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July 15, 2026 — 7:30pm
Not particularly meaning to eavesdrop at the restaurant of a luxury lodge on idyllic Waiheke Island, only 45 minutes by ferry from Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city, I can’t help but overhear the conversation beside me.
“The Australians aren’t like us,” a New Zealand houseguest informs a holidaying French couple planning to travel to Australia. “They’re more like the Americans.”
It’s not the first time I’ve heard such a comment from a Kiwi in their own country, a place that after countless visits as an (Australian-born) travel writer and editor I’ve come to love and admire. I’ve also been led to conclude that the close relationship between our two nations is considerably more complex than it would appear or has been portrayed.
Once, after a sheep station tour (yes, really) outside the city of Napier on the North Island, the owner of the property fully within my earshot told a group of Americans that “the Australians aren’t like us”, though I noted he prudently omitted the aforementioned “they’re more like the Americans” assertion.
On both occasions, I was more intrigued than offended; I’d argue that the nature of Australians falls somewhere between the Americans and the Canadians rather than being “like the Americans”, with the Kiwis being more like the Canadians than even the Canadians themselves!
Beyond the extraordinary outpouring of grief and affection in Australia following the death of Sam Neill, the much-loved Irish-born but New Zealand-raised actor, there’s the opportunity to reflect, for what it’s worth, on the relationship between our two nations.
Neill effortlessly, or seemingly so, straddled the so-called ditch like some trans-Tasman titan along with Kiwis such as the gifted singer and songwriter Neil Finn, who achieved enormous Australasian and international chart success through his bands Crowded House and Split Enz.
It all could have been so different, cuz.
In the early 20th century, New Zealand was a single decision away from surrendering its sovereignty to Australia. The smaller nation declined an offer to join the newly formed Federation of Australia, with our constitution still officially including a clause allowing the land of the long white cloud.
Even so, during tough economic times for a natural resources-deprived, even more isolated New Zealand (read: most of the time), the idea of becoming a state of Australia has been a subject of passing, if not occasionally intense, discussion among Kiwis.
In fact, in Auckland recently, I was surprised to hear a Kiwi colleague who has lived in Australia and cognisant of New Zealand’s ongoing economic malaise remark that “we should just get into bed with Australia and be done with it”.
No post-federation Australian politician to my knowledge has ever made a Trump-like demand, akin to his 51st-state Canada impertinence, that our trans-Tasman cousin become the seventh state.
And, speaking of politics, no Australian has ever matched the global notoriety of Jacinda Ardern, the former New Zealand prime minister and non-darling of the right, who is nowadays resident in Sydney. That from a country of fewer than 5.5 million citizens.
It’s much too tempting to not point out that at the 2024 Paris Olympics, a combined Australia-New Zealand team would have come third in the gold medal tally, displacing Japan, just behind the US and China.
If only the Kiwis, with a GDP per capita of $US49,591 compared with $US65,130 for Australia, could replicate our relative economic success.
Of course, Australians have a well-documented tendency to adopt New Zealanders as our own when it suits us. But once, when asked how he felt about being an honorary Australian, Sam Neill replied, in his typically wry fashion, that he was comfortable about it provided he was always allowed to go home.
Among the attributes Australians admired about Sam Neill, aside from his dry Kiwi wit – subtly distinct from the Australian variety – was his uncommon humility. It’s arguably a national character trait more associated with New Zealanders and Australians than Americans.
While New Zealand-born Russell Crowe identifies as an Australian, and with some of his foibles over the years associated with those of Australians, Sam Neill managed to maintain his New Zealand identity while enjoying one of the strongest connections of any high-profile Kiwi export to Australia.
It’s ironic, if not a little melancholic, that he should die in Australia and not his beloved New Zealand. It almost prompts the question – is it possible for someone to have two state funerals in two separate nations?
Australians are often thought of as confident, if not brash and at times uncouth. In contrast, the world view of New Zealanders is of a humble, gentler, tolerant (some critics would contend “woke”), almost absurdly over-achieving race based on population and the drain of people from it.
(Paradoxically, though, there’s been no more ruthless and clinical sporting unit than the New Zealand All Blacks rugby side.)
The reality is that while we may have adopted Neill as an Australian, the qualities we most admired in him were mainly New Zealand ones.
The humour that won him a new audience during the pandemic, when he entertained the world with his so-called “Cinema Quarantino” online takes, largely on bucolic Kiwi life, were classic absurdist Kiwi comedy.
They say that no two countries are as much alike as Australia and New Zealand, and true enough, too. But what I’ve always liked about visiting New Zealand are those times when, at first, you think it’s a kind of Australia-lite – and then discover it’s nothing like it.
Vale Sam, and, whichever nationality we may both may be more akin to, vive la différence, vive la similarité.
Anthony Dennis is editor of the Traveller title in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
