Spotlight on NZ

One degree of separation

Frances Manwaring | 28 June 2009 | 2 Comments

Imagine living in a country that is the roughly the size of France with a population just over four million.   Well that's the reality for us in New Zealand.  Our total population is smaller than a significant number of the world's largest cities.  In fact it's half or less than half of the likes of Seol, Sao Paolo, Bombay, Jakarta, Karachi, Istambul, Mexico City, Shanghai, Tokyo, New York, Bangkok, Beijing, Delhi and London, which range from 10+ million to 7+.  It's about the same size as Sydney, Wuhan, Singapore and Calcutta.

 

Granted, thanks to Captain James Cook and a succession of other importers, we have a lot of sheep  - some 38.6 million sheep in New Zealand, down from a mind-boggling peak of 70.3 million in 1982.  Those were the days when sheep jokes were all there rage and there were 22 of them to every one of us.  Now there are only a paltry 8.  Still leaves us people as something of an ethnic minority, but hey, who's counting.  Well, actually, Statistics New Zealand for one!

 

Anyway, the point is that such a small population is good and bad.  On the one hand, it's a contstant source of amazement that 4million tax payers cough up enough cash on an annual basis to keep the country functioning as a first world going concern, with New Zealand personal income tax rates of 22.7% up to $48K per annum, rising to 38.6% for those on big bucks!  (i.e. around the $70K mark).

On the other hand, rather than the usual six degrees of separation, in New Zealand, it's more like one.  And why does that matter?  It matters because it means people are more accessible.  There's a sense of community.  If you don't know someone that you wish to meet, you can bet your bottom dollar you will have a contact who does.  That means you have a better than fighting chance of speaking direct to everyone from the highest in the land, including senior politicians and people like eminent scientist Professor Paul Callaghan, head of the prestigious Macdiarmid Institute and our keynote speaker for ExpoNZ's inaugural event on 16 July.  It means people are pretty egalitarian in their approach - you don't encounter the human EA/PA barricade - and it makes for a pretty cohesive, caring society.   It also means our environment is reasonably clean and certainly green, because there aren't that many of us per square kilometre to pollute it, despte our best efforts!

But...and there is always a but...it's like living in a small town as opposed to a city.  Everyone knows what everyone else is doing.  There's little anonymity.  People are generally unpretentious and un-impressed by pomp and circumstances.  Flat organisational structures are the norm and big egos can easily be deflated.

However, love it or hate it, it's one of the defining characteristics of this country on the edge of the world, and something that people thinking about engaging with us need to factor into their thinking.

Tags: New Zealand life, sheep, population, community