our east coast – this despite the Boxing Day tsunami and what was learnt from that tragedy in the Indian Ocean in 2004.

    But one buoy is reporting significant waves – you can see them in the Tsunami Gauge Chart section of the GeoNet link on the right hand side of this page.

    Below is last detailed report from NZ’s Civil Defence – issued very early on Thursday evening. Nothing further has been added since. We are working with Govt Ministers and MPs to fix this and create more open data in New Zealand.’

    Migrants beware.

  48. The following BBC article really sums up how backward Moo-Zealand is.

    What central heating has done for us
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8283796.stm

    ‘In 1970, Martyn Jarvis, 55, was a gas fitter, installing central heating systems in the Slough area.

    “Central heating was just taking off then and there was a sense of excitement. It was like getting the first colour television – ‘Ooooh, I’ve got central heating!’
    “Unless you were really well off, you didn’t have any radiators. There was an awful lot of solid fuel around then, an open fire in the living room normally, which heated the water as well.
    “Other houses just had a three-bar electric fire, so you needed plenty of blankets at night. I remember the 1963 winter was particularly horrendous.”
    By the end of that decade, and into the early 1980s, having central heating was regarded as a basic requirement, he says.’

    ‘People used to have to go to bed when it got too cold, even as late as the 1950s. Now people can sit up in a T-shirt and go to bed when they want to.’

    Really depressing how the above is still a reality for the majority in these isles.

  49. By having two separate electoral roles, divided by RACE “maori” and “others” the New Zealand government is committing the horrendous crime of racism. Maoris can be on either role, while “others” which are members of all other “races that make up New Zealand’s population do not have an option.Why does no one do something about it? because we may offend the minority. We are a multi cultural nation and have the right to the same rights

  50. I love this website! We are not going to shut up, bend over and take it like NZer make-doers. We, us, together are gonna be outta here at some point. I hope.

    Sorry for the graphic imagery, which is focused on bottoms, but our original st hole is probably now a better option than this st hole. Socially, NZ appears to be on a MUCH slipperier slope than the UK.

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