This is the difficulty about talking about it without sounding big-headed, but you cannot speak of New Zealand now without my involvement in what it has become.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
An interesting thing about New Zealand, you know, literature is that it really didn't begin in any real sense until the 20th century.
I see the great continuities in New Zealand history as being decency and common sense and up until now when we've confronted these things we've been able to talk them through, and I'm sure we will with this issue as well.
New Zealand is the only country I know well enough to write about. It can sometimes lead to complications.
I've had a quiet fascination with New Zealand for most of my life.
There's a very go-to kind of attitude in New Zealand that stems from that psyche of being quite isolated and not being able to rely on the rest of the world's infrastructure.
So I think that we're in a very heightened and somewhat unusual period of politics and polling around the countries that New Zealanders take close interest in.
Trust me: I don't wish I was a New Zealander.
I think it's inevitable that New Zealand will become a republic and that would reflect the reality that New Zealand is a totally sovereign-independent 21st century nation 12,000 miles from the United Kingdom.
I've been round Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, and China in the last few months and the message that I've been taking is that New Zealand is building an up market dynamic into a connected economy. And that we are not the old-fashioned, ship mutton kind of product the people associate their export in work.
New Zealand is not a small country but a large village.