Roger Rabbits with Jim Bunny

I trust the statutes of limitation have dealt to this. And the friendly community constable won’t be banging on my door with a summons to appear 60 years after the event.

Forget I was 18 and on a licensed premises at the time, well underage.

Forget it was 12.30am, long after the legal closing time.

Forget everyone having an ear half-cocked for the screeching of police car tyres as the licensing squad arrived to bust the joint. It was the wild west. It wasn’t right, but it was the way it was.

And I wasn’t really bad. I just enjoyed dabbling in the delinquent sub-culture sometimes. And it was a foil for the dreary, serious Presbyterian part of me.

‘Keeners’ Mustard

Back in the upstairs bar, there was a low cloud ceiling of cigarette smoke, the rattling of pool balls, and fierce, uncompromising trans-Tasman banter. A bunch of professional Aussie sportsmen had crashed town, crashed the bar – all hard-assed, smart-assed, and superior.

It was the night one of them called ‘Keeners’ would give a gullible Kiwi a reason, in my mind, to harbour a grudge against all Aussies for the next 57 years. ‘Keeners’ because his surname was Mustard. Someone pointed out that might be unfair.

Why? Because there might be nice trustworthy ones amongst the other 28.3 million Aussies.

Maybe?

They suggested I release, let go of the grudge, perhaps even forgive. Maybe not.

Anyhow Keeners, a skinny, knee-high-to-a-bandicoot ginga, asked me to shoot pool with him. A $2 flutter. I did. We traded a few shots, but the guy called Mustard didn’t cut the mustard. He messed up and muddled about, looked very ordinary on the end of a pool cue. I won. $2 thank you.

Growth on the butt 

The ante was upped to $20 for a rematch, a third of my weekly wages. I preferred to lose the money than lose face, so I agreed and broke. It was the first and last shot I played. ‘Keeners’  found form, inordinate form, and sank eight balls on the trot.

I had been stitched, I had been hustled, humiliated, done like a dinner. By an Aussie pool shark. I had failed my mother because that was her board money.

Keeners took my $20 and smirked!  

The rest of the Aussies went industrial strength braggadocious. Insufferable. Aussies are worse winners than losers. We, on the other hand, are gracious in victory and dignified in defeat. No, we are nothing like Australians. Even though the world thinks that because we are an extraneous geographical growth on the butt of Australia, we are exactly like them. Please tell me we aren’t.

So imagine the jaw dropping through the floor this week when a Wellington political commentator suggested, that because of the changing world order, it was time for New Zealand to become the 7th state of Australia.

Bile and bigotry

Really? Was this a Donald and Greenland joke? Would this require me to embrace ‘Keeners’ as a “brother, fellow countryman, kingsman, compatriot and loyalist.” I felt the bile and bigotry surging in equal measures.

Will I have to stand shoulder to shoulder with ‘Keeners’ and sing ‘Advance Aotea-Aussie Fair’? Will streaks of  ‘green and yella’ be woven into the AB’s game day strip? Will I have to buy one of those ill-fitting, outsized cheese cutters Aussie cricketers wear? Will I have to forgive the notorious sandpaper conspirators? At least Australian cricket stocks will be bolstered by a few decent Black Caps after the woeful Aussies were bundled out of the T20 World Cup in the group stage this week. They’ll be weeping shamelessly into their schooners.

The columnist suggested the time to buddy up was right because the rules-based world order has changed. Powerful countries which once played nicely in the interest of global stability and security, now preach “might is right” – the world is now governed by “strength force and power”. Which leaves New Zealand a bit exposed. And suddenly leaves this namby-pamby buying into the idea of becoming the seventh federated state.  

‘Take out the trash’

The upside is suddenly our navy of one 26,000 tonne supply ship would be boosted by Australia’s $368 billion nuclear submarine defence fleet. We’d grow wings. And muscle. Big muscle.

‘Boomers’ they call their nuclear subs, because of their destructive power and role in nuclear deterrence. Except the Aussie ‘Boomers’ can’t deter. Not here. Uh-huh! Not allowed.    

Because we are staunchly anti-nuclear Mr Albanese – nuclear-powered, or armed ships, are verboten, banned. That makes things messy. ‘Boomers’ will have to heave to outside territorial waters.   

And if nuclear armed aggressors threaten, we’ll wave the NZ Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act of 1987 under their noses. That should see them off.

And who’ll “take out the trash” when we cosy up Pete Dutton? He was the Aussie Home Affairs Minister who ramped up deportation of NZ-born criminals, the 501s. “Taking out the trash,” he called it.

There won’t be any point airmailing 501s back home. It would be like moving the trash from the lounge to the living room. So our trash will become your trash too.

If you see ‘Keeners’ Pete, tell him I’d probably be up for a grudge match. And a slice of pavlova. Which we invented before you had even broken your first egg.