Shamabil Yacob

And that comparison with Australia was useful because it helped us understand what the numbers meant.

This year, we know that we're still behind them.

But what we are also interested in is the change that we've seen over the last 12 months.

There was probably more change than I expected.

I didn't expect in 12 months I'd see the erosion that we saw.

But also same with Australia.

I didn't expect the massive opposition to immigration that's come through in the data.

Of course, we've seen the headlines in terms of the protests and things like that, but it's now much wider in society than had been 12 months ago.

So something is changing, and I think it has a couple of lessons for us.

One is that these kinds of negative attitudes can become quite big quite quick.

But two, it's not enough to just rely on what you have.

You actually have to work on it actively if you want to improve it.

And I think New Zealand is probably a little bit further on in that path

in that urgency to deal with those social cohesion problems.

Australia probably has just a little bit more time.

They have a little bit more of that social community connections that we don't have.

They're far more religious than we are.

They are much more likely to go to sporting events and sporting clubs and social clubs than we are.

They're more likely to do all of those things.

And so they seem to have this layer of social infrastructure that's still holding together better than ours.