I still await your call up from the Bench. I’ve reformed, I’m a good bloke these days.

Brendan Fevola

Ultimately this is what leads to there being Indian-Australians, Samoan-Australians, Chinese-Australians and so on – as they take aspects of the culture of their parents and aspects of the culture of Australia and make it their own. This happens to varying degrees, depending entirely on how much they identify with a given cultural practice.

As a Kiwi who has migrated to Australia, my experience is markedly different from the regards that the cultural divide between Australia and New Zealand isn’t as great as that between India and Australia (or Fiji and Australia). But I still find some differences. For instance, Australians are far more overtly proud of their country internationally, whereas New Zealanders tend to be more reserved, aside from in rugby (either that or we’re just picking our battles carefully). New Zealanders seem more to be more willing to embrace aspects of Maori culture, whereas Australians appear to be keeping indigenous culture at arms length (though I suspect that is because New Zealand is some 20 to 30 years ahead of Australia in terms of the journey of reconciliation, and also had a markedly different interaction between the indigenous culture and European settlers).

There’s certainly some parts of Australian culture I admire – for instance I think Australians celebrate success far better than New Zealand does. We’re more willing to cut tall poppies down, which ultimately I feel is a bad thing. However I’m proud of how much more liberal New Zealand is compared to Australia, and how far less religious we are.

It’s certainly an interesting discussion, and one that needs to be hand. Just how do we decide our own culture.