Why do Australians treat New Zealanders with such disrespect?

Question

I say this is an Australian and it's about time we cut the Kiwis some slack. There's a Commonwealth Bank ad atm showing Australian cricket players backyards and then they cut to seen showing a "typical" New Zealand backyard with sheep in the rain. Personally I'm damn sick of it. There are a lot of things in New Zealand that make it better than Australia. There's much less sexual discrimination, natives get treated a lot better, less corruption and more freedom for the media.

Answer 1

And come to think of it, they don't have Howard..........

Answer 2

It's pretty common for people to pick on other people. I grew up hearing various kinds of ethnic jokes. Ones about Polish or Irish people seemed to be popular for some reason. Then I met someone from the Netherlands and she told all the same jokes but they were about Belgians.

Answer 3

I'm an aussie and my best mate is a kiwi and there isn't any of the rivalry between us... i think most of it is a friendly rivalry between nations...

Answer 4

Yes there is all that. It is light fun being poked at them.
The important thing is that they are equal before the law and that is all I care about.

Answer 5

Its how people create bonds with others who they want to be friends with, you know, a common enemy. It can be lighthearted or it can be mean as in WW2, but its a quirk of our psychic.

Answer 6

Historical differences
While some (not all) Australian colonies were set up as convict settlements, New Zealand was settled by free settlers. The white Australian population from early times contained a large Catholic Irish component, hostile to the British overclass, in comparison to New Zealand which was settled by English, loyal to the British crown, with large minorities of Irish and Scots. This resulted in some significant differences in attitude to authority. New Zealand never had an equivalent to the Eureka Stockade revolt, and never developed a serious Republican movement.
Perhaps the most radically different experience of the two countries in colonial times was their respective treatment of indigenous peoples. While Australia was claimed for the British crown by right of discovery and conquest, New Zealand joined the British Empire through the Treaty of Waitangi signed between the British Crown and Māori chiefs. This gave the New Zealand Māori population certain rights not enjoyed by the Australian Aboriginal population at that time, including the vote, legal equality, and property qualifications. While Māori have at times been seen as an underclass (and still suffer economic disadvantages), their historical lot would come to be a lot luckier and more successful than that of the Aborigines.

Contemporary differences
After the Second World War both countries looked to the United States for security, rather than the United Kingdom. Australia has however maintained a much closer relationship with the United States, especially in recent years, after New Zealand's anti-nuclear policy lead to rifts in its relationship with the United States, and the eventual breakdown of the ANZUS alliance. Australia sees New Zealand as something of a freeloader in terms of defence, whilst New Zealand in contrast resents the self-appointed Australian role of being the United States' deputy sheriff for the region.
Australia in modern times has come to see itself as tied to the fortunes of Asia, whilst New Zealand has defined itself in contrast as a Pacific nation. This has led to radically different perspectives on various issues, including migration, trade, and the relationship with the United States.

Views and Stereotypes

Australian views of New Zealand
Australians tend to look upon New Zealand as a quainter, more provincial version of Australia. Stereotypes focus on New Zealand as a pastoral land lacking in sophistication and without the modern cosmopolitan nature of contemporary Australia. On the other hand Australians concede that New Zealand retains some aspects of an innocent golden age that Australia has lost, with its quiet lifestyle, lack of drugs and serious crime, and polite conduct. A comparison could be drawn with American views of Canada.

New Zealand views of Australia
New Zealanders see Australia as a larger, brasher and more obnoxious version of their society. While conceding that Australia is bigger and wealthier, few New Zealanders will readily admit to Australia being necessarily superior. New Zealanders point to the level of government and media corruption in their nearest neighbour (New Zealand outscores Australia in both the Corruption Perception Index and the Reporters without Borders Press Freedom Index), the higher level of crime, drug use, and social problems, and the treatment of indigenous people as inferior to their own society. A comparison could be drawn with Canadian views of the United States.
New Zealanders regard Australians as loud and opinionated, while Australians ridicule New Zealanders as 'South Seas Poms' for their supposedly closer relationship with 'Mother England', yet underneath the name-calling and the petty grievances, in case of need New Zealanders and Australians have defended one another, epitomised by the ANZAC tradition.
Some of the banter between the two countries is typified by the response by the former New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon when questioned about increased levels of emigration to Australia, that these migrants "raised the average IQ of both countries".

Relationships

Intra Migration
In recent decades, many New Zealanders have migrated to Australia, particularly to Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. Unlike citizens of other countries, New Zealand passport holders are issued with ‘special category’ visas on arrival in Australia, which allow them to live and work there. Although officially reciprocal, the traffic is to a large extent in one direction only; fewer Australians choose to live and work in New Zealand.
Consequently, ‘Kiwis’ in Australia are accused of taking local jobs or living on Australian social welfare benefits, although since 2001, New Zealanders must now wait two years before they are eligible for such payments. However, there are complaints in New Zealand that Australia is poaching the country's best and brightest, with police forces, schools and hospitals in Australia headhunting or recruiting aggressively across the Tasman.
Many only realise how much the two nationalities have in common when they go to Europe to work and travel, although some New Zealanders are almost horrified at the idea that they have anything in common with Australians. When groups of young Kiwis and Aussies congregate together in European camping grounds, etc, it can be difficult to say which are which.
Unlike Canadians and Americans, who share a land border that they can cross without passports (until 2007), the geographical separation between New Zealand and Australia means that many have never visited the other's country. Many of them are more likely to have visited Europe, and this is especially true of Australians. When the Australian actress Cate Blanchett told US talkshow host David Letterman that her time on location in New Zealand filming The Lord of the Rings was her first visit to the country, he was genuinely surprised, while she was equally puzzled by his reaction.
Perhaps on a map of the world the two countries look close together. However the closest points of the "mainlands" are more than 1,600km (1000 miles) apart, comparable with the distance from England to Africa. A typical flight between the two countries takes around three hours.

Answer 7

jealousy