7x7 good post - thank you. Why some kiwi bird would go to Oz specifically to have a sprog I don't know as she can just as easily and cheaply have it here - may be she got pregnant in Oz too which would, on the balance of probabilities, make you at least 50% responsible. There could well be other factors involved, eg family, neighbours etc, therefore I suspect a two traffic exists in those cases.
As far as Oz's on the Kiwi dole; it's not something that comes up but I suspect Oz taxpayers here pretty well cover it as do Kiwi taxpayers there. To the best of my knowledge you don't have to be married to a kiwi to get the job but, if that is in fact the case, I stand corrected but I doubt Human Rights and Employment legislation permits such discrimination.
If you follow the (now closed) 'Air NZ to follow Ansett' thread and extract the wake up calls from my postings you might just discern that, as far as the AN debacle is concerned, I'm in close agreement with the causes, ie; look at NewsCorp, TNT, the Oz government decisions and Nelsonian eyes etc
as well as the incompetence of the Air NZ board in buying into the airline in the first place, albeit at the implicit if not overt invitation of the Australian government.
Where I disagree with some posters on this thread and the other, and some more too if the truth be known, is holding a poor working stiff like me, or for that matter the poor working stiffs in senior management drawn from both airlines who tried to make it work (and failed) personally responsible for the collapse and wishing the same on me AND the wider NZ populace. To de facto impound the NZ PM's aircraft days after she had got the Oz PM off his Tampa boat people hook was hardly the act of a friend, as the acceptance of unwanted boat people so obviously was. Smacks of selective memory and selective knowledge. Whether we like it or not Australia and New Zealand are each other's closest friends and taking cheap shots when things get tough do not help that position.
It's just been on the news that QF have chartered Air Pacific B737s to fly QF(Australia) domestic flights in New Zealand because the Australian Government refuses to allow foreign carriers (
VB?) on domestic routes. Do glass-houses and stones spring to mind?
