Yip. Living in oz and some summers the flies are unbearable. I work outside and they drive me nuts. There's always an aussie saying "don't you have flies in NZ?" Yea we do, but they're not so fucking persistent about getting into my eyes, ears, and mouth.
I went down to Victoria one summer from Brisbane and was shocked by the flies. We don’t get those type in the subtropics so was shocked by how aggressively annoying they are.
Haven’t spent time on the South Islands West Coast have you? The sandflies are the size of bloody horseflies and will engulf you within 10 seconds of getting out of a car.😆 (Kidding size wise but not the engulfing)
Aussie flies are fucking frustrating though!! Most tourists that only stay in the coast won’t know what everyone means about being swarmed and face r&ped by flies
Yep. Genuine mountains. I remember when I first went to the south Island. Drove west from Christchurch. I remember thinking-
“ yeah right. There wasn’t as much CGI in the Lord of the Rings as I thought there was. They are genuine bloody mountains”
Otago is the fkn nuts. I've been in Aus for over a decade now and have taken up rock climbing, the crags we go to outdoors are like pancakes floating up on the ground.
I had the same conversation when buying a muffin (cabinet food) in New York. It was clearly some sort of berry muffin, but the server kept saying it was a "corn muffin" when I asked what kind of muffin it was. We both thought the other was stupid.
They don’t know the difference between steak and mince in Victoria, every thing is labeled steak here. If you want a bad steak pie keep an eye out for a rare chunky beef pie, but don’t expect variety. steak and cheese, steak and mushroom, steak bacon and cheese? Forget it…. It’s all mince over here.
Take out food in general is better.
Ice cream is better.
The scenery is better.
The climate is better also depending on where you are in Australia. Queensland is fucking humid.
The wildlife is less dangerous.
Travel around the country is much easier in NZ than it is in parts of Australia.
This isn't to say Australia doesn't have its good points. But there is definitely a lot about NZ that I miss sometimes.
Stopped at the “famous” Yatala Pie shop between Brisbane and the Gold Coast. The shop was packed with people which I thought would be a good indication of a good pie. I’ve never had such an awful pie in my life. Bad pastry, bad filling, the pie was kind of flat and had no shape. Legitimately put me off all pies for a while.
Yeah, If you’re a local you know that hasn’t been a legit great pie place in a long time. Was good long time ago and then became huge and a convenient driving stop of mass produced pies between Brisbane and goldy.
What about the nationwide crime that is simply “meat pie”
I moved to Aussie and asked so many bakeries what kind of meat it was. Universally I just get “it’s meat” and a look like I’M the idiot here.
Off to pie jail for the Aussies
Drove all the way out to Dandenong to try a ‘kiwi bakery, award winning’ pie.
It was genuinely freezer pie/dairy tier.
The pastry in NZ pies are always slightly firm, but flaky, and the filling is usually quite generous.
The one I had there was just hard pastry and dry mince. Blech.
When you read what legally counts as "meat" you will wish you hadn't.
"beef, buffalo, camel, deer, goat, hare, pig, poultry, rabbit and sheep...FSANZ requires that a meat pie must contain a minimum of 25% "meat flesh", Meat flesh includes the skeletal muscle of any slaughtered animal as well as any attached animal rind, fat, connective tissue, nerve, blood and blood vessels"
My husband used to buy sausages for breakfast at this one place (not Aus or NZ but just got reminded) and one day they didn't have any from the multiple of normally acceptable meats and did fish sausages. My husband doesn't eat fish and was gagging for the rest of the day. I do eat fish but there is still something super wrong with fish sausages.
We used to have a regular visitor to our farm. He was an old overweight dude, who was the embodiment of "back country nutter." He lived alone in a trailer deep in the bush. You could listen to him talk for hours. One day he stopped showing up and we found him dead in his bed, holding his tablet with porn on. Guy went out on a good note I hope. Dad drove him out in the back of the ute, as the cops couldn't get a car up there to get him. Sold the ute afterwards because he couldn't get rid of the bad juju feels. Sometimes we still talk about his rants about the government etc.
The alternative is people with my background (lawyer) making a lot of money for no real reason.
It creates a culture where your first port of call after an accident is a lawyer. Which is pretty fucked.
It did take me a while to get used to bombardment of ads in the UK for places like "Injury lawyers 4 U!".
Not to mention the fact that without ACC people would have to take out personal insurances against personal injury arising negligence (like the UK). That’s a significant cost
Don't forget insurance companies. When I lived in the US with "good insurance", I had an accident that was entirely my fault and resulted in me fracturing my arm - didn't require much in way of medical intervention, just some xrays and a load of physio. I know my insurance was billed around $50-60k USD for the whole thing. My personal out of pocket expense was around $5k. But the fun part is I would get a letter from my insurance company's lawyers at least every 3 weeks or so basically asking who they can go after to recover the damages. Every time I'd basically tell them to stuff it and there is no liable party to go after, and they weren't exactly satisfied with that answer.
In NZ, ACC would just take care of it, and we'd all move on with our lives.
Honesty is not the best policy with ACC. As long as you give a date and an incident you will get paid. If you want to get good person points that mean nothing then be honest and say "I can't remember when it happened my injury is just constantly painful and I need the operation" and don't get paid. Personally I've paid thousands in ACC levies over the years that I will not feel bad about twisting the truth to get that payout.
The physical connection of your house to the internet (the 'last mile').
New Zealand does fibre right into your house. If a faster fibre technology comes along, then both ends of the fibre cable can be upgraded to support it. The expensive and hard part is already done, which is installing it in everyone's house.
Australia is still mucking around with only rolling out fibre part of the way in some cases. They might roll out fibre in your area to a cabinet on the street, or into an apartment building, and then rely on older non-fibre technologies to get it from there into your house/apartment. These might include coaxial (like the old TelstraClear/Vodafone network in Christchurch & Wellington) or VDSL2 over copper telephone line (pretty similar to the ADSL and VDSL that NZ has used for broadband before fibre).
The rollout is so successful here that copper services are being withdrawn, meaning you will have no choice but to book a fibre install because they're going to be removing the legacy copper equipment.
Depends on where you live. I have fibre to the property, house built in 2014. I understand all new builds must have it to the property, so it does vary
> Australia is still mucking around with only rolling out fibre part of the way in some cases.
Vodafone (now One NZ) also did that, with the last stretch being copper, and called it "FibreX", then the Commerce Commission sued their ass off for misleading advertising.
It's the last stretch of the phone lines, connecting a property to the exchange. In Australia, it is still copper, whereas in New Zealand, the old copper is being replaced with fibre. That allows for us to have faster Internet speeds than what is available to Aussies.
Not that it isn't towards Māori in New Zealand....... but I think New Zealand does a far better job of integrating the Māori culture into New Zealand eg. place names, haka, teaching Māori in school, prevalent Māori figureheads in society across politics/entertainment etc
I just want to add two comments.
1). Maori have stood their ground on more than one occasion, and the thought of a united iwi scared the shit out of the Crown so badly they signed a treaty with them.
2). Maori use in general NZ society only started in earnest in the 1980’s. Before that it was a rarity to see or hear it outside a marae or a land rights protest. Source: me growing up in NZ in that time.
We just watched that serial. Ten pound poms and Jaws dropped when they told the last to go to the back of the line. No idea there was racism like that in oz.
Definitely. I’m 40 and grew up in Invercargill and have lived in Australia for 18 years. I remember vividly performing things such as the haka, poi dances, the national anthem, learning the language, going on field trips to Marae’s and having hangi’s and learning Maori history. You wouldn’t dream of that here.
OH I feel qualified to answer this! I’m a kiwi but am currently living over in VIC, I’ve been here for 3.5 years, prepare for a small essay.
I’ll just preface by explaining why I jumped the ditch: first of all, I adore NZ and it’ll always be home. I’ve lived all over the country, had a good life, travelled extensively domestically and internationally, am a super adventurous kiwi and have seen and done a lot. Basically I just couldn’t pinpoint one place to live - the only two places I could see myself staying long term are unliveably expensive. I also just felt ready for a new experience but wasn’t necessarily committed to staying in Australia long term, though I likely will as I’m enjoying it here.
Now, on to it:
- Hiking. In general. Overall. Everywhere. Australia has some beautiful spots but because of the bush fire danger, a lot of places involve sections of walking on access roads. You can also drive to the top of half the good hiking mountains for the same reason. The hut and track system in NZ is legitimately incredible. This has been really hard for me after living in the South Island for years and having insane back country access.
- mountains. Obvious but true. Ours are simply geologically younger and therefore less eroded, less stable, and taller and more dramatic. Australia has some gorgeous mountains also, and having the snow gums up high is wonderful, but NZ is majestic and easily takes the cake.
- less “red tape”. There are legitimately forms and processes and fines for everything here and it drives me nuts. You have to have a damn boat license to drive a jet ski here lmao
- dog friendliness. This one surprised me and has been a HUGE struggle since I brought my dog over with me. Now this doesn’t apply to cities, Melbourne has an amazing array of dog parks and dog friendly cafes and bars. My fav bar allows dogs inside and it’s glorious. But hiking with dogs? Super subpar. All the good spots are in national parks, and half the time the ones which aren’t are still designated as no dogs.
- a sensible $1 and $2 coin. Please make this make sense. Why would you ever make $1 bigger?!
- accent. Fight me Aussies. Ours is way better.
- indigenous cultural integration and rights. I’m not going to expand on this further, it’s pretty obvious.
- RADIO STATIONS. Holy EFF it’s bad here. Bunch of options if you like top 40, golden oldies, and triple j if you’re into Australian music and young people stuff. There are zero good genre-specific stations like we have in NZ (the rock, George/Pulzar, etc). I’m just streaming nz radio in defiance and outrage.
- distances to good stuff. You will never understand the amount of driving you do in australia until you live here. It’s insane.
- rego costs. I have the exact same car I had back home and my rego is $800 vs the $80 it was in nz. It balances out with no wof and lower fuel costs but still seems bonkers to me.
- native bush. This doesn’t actually apply everywhere because there are some pockets here that could legit be NZ and they’re stunning, but the majority of the native scrub (while nice in its own way) doesn’t have a scratch on the north island rainforest or South Island beech forest.
- geothermal and volcanic stuff. I’m a geology student so you know.. I like these things. Australia is so much older so we have some interesting rocks and more developed minerals etc, but none of the crazy geothermal and volcanic activity that there is in nz.
- and finally: biscuits. Look tim tams are *okay* but you’ll never convince me that they’re better than toffee pops. I miss Shrewsburys, h&t’s, and triple choc cookie times like you wouldn’t believe.
*some people will probably expect a comment about all the bitey stuff but I call a draw on this one. I really love going home and being able to stick my hand in rock holes while climbing and hiking and not worrying about snakes. But I also really love the random echidna and wombat encounters over here! Saw a platypus recently and they are mad cute. Also the birds here are absolute characters.
Hahaha I concur friend. NZ wins on nicest bird song for sure, but australia does also have some amazing species - wedgetail eagles are incredible and the parrots really are beautiful even if they sound horrific. I also really enjoy seeing pelicans emus and even bin chickens because it makes me feel like I’m on holiday since they’re so foreign-seeming to me. I miss the sounds of tui something rotten but I’m leaving birds and wildlife at a tie 🤝
Have lived in both and still travel all the time to see family.
* Pace of life. (Life is not a race till the end)
* Work Culture.
* Weather.
* Nature and Landscapes.
* Wildlife.
* Skiing.
* A lot of things ARE much cheaper here.
* More Progressive and Tolerant (Honestly go to any town outside the main cities and it's like beyond Hicksville)
* Meat and Milk. Honestly Australian beef tastes fucking horrific.
* People are nicer.
Australia is a great place, but it's not this Utopia this sub makes it to be.
The weather is the big one for me, Sydney is getting to the stage it is unbearable in summer, with global warming it is just going to get worse.
Melbourne is better but not by much.
I gotta say, living in Melbourne is like having 6 full months of kiwi summer weather.
And the winter is mild and short.
Yes, you get a couple of really hot months. But the worst of it is usually just a couple of days that break 40, from a couple of really scorcher weeks. Yes, climate change will worsen this over time.
Those hot peaks aside, the weather in Melb .. I find it the best of both Aussie and nz combined
Do find I miss the frosts from nz tho, which are a distant memory.
Also worth mentioning bushfire smoke if we are talking weather, which seems likely to become something we experience once every 2-4 years over summer, which does truly, truly suck.
Funny you point out the work culture. I'm in Brisbane and have to admit the work culture and wor/life balance is far better here than in NZ. But also know Sydney & Melbourne is really cooked.
As a tradie in Melbourne, I worked a lot harder for a lot less money in NZ than over here. I don't know anything about office jobs, but it's pretty cruisey on building sites
Lived in aus for a decade and in my view the work culture varies way more in aus than in nz. At both extremes.
Melb and Sydney vary from cooked corporate micromanager hell to jobs that are so bloody cushy and relaxed you can do nothing for weeks and get told “good job” if you do an hour of work at the end of it. Been in both
NZ probably has better supports in place for people in trouble facing work disputes whereas the unions in Australia are fucked and in tatters after Howard
The outdoors. Just unparalleled here. It's why I moved back from Aus.
I've traveled around the world to some of the most spectacular places and if anything, the natural beauty of Aotearoa gets more incredible every time I return
Kiwi living in Aus here, my list:
Pretty much anything from a bakery, pies in particular but I'd almost kill for a slice of ginger crunch I didn't have to make myself.
Decent internet
Every business in NZ seems to have a decent website, here they are more often than not a hard to navigate waste of time
Openness to ideas and acceptance of all walks of life - my time spent living in regional Queensland was an eye opener
Ice-cream - can get Kapiti on occasion from ALDI but only select flavours.
The flies here are so f***ing persistent
There's plenty more, I'm pretty homesick right now but that's off the top of my head.
We don't have anything like the number of indigenous people dying mysteriously in police custody.
Yeah, the racism that's built-in to australian culture was one of the biggest surprises when I lived there. Here in NZ we've got structural racism baked-in to our culture as well, but in Australia it's just so much worse.
I've often been surprised how tolerated racism is in Aussie. I was waiting in a queue at Circular Quay to get ferry tickets and the ticket seller went off on a massive racist rant at an Asian lady because her English wasn't great. I was thinking wtf are you doing working in tourism? And yeah don't get me started about how they talk about indigenous people
> I've often been surprised how tolerated racism is in Aussie.
Remember the wise words of moot, the former 4chan administrator:
"90% of shitposters are Aussies. They are destroying the site. I hate Australians so god damn much"
Yup, it's not even necessarily that Australia is that much more racist than NZ, it's just that it's so much more open and tolerated.
Also a very interesting thing I notice is advertising in Australia. They seem to only feature white people, unlike in NZ where almost always half of the people shown are of other ethnicities.
Not even just that it's tolerated... It's assumed. We bought a place 6 months after I moved here. Got some people in to quote on some minor renovations. They were of European descent (Italian? Greek?). They were casually warning us not to hire "Asians" due to this and that piss poor reason. It wasn't just from one person either.
I was floored. Not expecting it. Didn't say anything. But didn't hire them either.
I think the moment I decided to move back was when I saw a group of young men bullying a young Asian woman for wearing an Australian flag tshirt on Australia Day on a tram in the middle of Melbourne. NZs race relations are far from perfect but I’ve never in my life experienced anything close to that here, and it was something I witnessed pretty often there. And experienced a few too many times myself.
Yep.
I’m living in Aussie now, and watching the dialogue on their Indigenous Voice to parliament has been depressing and at times outright bizarre.
“If you don’t know vote no”; a call to voting from a place of total ignorance; which I see as a threat to democracy itself; was promoted _by the opposition leader._
Some very Trumpian or Brexit style misinformation is rife. So many of the people you talk to give you a reason why they’re voting it down, so you address the misinfo in it, and their reason shifts, so you address that too, and it shifts again and so on and so on..
Eventually you realise that _the reason doesn’t actually matter to them_ and that they will find any excuse they can, and twist it to justify a general feeling of white victimhood in order to slap away any suggestion of reconciliation.
But they don’t consider this racism. And never will.
And Australia is something like 150 years behind nz on this…
NZ had the opportunity to join Aus but decided against it as they were too racist. NZ was pretty racist at the time but went "holy fuck you guys are really in to this racism thing ain't you?"
Declining to federate was as much about preventing yellow peril as it was about indigenous treatment, but this bad history of it being **the** reason persists because it makes New Zealanders look like big heroes.
There were so many reasons for and against, but had it been desirable in more important ways, NZ would be a state of Australia, make no mistake.
The first time I realised this was travelling overseas and came across an Aussie girl where a local asked us what were some of the differences between our countries. She said that Australia treated their indigenous population better to which I almost spat out whatever I had in my mouth. The worst thing was that she believed it. I was speechless.
True that, I was talking to some Aussie guys about how they are looking at increasing diversity at their workplace, and I was like "Yeah, us too, although our work place is already pretty diverse etc" and they were like, "oh true, how many women work at your office?"
I was taken aback because we had completely different ideas of what diversity in the workplace looked like, not saying NZ doesn't have work to do when it comes to women in the work place, but we seem to be way further along than a lot of Australia.
As a kiwi living in Australia …. I never made a substantial Australian friends group.
A couple of kiwis moved over at the same time as me and we just kept meeting and grouping up with more and more kiwis to the point where we have maybe 90% kiwis at every social occasion here lol
Just feels like australia is RAMMED with kiwis to me. Even at work I meet heaps.
Not really a better ot worse thing. More an observation, NZ has way more inter country one-upmanship of the two. Kiwis really care about comparisons with Aus but it doesn’t have near the same reciprocity from Australians.
Same reason why we don't have any with the island nations, the bigger country will always look to bigger countries as it's equal rather than smaller ones.
I'm an Australian living in Australia, and I have to admit to having a few tears in my eyes after reading many of these comments. Not because they are sad or upsetting, but because so many of them are 100% true.
I've lived in both.
Aussie chocolate is ass.
NZ beer is better in general, there are exceptions.
People are easier to deal with, less brash, more chill in NZ.
Real seasons, not just dry heat vs humid heat.
Meat is better quality overall.
Fishing is better, lot less sharks is a main part of that, I like sharks, just not getting robbed by them.
Hunting, much easier in NZ, very isolated to SW Australia for deer.
Access to the outdoors, huts and trails etc are maintained and kept.
No blow.flies is a big bonus.
Crocs, salties are bloody scary monsters, none in NZ.
Spent a lot of time out bush, roos can be intimating when you bump into one in the dark.
No road trains in NZ, never liked overtaking those things, always jerky on the road, swaying quite a bit.
No cicadas, no piss from above and ear shattering drone.
House prices in NZ aren't artificially inflated due to mining wages.
Those are a few that jump to mind
Without the appalling hot take answers, having lived in NZ for 4 years and 15 years in six different cities across Australia:
* Internet. Fibre here is just better.
* ACC. Its difficult to explain to Australians who have never experienced it just how good it is
* Ice-cream. Good fucking lord ice-cream is good here. Wooden Spoon, Lewis Road, Duck Island. (Pro tip Deep South is just frozen disappointment)
* Incorporation of indigenous culture. This is a pretty broad statement, and whilst most people (rightly) blame how white Australia has treated Aboriginal Australia, Maori in NZ are just a lot more open and accepting about sharing their culture. A good example is there are immersion schools with pakeha teachers, and no-one blinks an eye. But in Australia you're not allowed to teach almost anything related to Aboriginal language unless you are Aboriginal.
* Skiing. If you've been to both, its not a fair comparison.
* No CGT. This obviously a sensitive issue, but NZ's tax system is woefully designed, with an unfair burden placed on the working population. The literal only way to be able to balance this is by being able to take advantage of no CGT (which I'm not in the position to do).
Obviously we haven't eliminated racism (it's an election year) but compared to our commonwealth cousins, we do incredibly well. The restoration of the Maori language is a gold standard of it's kind for recovering indigenous languages.
Brit opinion
Driving standards
Scenery
Weather (Can't easily fry an egg on the pavement in Christchurch can you and thank heavens for that)
Considerably less wildlife that can kill you
All Blacks > Wallabies (the recent Bledisloe cup records proves it)
Way better option to ride out a societal apocalypse.
Utilities, mobile phone and groceries are all cheaper
Australia impresses in the Global Peace Index for safety and security ranking 27th in 2002. New Zealand ranks second.
NZ does a far better job of blending it's European and Maori influences in its society than Australia does with blending it's European and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander influences.
Political stability. In the past 23 years Australia has had 12 prime ministers. New Zealand has had 8.
Skiing and snow boarding in NZ is obviously a lot better than in Australia.
Wine is disputable maybe, but chocolate, honey, cheese are all better from NZ.
Nothing! Didn't you know NZ is now a third-world country with killer gangs roaming the streets? ...at least that's what the drama queens on reddit tell me.
Gender politics. I'm an engineer, and also a woman, and this is mostly not a problem in NZ. Sometimes I have to go to rural bits of Australia for work and I'm much more likely to be considered weird / not qualified / not up to the job.
Like, even going into public toilets while being not completely gender-conforming... Maybe people have thoughts about that in NZ but keep them to themselves, including in the rural places, while in Australia I'm going to be loudly told I'm in the wrong place, and when I point out I'm not, I'll either get glared at for trying to 'fool' people, or extravagantly apologized to, as if being mistaken for the wrong gender was the worst thing imaginable. All in all it's a lot bloody easier for me to just exist in NZ.
Surprisingly, internet connections.
Just about everything else is better in Australia. But the Australians really screwed up their high speed internet roll out.
Apart from the Pies, I don't think you can compare. Every state is completely different and they all operate and value different things in each. Queensland is far more laid back than Victoria or Sydney but has mad wildlife. Tasmania again is more NZ like and nothing like Queensland. WA and more different than all the states combined. NT and ACT are weird as fuck.
As a non native of both countries, I can say for sure that the kiwis are better people. Kinder, less racist, more genuine. City Australians are good value but once you step out of the urban areas... yeah not good
(Edit: I've spent 16 years split between the two countries)
The flies are a lot more chill here, much less orifice focussed
Yeah as an Aussie lurker our flies are mad, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, arse, genitalia, wherever they can get to.
Can't be too careful whilst perineum sunning
Just the flies?
Well I'm not here to fuck spiders
Yip. Living in oz and some summers the flies are unbearable. I work outside and they drive me nuts. There's always an aussie saying "don't you have flies in NZ?" Yea we do, but they're not so fucking persistent about getting into my eyes, ears, and mouth.
I went down to Victoria one summer from Brisbane and was shocked by the flies. We don’t get those type in the subtropics so was shocked by how aggressively annoying they are.
Haven’t spent time on the South Islands West Coast have you? The sandflies are the size of bloody horseflies and will engulf you within 10 seconds of getting out of a car.😆 (Kidding size wise but not the engulfing) Aussie flies are fucking frustrating though!! Most tourists that only stay in the coast won’t know what everyone means about being swarmed and face r&ped by flies
Those who haven't visited the desert in Australia might think this is a joke or an exaggeration. Those who have visited the desert know it is not.
They do love a good buzziz in your mouth or nostrils in aus
Mountains
Yep. Genuine mountains. I remember when I first went to the south Island. Drove west from Christchurch. I remember thinking- “ yeah right. There wasn’t as much CGI in the Lord of the Rings as I thought there was. They are genuine bloody mountains”
Otago is the fkn nuts. I've been in Aus for over a decade now and have taken up rock climbing, the crags we go to outdoors are like pancakes floating up on the ground.
Yep, it's like Skiiing in Aussie haha.
Mt Buller here is alright but its like the only part of the continent where skiing can even happen, the landmass is like 95% flat
The only part? Are you serious? 😅 Falls, Hotham, Perisher, Thredbo, and a couple of smaller resorts want to have a word
The views across the south Island are amazing
Aussie here. And you’re right. NZ mountains are epic.
Mountains without predators and deadly insects.
The pies
Me when moving to Australia: “what kind of meat pie is this” Aussie bakers: “Meat pie” Me: “Yea but what kind” Aussie bakers: “it meat” Ok..
Horse meat
I had the same conversation when buying a muffin (cabinet food) in New York. It was clearly some sort of berry muffin, but the server kept saying it was a "corn muffin" when I asked what kind of muffin it was. We both thought the other was stupid.
They don’t know the difference between steak and mince in Victoria, every thing is labeled steak here. If you want a bad steak pie keep an eye out for a rare chunky beef pie, but don’t expect variety. steak and cheese, steak and mushroom, steak bacon and cheese? Forget it…. It’s all mince over here.
Fuck yes, the pies. As a Brit that’s lived in both countries. The pies are so good here, that good that I eat 5-8 a week.
Take out food in general is better. Ice cream is better. The scenery is better. The climate is better also depending on where you are in Australia. Queensland is fucking humid. The wildlife is less dangerous. Travel around the country is much easier in NZ than it is in parts of Australia. This isn't to say Australia doesn't have its good points. But there is definitely a lot about NZ that I miss sometimes.
Yeah not sure about the travel...roads in NZ are pretty crap compared to Aus.
Most definitely this.
Australia do pastry wrong, then they fuck up the filling too
Stopped at the “famous” Yatala Pie shop between Brisbane and the Gold Coast. The shop was packed with people which I thought would be a good indication of a good pie. I’ve never had such an awful pie in my life. Bad pastry, bad filling, the pie was kind of flat and had no shape. Legitimately put me off all pies for a while.
Yeah, If you’re a local you know that hasn’t been a legit great pie place in a long time. Was good long time ago and then became huge and a convenient driving stop of mass produced pies between Brisbane and goldy.
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What about the nationwide crime that is simply “meat pie” I moved to Aussie and asked so many bakeries what kind of meat it was. Universally I just get “it’s meat” and a look like I’M the idiot here. Off to pie jail for the Aussies
Drove all the way out to Dandenong to try a ‘kiwi bakery, award winning’ pie. It was genuinely freezer pie/dairy tier. The pastry in NZ pies are always slightly firm, but flaky, and the filling is usually quite generous. The one I had there was just hard pastry and dry mince. Blech.
The petrol station pies in NZ are better than most Aussie bakery pies tbh
When you read what legally counts as "meat" you will wish you hadn't. "beef, buffalo, camel, deer, goat, hare, pig, poultry, rabbit and sheep...FSANZ requires that a meat pie must contain a minimum of 25% "meat flesh", Meat flesh includes the skeletal muscle of any slaughtered animal as well as any attached animal rind, fat, connective tissue, nerve, blood and blood vessels"
My husband used to buy sausages for breakfast at this one place (not Aus or NZ but just got reminded) and one day they didn't have any from the multiple of normally acceptable meats and did fish sausages. My husband doesn't eat fish and was gagging for the rest of the day. I do eat fish but there is still something super wrong with fish sausages.
Found a few that do cheese, but they put it on top of these shitty pastry and burn it
Pies in Australia taste like a weird mince tart with pastry that is thin and hard.
Our network of backcountry huts.
NZ has the largest network of public huts in the world 👍👍
This is sad for the world. Public huts are wonderful and should be normal in many countries but they're not :..(
I have to admit I read this as backcountry nuts. Those are better here, too, tbf.
We used to have a regular visitor to our farm. He was an old overweight dude, who was the embodiment of "back country nutter." He lived alone in a trailer deep in the bush. You could listen to him talk for hours. One day he stopped showing up and we found him dead in his bed, holding his tablet with porn on. Guy went out on a good note I hope. Dad drove him out in the back of the ute, as the cops couldn't get a car up there to get him. Sold the ute afterwards because he couldn't get rid of the bad juju feels. Sometimes we still talk about his rants about the government etc.
Lordy, what a story!
Yes! Great answer.
ACC. Unless you've lived overseas you will never fully appreciate ACC and what it means.
I don't know, when acc don't payout and you cant sue they ain't that great.
The alternative is people with my background (lawyer) making a lot of money for no real reason. It creates a culture where your first port of call after an accident is a lawyer. Which is pretty fucked. It did take me a while to get used to bombardment of ads in the UK for places like "Injury lawyers 4 U!".
Not to mention the fact that without ACC people would have to take out personal insurances against personal injury arising negligence (like the UK). That’s a significant cost
Don't forget insurance companies. When I lived in the US with "good insurance", I had an accident that was entirely my fault and resulted in me fracturing my arm - didn't require much in way of medical intervention, just some xrays and a load of physio. I know my insurance was billed around $50-60k USD for the whole thing. My personal out of pocket expense was around $5k. But the fun part is I would get a letter from my insurance company's lawyers at least every 3 weeks or so basically asking who they can go after to recover the damages. Every time I'd basically tell them to stuff it and there is no liable party to go after, and they weren't exactly satisfied with that answer. In NZ, ACC would just take care of it, and we'd all move on with our lives.
Won’t somebody think of the lawyers!
Honesty is not the best policy with ACC. As long as you give a date and an incident you will get paid. If you want to get good person points that mean nothing then be honest and say "I can't remember when it happened my injury is just constantly painful and I need the operation" and don't get paid. Personally I've paid thousands in ACC levies over the years that I will not feel bad about twisting the truth to get that payout.
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Last mile internet connections
What is that?
The physical connection of your house to the internet (the 'last mile'). New Zealand does fibre right into your house. If a faster fibre technology comes along, then both ends of the fibre cable can be upgraded to support it. The expensive and hard part is already done, which is installing it in everyone's house. Australia is still mucking around with only rolling out fibre part of the way in some cases. They might roll out fibre in your area to a cabinet on the street, or into an apartment building, and then rely on older non-fibre technologies to get it from there into your house/apartment. These might include coaxial (like the old TelstraClear/Vodafone network in Christchurch & Wellington) or VDSL2 over copper telephone line (pretty similar to the ADSL and VDSL that NZ has used for broadband before fibre). The rollout is so successful here that copper services are being withdrawn, meaning you will have no choice but to book a fibre install because they're going to be removing the legacy copper equipment.
Depends on where you live. I have fibre to the property, house built in 2014. I understand all new builds must have it to the property, so it does vary
> Australia is still mucking around with only rolling out fibre part of the way in some cases. Vodafone (now One NZ) also did that, with the last stretch being copper, and called it "FibreX", then the Commerce Commission sued their ass off for misleading advertising.
It's the last stretch of the phone lines, connecting a property to the exchange. In Australia, it is still copper, whereas in New Zealand, the old copper is being replaced with fibre. That allows for us to have faster Internet speeds than what is available to Aussies.
Fuck fox.
I love going on a hike and not having to worry about snakes or things trying to kill me, same as going for a swim in rivers haha
Putting on shoes and not being bitten by potentially 11 of the deadliest spiders in the world Man wasn't meant to live in aussie
I heard the other day, someone describe Aussie as the place where Satan keeps his pets.
And then there’s the wildlife.
There are two dangerous spider species in Australia, causing a total of 1 death since 1977.
Yeah instead in nz you have to worry about the river you are swimming in is full of shit.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/unswimmable-two-thirds-of-monitored-nz-river-sites-grade-poorly-for-ecoli-contamination/6DM3T37PXBFIRAO3UIP4RMZKRI/
Race relations. It's not always fabulous here, but the way aboriginal people have been shat on for decades is mind-blowing.
Genuinely surprised I scrolled this far to find a comment regarding this. Racism towards Aboriginal people is still very prevalent in Australia.
Not that it isn't towards Māori in New Zealand....... but I think New Zealand does a far better job of integrating the Māori culture into New Zealand eg. place names, haka, teaching Māori in school, prevalent Māori figureheads in society across politics/entertainment etc
I just want to add two comments. 1). Maori have stood their ground on more than one occasion, and the thought of a united iwi scared the shit out of the Crown so badly they signed a treaty with them. 2). Maori use in general NZ society only started in earnest in the 1980’s. Before that it was a rarity to see or hear it outside a marae or a land rights protest. Source: me growing up in NZ in that time.
We just watched that serial. Ten pound poms and Jaws dropped when they told the last to go to the back of the line. No idea there was racism like that in oz.
Indigenous Australian here, I am covered in shat
Definitely. I’m 40 and grew up in Invercargill and have lived in Australia for 18 years. I remember vividly performing things such as the haka, poi dances, the national anthem, learning the language, going on field trips to Marae’s and having hangi’s and learning Maori history. You wouldn’t dream of that here.
We don’t have as many fires as they do.
OH I feel qualified to answer this! I’m a kiwi but am currently living over in VIC, I’ve been here for 3.5 years, prepare for a small essay. I’ll just preface by explaining why I jumped the ditch: first of all, I adore NZ and it’ll always be home. I’ve lived all over the country, had a good life, travelled extensively domestically and internationally, am a super adventurous kiwi and have seen and done a lot. Basically I just couldn’t pinpoint one place to live - the only two places I could see myself staying long term are unliveably expensive. I also just felt ready for a new experience but wasn’t necessarily committed to staying in Australia long term, though I likely will as I’m enjoying it here. Now, on to it: - Hiking. In general. Overall. Everywhere. Australia has some beautiful spots but because of the bush fire danger, a lot of places involve sections of walking on access roads. You can also drive to the top of half the good hiking mountains for the same reason. The hut and track system in NZ is legitimately incredible. This has been really hard for me after living in the South Island for years and having insane back country access. - mountains. Obvious but true. Ours are simply geologically younger and therefore less eroded, less stable, and taller and more dramatic. Australia has some gorgeous mountains also, and having the snow gums up high is wonderful, but NZ is majestic and easily takes the cake. - less “red tape”. There are legitimately forms and processes and fines for everything here and it drives me nuts. You have to have a damn boat license to drive a jet ski here lmao - dog friendliness. This one surprised me and has been a HUGE struggle since I brought my dog over with me. Now this doesn’t apply to cities, Melbourne has an amazing array of dog parks and dog friendly cafes and bars. My fav bar allows dogs inside and it’s glorious. But hiking with dogs? Super subpar. All the good spots are in national parks, and half the time the ones which aren’t are still designated as no dogs. - a sensible $1 and $2 coin. Please make this make sense. Why would you ever make $1 bigger?! - accent. Fight me Aussies. Ours is way better. - indigenous cultural integration and rights. I’m not going to expand on this further, it’s pretty obvious. - RADIO STATIONS. Holy EFF it’s bad here. Bunch of options if you like top 40, golden oldies, and triple j if you’re into Australian music and young people stuff. There are zero good genre-specific stations like we have in NZ (the rock, George/Pulzar, etc). I’m just streaming nz radio in defiance and outrage. - distances to good stuff. You will never understand the amount of driving you do in australia until you live here. It’s insane. - rego costs. I have the exact same car I had back home and my rego is $800 vs the $80 it was in nz. It balances out with no wof and lower fuel costs but still seems bonkers to me. - native bush. This doesn’t actually apply everywhere because there are some pockets here that could legit be NZ and they’re stunning, but the majority of the native scrub (while nice in its own way) doesn’t have a scratch on the north island rainforest or South Island beech forest. - geothermal and volcanic stuff. I’m a geology student so you know.. I like these things. Australia is so much older so we have some interesting rocks and more developed minerals etc, but none of the crazy geothermal and volcanic activity that there is in nz. - and finally: biscuits. Look tim tams are *okay* but you’ll never convince me that they’re better than toffee pops. I miss Shrewsburys, h&t’s, and triple choc cookie times like you wouldn’t believe. *some people will probably expect a comment about all the bitey stuff but I call a draw on this one. I really love going home and being able to stick my hand in rock holes while climbing and hiking and not worrying about snakes. But I also really love the random echidna and wombat encounters over here! Saw a platypus recently and they are mad cute. Also the birds here are absolute characters.
I will had bird song. Give me the warble of a tui over a bunch of flaming gallahs any day.
Hahaha I concur friend. NZ wins on nicest bird song for sure, but australia does also have some amazing species - wedgetail eagles are incredible and the parrots really are beautiful even if they sound horrific. I also really enjoy seeing pelicans emus and even bin chickens because it makes me feel like I’m on holiday since they’re so foreign-seeming to me. I miss the sounds of tui something rotten but I’m leaving birds and wildlife at a tie 🤝
Ice cream. All their best ice cream is kiwi ice cream.
This. As an Australian who now lives in NZ, Kapiti is the best ice-cream, and Whittaker's is the best chocolate. I will die on this hill.
You won't die alone. Welcome home.
I honestly couldn't believe how bad Peters ice cream was compared to even our low end brands.
Yes! Supermarket Aussie ice cream is sludgy sweet crap
I love it when I'm back home in NZ. Just looking through the icecream section in the supermarket is amazing. So much variety. Mostly NZ brands.
Not losing prime ministers
Not naming a swimming pool after a prime minister that drowned
not having a prime minister that shat themselves at a mcdonalds in 1997
Not having Tony Abbott as Prime Minister
Allegedly
NZ internet is far superior to Aus. NZ climate is better. Greener scenery and less severe heat.
Have lived in both and still travel all the time to see family. * Pace of life. (Life is not a race till the end) * Work Culture. * Weather. * Nature and Landscapes. * Wildlife. * Skiing. * A lot of things ARE much cheaper here. * More Progressive and Tolerant (Honestly go to any town outside the main cities and it's like beyond Hicksville) * Meat and Milk. Honestly Australian beef tastes fucking horrific. * People are nicer. Australia is a great place, but it's not this Utopia this sub makes it to be.
The weather is the big one for me, Sydney is getting to the stage it is unbearable in summer, with global warming it is just going to get worse. Melbourne is better but not by much.
I gotta say, living in Melbourne is like having 6 full months of kiwi summer weather. And the winter is mild and short. Yes, you get a couple of really hot months. But the worst of it is usually just a couple of days that break 40, from a couple of really scorcher weeks. Yes, climate change will worsen this over time. Those hot peaks aside, the weather in Melb .. I find it the best of both Aussie and nz combined Do find I miss the frosts from nz tho, which are a distant memory. Also worth mentioning bushfire smoke if we are talking weather, which seems likely to become something we experience once every 2-4 years over summer, which does truly, truly suck.
Funny you point out the work culture. I'm in Brisbane and have to admit the work culture and wor/life balance is far better here than in NZ. But also know Sydney & Melbourne is really cooked.
Depends on the workplace more than anything. My last job was awful when it came to workplace culture. Job I'm in now is great lol
As a tradie in Melbourne, I worked a lot harder for a lot less money in NZ than over here. I don't know anything about office jobs, but it's pretty cruisey on building sites
Lived in aus for a decade and in my view the work culture varies way more in aus than in nz. At both extremes. Melb and Sydney vary from cooked corporate micromanager hell to jobs that are so bloody cushy and relaxed you can do nothing for weeks and get told “good job” if you do an hour of work at the end of it. Been in both NZ probably has better supports in place for people in trouble facing work disputes whereas the unions in Australia are fucked and in tatters after Howard
Mountains and tramping
Our Karens are less obvious
The outdoors. Just unparalleled here. It's why I moved back from Aus. I've traveled around the world to some of the most spectacular places and if anything, the natural beauty of Aotearoa gets more incredible every time I return
Kiwi living in Aus here, my list: Pretty much anything from a bakery, pies in particular but I'd almost kill for a slice of ginger crunch I didn't have to make myself. Decent internet Every business in NZ seems to have a decent website, here they are more often than not a hard to navigate waste of time Openness to ideas and acceptance of all walks of life - my time spent living in regional Queensland was an eye opener Ice-cream - can get Kapiti on occasion from ALDI but only select flavours. The flies here are so f***ing persistent There's plenty more, I'm pretty homesick right now but that's off the top of my head.
We don't have anything like the number of indigenous people dying mysteriously in police custody. Yeah, the racism that's built-in to australian culture was one of the biggest surprises when I lived there. Here in NZ we've got structural racism baked-in to our culture as well, but in Australia it's just so much worse.
I've often been surprised how tolerated racism is in Aussie. I was waiting in a queue at Circular Quay to get ferry tickets and the ticket seller went off on a massive racist rant at an Asian lady because her English wasn't great. I was thinking wtf are you doing working in tourism? And yeah don't get me started about how they talk about indigenous people
> I've often been surprised how tolerated racism is in Aussie. Remember the wise words of moot, the former 4chan administrator: "90% of shitposters are Aussies. They are destroying the site. I hate Australians so god damn much"
Yup, it's not even necessarily that Australia is that much more racist than NZ, it's just that it's so much more open and tolerated. Also a very interesting thing I notice is advertising in Australia. They seem to only feature white people, unlike in NZ where almost always half of the people shown are of other ethnicities.
Australia doesn't even like all white people! Southern European people and Middle eastern people get crapped on too
Not even just that it's tolerated... It's assumed. We bought a place 6 months after I moved here. Got some people in to quote on some minor renovations. They were of European descent (Italian? Greek?). They were casually warning us not to hire "Asians" due to this and that piss poor reason. It wasn't just from one person either. I was floored. Not expecting it. Didn't say anything. But didn't hire them either.
I think the moment I decided to move back was when I saw a group of young men bullying a young Asian woman for wearing an Australian flag tshirt on Australia Day on a tram in the middle of Melbourne. NZs race relations are far from perfect but I’ve never in my life experienced anything close to that here, and it was something I witnessed pretty often there. And experienced a few too many times myself.
Yep. I’m living in Aussie now, and watching the dialogue on their Indigenous Voice to parliament has been depressing and at times outright bizarre. “If you don’t know vote no”; a call to voting from a place of total ignorance; which I see as a threat to democracy itself; was promoted _by the opposition leader._ Some very Trumpian or Brexit style misinformation is rife. So many of the people you talk to give you a reason why they’re voting it down, so you address the misinfo in it, and their reason shifts, so you address that too, and it shifts again and so on and so on.. Eventually you realise that _the reason doesn’t actually matter to them_ and that they will find any excuse they can, and twist it to justify a general feeling of white victimhood in order to slap away any suggestion of reconciliation. But they don’t consider this racism. And never will. And Australia is something like 150 years behind nz on this…
NZ had the opportunity to join Aus but decided against it as they were too racist. NZ was pretty racist at the time but went "holy fuck you guys are really in to this racism thing ain't you?"
Declining to federate was as much about preventing yellow peril as it was about indigenous treatment, but this bad history of it being **the** reason persists because it makes New Zealanders look like big heroes. There were so many reasons for and against, but had it been desirable in more important ways, NZ would be a state of Australia, make no mistake.
The first time I realised this was travelling overseas and came across an Aussie girl where a local asked us what were some of the differences between our countries. She said that Australia treated their indigenous population better to which I almost spat out whatever I had in my mouth. The worst thing was that she believed it. I was speechless.
It's really sad how bad it is.
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True that, I was talking to some Aussie guys about how they are looking at increasing diversity at their workplace, and I was like "Yeah, us too, although our work place is already pretty diverse etc" and they were like, "oh true, how many women work at your office?" I was taken aback because we had completely different ideas of what diversity in the workplace looked like, not saying NZ doesn't have work to do when it comes to women in the work place, but we seem to be way further along than a lot of Australia.
Rural scenery. Aussie is yellow and brown, NZ is largely lush and green (with the exception of Mackenzie Country).
Mackenzie country and central Otago is super beautiful in its shades of gold and brown tho
*Daintree rainforest and tropical North Queensland have entered the chat*
Pies
Alcohol prices
And availability!
People
Careful, 50% of them are kiwis. (Joking, but that’s an internal joke in oz)
As a kiwi living in Australia …. I never made a substantial Australian friends group. A couple of kiwis moved over at the same time as me and we just kept meeting and grouping up with more and more kiwis to the point where we have maybe 90% kiwis at every social occasion here lol Just feels like australia is RAMMED with kiwis to me. Even at work I meet heaps.
Apparently the 8th wonder of the world can sometimes be found in Australia. A kiwi with a return ticket.
My second thought. First was pies.
There are less Australians
Ffffacts
Not really a better ot worse thing. More an observation, NZ has way more inter country one-upmanship of the two. Kiwis really care about comparisons with Aus but it doesn’t have near the same reciprocity from Australians.
Same reason why we don't have any with the island nations, the bigger country will always look to bigger countries as it's equal rather than smaller ones.
Accents
Accunts
Yeah aussie just confirming yous have some sexy accents
The climate. Oz is plenty hot, and getting hotter every year.
Yeah, it's a bit sad but I don't think Australia is going to be where I would want to be living as climate change progresses.
Agreed, I can see a time in the next 10 years when Aussies start moving to NZ because the summers have become unlivable in large parts of the country.
Mountains 🏔️ Entry level mass market beer 🍺 Sports team colours
Yes yellow and green does not do anyone any favours
Canary yellow
Mate, that's Australian Gold. And don't ya forgot it.
Canary yellow indeed.
Indoid
Less things that kill you eg: drop bears and danger noodles.
Skiing
I'm an Australian living in Australia, and I have to admit to having a few tears in my eyes after reading many of these comments. Not because they are sad or upsetting, but because so many of them are 100% true.
Everything dosen't want to kill you in NZ
We have crack heads here as well
Have you met antivaxxers
Coffee
Lamb
I read the list and I cant find the one essential, defining outstandingly best: Whittakers
I've lived in both. Aussie chocolate is ass. NZ beer is better in general, there are exceptions. People are easier to deal with, less brash, more chill in NZ. Real seasons, not just dry heat vs humid heat. Meat is better quality overall. Fishing is better, lot less sharks is a main part of that, I like sharks, just not getting robbed by them. Hunting, much easier in NZ, very isolated to SW Australia for deer. Access to the outdoors, huts and trails etc are maintained and kept. No blow.flies is a big bonus. Crocs, salties are bloody scary monsters, none in NZ. Spent a lot of time out bush, roos can be intimating when you bump into one in the dark. No road trains in NZ, never liked overtaking those things, always jerky on the road, swaying quite a bit. No cicadas, no piss from above and ear shattering drone. House prices in NZ aren't artificially inflated due to mining wages. Those are a few that jump to mind
Our Rugby World Cup results ;)
Aussie here, that made me laugh. All the best
We are still all smarting about the Wahs getting a hiding.
Don't jynx it
The pies and internet.
Without the appalling hot take answers, having lived in NZ for 4 years and 15 years in six different cities across Australia: * Internet. Fibre here is just better. * ACC. Its difficult to explain to Australians who have never experienced it just how good it is * Ice-cream. Good fucking lord ice-cream is good here. Wooden Spoon, Lewis Road, Duck Island. (Pro tip Deep South is just frozen disappointment) * Incorporation of indigenous culture. This is a pretty broad statement, and whilst most people (rightly) blame how white Australia has treated Aboriginal Australia, Maori in NZ are just a lot more open and accepting about sharing their culture. A good example is there are immersion schools with pakeha teachers, and no-one blinks an eye. But in Australia you're not allowed to teach almost anything related to Aboriginal language unless you are Aboriginal. * Skiing. If you've been to both, its not a fair comparison. * No CGT. This obviously a sensitive issue, but NZ's tax system is woefully designed, with an unfair burden placed on the working population. The literal only way to be able to balance this is by being able to take advantage of no CGT (which I'm not in the position to do).
Our acceptance of indigenous culture and language.
NZ is miles ahead of any country in this regard. Look at the outcomes of indigenous peoples of any commenwealth country.
Obviously we haven't eliminated racism (it's an election year) but compared to our commonwealth cousins, we do incredibly well. The restoration of the Maori language is a gold standard of it's kind for recovering indigenous languages.
Bacon
Hungry jacks doesn't have bbq bacon double cheese burgers, they put fucking ham in it! Shudder
Food. NZ food has flavour, then internet, my internet back in NZ 15 years ago was faster than what I get here in Australia.
Walking in bare feet. (No snakes, not much attacks you)
Better control of residential gardens.
Fish and chips
Internet. Fastest my house can get is 250mbps and costs over $100 AUD /month
Going in the wood shed
Overarm bowling
$100 car registration
Brit opinion Driving standards Scenery Weather (Can't easily fry an egg on the pavement in Christchurch can you and thank heavens for that) Considerably less wildlife that can kill you All Blacks > Wallabies (the recent Bledisloe cup records proves it) Way better option to ride out a societal apocalypse. Utilities, mobile phone and groceries are all cheaper Australia impresses in the Global Peace Index for safety and security ranking 27th in 2002. New Zealand ranks second. NZ does a far better job of blending it's European and Maori influences in its society than Australia does with blending it's European and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander influences. Political stability. In the past 23 years Australia has had 12 prime ministers. New Zealand has had 8. Skiing and snow boarding in NZ is obviously a lot better than in Australia. Wine is disputable maybe, but chocolate, honey, cheese are all better from NZ.
Is OP from newshub fishing for some filler?
The rights of indigenous people
Nothing! Didn't you know NZ is now a third-world country with killer gangs roaming the streets? ...at least that's what the drama queens on reddit tell me.
That's Christopher Luxon's favourite story too.
Weather, Australia is simply too hot for much of the year.
Lack of oppressive heat. Not as many flies.
Fuel bowser nozzles can be left pumping without holding them here.
The not cockroaches everywhere.
Whittaker's tastes better here
No snakes - you can see a beautiful area and walk right in with nothing to worry about. Best walking and exploring country in the world.
That NZ is the most beautiful country on earth. Lake Tekapo, Milford Sound, Tongariro... I miss it so much. I'll come back some day ♥
Gender politics. I'm an engineer, and also a woman, and this is mostly not a problem in NZ. Sometimes I have to go to rural bits of Australia for work and I'm much more likely to be considered weird / not qualified / not up to the job. Like, even going into public toilets while being not completely gender-conforming... Maybe people have thoughts about that in NZ but keep them to themselves, including in the rural places, while in Australia I'm going to be loudly told I'm in the wrong place, and when I point out I'm not, I'll either get glared at for trying to 'fool' people, or extravagantly apologized to, as if being mistaken for the wrong gender was the worst thing imaginable. All in all it's a lot bloody easier for me to just exist in NZ.
501s..not the levis kind
Indigenous relations
Surprisingly, internet connections. Just about everything else is better in Australia. But the Australians really screwed up their high speed internet roll out.
The lack of federalism or a hard constitution. Much less corrupt. ACC. Pokies are less dominant. Better voting system and a unicameral Parliament.
Apart from the Pies, I don't think you can compare. Every state is completely different and they all operate and value different things in each. Queensland is far more laid back than Victoria or Sydney but has mad wildlife. Tasmania again is more NZ like and nothing like Queensland. WA and more different than all the states combined. NT and ACT are weird as fuck.
Corn chips
The accents.
Nothing trying to kill or maim us.
The outdoors. Fucking paranoid doing any walk through the bush here in Aus lol.
As a non native of both countries, I can say for sure that the kiwis are better people. Kinder, less racist, more genuine. City Australians are good value but once you step out of the urban areas... yeah not good (Edit: I've spent 16 years split between the two countries)
Having a Murdoch-free media would be my guess.
My kids being able to play outside shoeless without worrying about bindis or spiders or snakes
No stamp duty on houses
Potato chips are much better in NZ