I have been slow to concur with the clamour to "catch up" with our friends across the ditch.
Bigger wages seem small consolation for having to worry about where the next drop of water might come from in a hot country with snakes, bush fires and too many flies.
But one thing I envy is their political shenanigans.
Compared with our feeble efforts, Oz politics seem riveting.
Their politicians appear more colourful, even when they are in what seems to be a dull election campaign (judging by that tedious television debate complete with the maddening audience approval /disapproval/male/female worms).
In one of our election campaigns, would you have previous leaders slagging each other off as the silver bodgie Bob Hawke and Paul Keating are?And what about the just-screened telemovie based on the book written by Hawke's second wife Blanche d'Alpuget?
Apparently it has a scene (clearly before they were married) where she sneaks up to Hawke's prime ministerial hotel room disguised in a red wig to be admitted by a press secretary with the unfortunate nickname Grunter.
Grunter then skulks off to the bathroom with his Walkman on full to muffle the bedroom bliss of Bob and Blanche.
In New Zealand, we have steered clear of much exposure of sex scandals, which is probably a good thing for politicians' family members.
We have had other things to gasp at the horrifying sights of Rodney Hide on the dance floor, appearing like a creature from the deep in an unfortunately unzipped wetsuit, and pushing our tolerance for colour in his hideous yellow jacket.
To be fair Rodney has not been the only bad dancer (think Pete Hodgson and Trevor Mallard without shuddering).
A few years back we had Jenny Shipley's see-through sleeves when Bill Clinton came to visit; Helen being told off for not wearing skirts; raging Bill English looking less than hunky in his boxing shorts.
John Key has yet to learn he does not look good in a T shirt.
Lockwood Smith graced newspaper pages at least once in his budgie smugglers, but hopefully as the Speaker he understands how easy it would be to undermine his authority by such behaviour.
He will be wise enough to know some of the criticism he might attract would be sheer envy from his fatter and unfitter parliamentary colleagues.
It has taken Australian Liberal Leader Tony Abbott a while to get to this point.
Another fitness fanatic who takes part in ironman events, in recent years he has had to endure ribbing over his penchant for being snapped in his budgie smugglers.
In this election campaign he has suffered the ignominious and possibly health-threatening stunt of publicly burning a pair of rainbow coloured ones as some sort of symbolic gesture to the Australian electorate.
It has not stopped the nonsense, however, with him now being stalked by some Labour Party supporter brave enough to sport the silly swimwear.
Is it any wonder that Tony does not appear to be doing that well with women voters? We can only speculate what part appearance plays in that.
It may be hard for women to expunge the almost naked image of Tony from their thoughts.
Who can possibly expect to be taken seriously when their private parts are barely concealed? And, lest you think I am being sexist, I feel similarly about those women whose cups runneth over.
Labour leader Julia Gillard does not appear to have fallen into (or out of) that trap.
Even in a pic I found of her in a strapless evening gown there was no suggestion anyone would be cleavaged.
My unscientific view would be that women are traditionally quite harsh judges of other women, particularly if they have any inkling men might be sucked in by good looks rather than good ideas.
I would be surprised if there were many of the sisterhood who would vote for women candidates purely on the grounds of gender.
As someone whose life has been one long bad hair day, I confess I was briefly wildly envious of Julia.
Wasn't she the luckiest woman in the world to have her own live-in hairdresser, in Tim Mathieson, a man who says he's learned to blow wave in his sleep?But then I noticed that her hair never moves.
It made me feel so warm and fuzzy towards Jools, I could almost forgive her for her "moving forward" meaningless mantra.
I realised I needed an impartial election commentator.
I've chosen my own worm from the garden, Hermi the hermaphrodite.
Clearly, it is not going to be blinded by gender, but I should be able to tell whether it is moving forward.
While I am not a betting woman, I reckon Hermi will make Paul the Octopus look like a rank amateur.
Fair dinkum.
Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
