Comment by timcederman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by timcederman | Hacker News Reader

As a New Zealander who grew up in Australia and now lives in the US, let me start by saying what I love about New Zealand:

1) The culture is for the most part pretty awesome. Friendly people, love of sport, lots of folks with gumption and can-do attitude, appreciation of nature, etc etc.

2) One of the most beautiful countries in the world.

3) Politically well-centred, and doesn't brown-nose the way Australia does.

Now let me enumerate my issues with New Zealand:

1) Not the paradise this article would have you believe. I feel a lot safer in California than I ever did when I was living in New Zealand.

2) A bit of a backwater - so far from anything, very socially isolated, living in a small pond basically.

3) A negative/tall-poppy attitude. Lots of complaining, "make sure you know your place" feeling.

The entrepreneurs I've worked with from NZ were all amazing people, but being there was holding them back.

Overall - there's no way I can imagine moving back there anytime soon, but I do love it as a country.

It's interesting that you feel safer in California.

As a New Zealander visiting America I felt quite unsafe just seeing police offers with guns holstered. Just the idea that someone standing nearby could decide to outright kill me if they decided to dislike me made me very uneasy.

In New Zealand, I could (though I obviously would not) walk up and punch a police officer in the face, and while I could reasonably expect to have the police officer respond in kind, there is no chance that I would fail to live through the experience.

I didn't feel confident that this was the case in the US.

>1) Not the paradise this article would have you believe. I feel a lot safer in California than I ever did when I was living in New Zealand.

Wow, never would have guessed that. Could you elaborate?

Never had an issue in the South Island, but living in Wellington, and when I visited Auckland, I had surprising confrontations on numerous occasions.

Your milage may vary. I live in Auckland, retain a presence in Wellington and feel ridiculously safe in both.

I lived, stayed and travelled all over the USA and felt a lot less safe there by comparison with NZ, UK, Canada and Australia. South Africa on the other hand was off the scale dangerous.

We have our issues, as all locations do, but it's a marvelous existence, and a great place to consider for start-ups.

As an Australian i felt far safer in NYC and San Fran than say in Melbourne or Sydney, which went against my expectations. I think both Australia and NZ are extremely tolerant of youth crime which is a big part of the problem. That combined with limited legal protection for those acting in self defence means you often feel like criminals and gangs have greater rights than ordinary citizens.

I think it depends heavily on which parts of the cities you visit. Tourists don't tend to visit the slummy areas.

That combined with limited legal protection for those acting in self defence means you often feel like criminals and gangs have greater rights than ordinary citizens.

This is nonsense. You have the right to use equal force in return, and you are expected to retreat if possible. What it means is you can't shoot someone who's only threatening you with their fists.

And if you're talking about gangs, Australian gangs are not a patch on US gangs - US self defence laws have certainly not given them less gang influence than here.

> I think it depends heavily on which parts of the cities you visit. Tourists don't tend to visit the slummy areas.

I was walking the streets of Brooklyn and Queens in not-so-touristy areas and didn't run into any problems or feel threatened. I got the feeling that there might have been dangerous people around, but if you didn't mess with them they wouldn't mess with you.

> This is nonsense. You have the right to use equal force in return, and you are expected to retreat if possible. What it means is you can't shoot someone who's only threatening you with their fists.

As a somewhat pudgy software engineer who hasn't been in so much as a scuffle since primary school, knowing that I can "use my fists" against a street hardened, violent thug does not exactly leave me feeling empowered. And while I would not like to shoot anyone whatever the circumstances, I would like to feel I could use a firearm to deter someone from violently assaulting me.

> And if you're talking about gangs, Australian gangs are not a patch on US gangs

Your right, there is a big difference. Gangs in the US appear to be well organized, hierarchical, structured operations, "gangs" in Australia are more like packs of disaffected youth roaming the streets looking for trouble. And I may be way off here, but while the US might have a lot of gang violence, it seems to be largely gang-on-gang violence. The incidents of random, senseless, violent attacks against innocent bystanders by violent youths and thugs - usually without any other motive such as theft - is a bewildering common occurrence in Australia, and a well-known and widely talked about issue in contemporary Australian culture. Here is a very recent example which is typical of the kind of stories that we hear about every few days: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/mans-neck-slashed-...

As a somewhat pudgy software engineer who hasn't been in so much as a scuffle since primary school, knowing that I can "use my fists" against a street hardened, violent thug does not exactly leave me feeling empowered.

So you're subscribing to the idea that carrying a knife or gun is going to help? But more importantly, note this part of your quote: "hasn't been in so much as a scuffle since primary school". What, exactly, do you feel you need to defend yourself against? You want to bring sidearms into a nation to protect yourself from 'not so much as a scuffle since primary school'? The US has major problems with handguns and crime, but the genie is out of the bottle there.

The incidents of random, senseless, violent attacks against innocent bystanders by violent youths and thugs - usually without any other motive such as theft - is a bewildering common occurrence in Australia, and a well-known and widely talked about issue in contemporary Australian culture

I might be wrong here, but the 'random, senseless attacks' were a large part of NYC until the very recent efforts in making the city much safer. It's not something that is peculiar to the Australian psyche.

But yes, around nightclub districts there is a problem. Even your linked article it's talking about the heart of a nightclub district at 2:30am. But in reality street crime is no worse here than anywhere else. I think you're falling into the trap that Australians so like to fall into, claiming that the country is always going downhill and is worse than anywhere. It's like the people that claim our country is the most racist in the world. Sure, we have some problems with racism, but what countries don't? Whenever we have these discussions, there's almost never any actual comparison to contemporary countries - it's habit for us just to assume we're the worst (because like the US, we like to think we're #1, it seems :)

It's actually really hard to accurately compare crime directly between countries (excluding homicide). A punch-on between a couple of guys can end up with five charges being laid in Australia (ascending charges, one of them will stick), and is listed as 5 charges in the stats. NZ does this as well, but not many other places do. In contrast the US doesn't even bother publishing those stats, they'll generally only publish aggravated assaults, which are with either a weapon or resulting in severe injury.

Definitely agree here. There's a violent undercurrent in New Zealand that you'd never see in 10 days. Gangs & drugs are also a big problem.

Tell us more? I'm sure I'm not the only considering NZ as a candidate for future residence. Getting inside info is invaluable.

Same for me.

It really depends on where you are. There is a lot of gang activity in the more impoverished areas - even though NZ is a welfare state the benefits are set at a starvation level, which leads to the associated crime.

It would pay to ask locals what they think of an area before moving there. In general it's fairly safe though, the big gangs are more interested in selling pot than getting locked up. The youth gangs are full of angry teenagers as usual, but they're not a big issue. You can walk down the nightlife areas at 3am and not get mugged unless you go down a dark alley.

My background - expat brit who moved here for high school, been here for 16 years now. Lived in the lower north island for all of that time.

WTF. I don't get how people say Auckland is unsafe. I've lived here for pretty much my whole life and I have never run into any trouble. I'm often in town on a Friday/Saturday night usually till around 4am and I've never gotten into a fight or anything. I usually walk home by myself and have never had any trouble. People don't carry weapons here, and if you do ever get jumped or whatever, your not going to end up in hospital.

If I compare it Melbourne (where I lived last year) I had probably more trouble with flipped out P heads then I ever have had in my whole life. There was multiple occasion where I thought we were going to be jumped by Samoan/Tongan people (maybe it was a coincidence but it was every time) and I found that if you talked to them, most of them were from South Auckland so after I got talking to them they seemed to leave us alone. But once again, nothing like this has happened before in NZ.

You honestly never see gang people around, you never see people cracked out of their mind walking around Queen St/K Rd.

I've only been in to LA once but I imagine Auckland would be a lot safer due to the fact that it's a much smaller compact city and there's no guns here. Plus the number of cops around has literally quadrupled in the last few months from what I noticed. It's kind of annoying cause they literally pull over 50% of cars driving through K Rd but hey whatever least it's safe.

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