Early Edition with Kate Hawkesby

"It’s a fantastic place to grow up as a kid... and it’s also a great place to retire... it's the in-between bits that are tricky,” said Neil Finn when once asked what NZ was like. It’s the same now I’d argue. He also said, and bear in mind this is many, many years ago, that it was "the worst place in the world to be if you had any ambition.” That’d be true now too I reckon. And at the risk of sounding like Marc Ellis and all the other Kiwis bailing, we have definitely lost our mojo. We are backwards on too many metrics. Australia - where I’ve been three times in the last month —Sydney and Melbourne— is more forward focussed than we are, it’s going places, people are upbeat - my sister's currently in Queensland, she says it’s the same there. Here, it feels like we are still mopping up from a pandemic and a shut down that we should've bounced back from ages ago. The fact we haven’t yet, or don't want to, or don't know how to, speaks volumes about where we are and who we are. Focussed on all the wrong things, he