WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A NEW ZEALANDER IN 2003? What depths of patriotism must we display to be a real Kiwi? To be a "K-1, W-1, till the day we die?"
   Is Russell Coutts—who achieved the not insignificant task of winning our nation the Auld Mug twice over in the past decade—really, as Mr. Beale states, a national traitor worthy of deportation? Or are we, as Jim Belich recently described¹⁶, suffering from the "Kiwi Curse": a "collective mean streak, a propensity to spasms of narrow-mindedness, the tall poppy syndrome, negative egalitarianism and voluntary totalitarianism?"
   Are we a close-minded community esconced at the farflung bottom of the South Pacific, or postmodern worldly world citizens ready to take on the challenges of the new knowledge economy? Do we really need to just get over ourselves? Or is it perhaps time we made a concerted attempt to actually find out who we really are?

 In the past two weeks here in Aotearoa NZ, two interesting events have happened. Both are yet to play themselves out fully.
   First event: we've lost three races in the America's Cup final. The first loss, a humiliating dunking for the Kiwi yacht with a snapped mast adding insult to injury. The next two races, much closer, but no less shameful given the context of the first. Our nation's now going through a collective hand-wringing at the prospect of losing the Cup. Just when we've finally gotten over all the anti-Auckland Jafa hatred connected with the Cup race¹⁷, we face the prospect of the golden calf going offshore as the result of Russell Coutts—an Aucklander!—doing what Aucklanders do best: following the money trail, wherever it might take them. Then, to cap it all off today, news that all those black "Loyal" silver fern flags we've been flying were actually Made in China!¹⁸ Oh, and all the denial!
   Second event: the "Knowledge Wave" emerging leaders forum, our nation's go at bringing together three or four hundred of its leading lights to examine NZ's place in the world - mostly economically, but also culturally.
   Last Wednesday, stuck at home with an unwell child, I switched on the telly to find not much yachting but instead wall-to-wall coverage of Knowledge Wave on Sky. So I tuned in.
   Day One was a good watch: I liked Jim Belich, was intrigued by Mike Moore, and found Australian High Court Justice Michael Kirby's speech heartfelt and important. That he talked with casual regard about his past sexuality embroilings spoke volumes about how our Australian neighbours have progressed on important social issues. It's debatable, however, whether NZ has progressed a similarly distance. I caught a snippet of an interview with one of the newspaper-nominated emerging young leaders, who rabbited on about how our economic decline was as a result of the decline of Christian values in our society. The "Voice of a New Generation." And, on video the next day, I watched the audience squirm as slick American presenter Richard Florida talked about the rise of the cultural class, and how he measures its presence through a "Bohemian Index" and a "Gay Index". Press coverage of Florida's speech similarly dwelt unhealthily on the "gay" issue¹⁹, which perhaps is a hint that our country, and indeed Auckland, would likely rank low on such indicators. Personally, I think Florida's a genius, and Kiwi economic boosters of big expensive stadia, conference centres and museums would do well to listen to him (Bob Harvey, are you out there?).
   Day Three's highlights, which I read online²⁰, were Saatchi's sage Kevin Roberts, and OECD expatriate francophone Simon Upton. In my job with an environmental NGO back in San Francisco, I became close friends with Simon Upton's former PA, who had nothing but compliments for him, so my expectations were high. On a break from his role running the OECD environment programme in Paris, Mr. Upton indeed delivered. Here's a highlight:

   World citizens, indeed. But how we reconciliate the conservative Christian values of Celtic rurality with our growing Polyfornian hedonist populace²¹ remains unanswered.

   One of the more intriguing theories put forward by Mr. Upton was that of drawing upon overseas Kiwis to try and make up for our smallness and our distance. This line of thought is very similar to that of Kevin Roberts, who promotes this very idea on his own (Saatchi-supported) website: nzedge.com. Simon Upton had the following to say: 

The above statement encouraged me to do a rather delicate deconstruction of his statement.
   Question 1: What about all those foreign-born people living here? Shouldn't they be given the complementary right to politically connect with their homelands? And what's the impact if we did so?

   Let's look at the math.

NOTES:

(1) http://www.nzherald.co.nz/

(2) In his speech at the "Knowledge Wave Leadership Forum" in Auckland, NZ, 19.2.2003.

(3) Team NZ last year undertook a tour of rural NZ with the stated aim of "taking the enthusiasm beyond Auckland."

(4) See: The Warehouse Loyal to China? http://www.nzherald.co.nz/americascup/acstorydisplay.cfm?storyID=3197861 &thesection=sport&thesubsection=americascup&thesecondsubsection=general

(5) Gay Index used to rank hottest cities: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3101675&thesection=ne ws&thesubsection=general&reportid=812597

(6) http://www.knowledgewave.org.nz/

(7) Including pretty much all those bohemian backpacker visitors to our shores. Oh, and its worth mentioning that the Polyfornians in the Knowledge Wave audience were few and far between (unless you count Dave Dobbyn?).

(8) The same might go for the children of these foreign-born residents, who could likely visit their parent's home country regularly and have stronger connections there than here.

(9) Andrew Beale uses "Kiwi" and "NZer" the same as Simon. Perhaps the simple solution for all of us would be to not strip Coutts of his citizenship, but to individually take an oath never to call him a Kiwi ever again??