Just what NZ needed: a nobody PM interested mainly in 'wumen' and the environment and a 72 year old deputy! As for us upsetting them, NZ is a pissant country with nothing we want; especially their cast offs who prefer to live in Australia and whinge about everything.

New Zealand Australia tensions!? TWADDLE! Just the usual sh!te stirring crap this mendacious, disingenuous Author has as a hallmark of his literary style!? Apart from a very minor storm in a teacup? Nothing to see here!

Smile though your heart is aching,
smile even though it's breaking.
You'll get by, if you just smile,
through your tears of sadness.
Smile through your fears an gladness.
Then in a while,
the sun will come shining through,
for you, if you just smile.
Alan B.

Relax, nothing will change, dodgy goods from China, will continue to be laundered with "made in NZ" tags, and passed on to Australian suckers.

Chinese illegal immigrants will continue to be laundered in the same manner, with NZ citizenship, and flock in through Australia's back door immigration policy, sanctioned by all political parties, especially Labour and Liberal joint venture. There is no war, relax!

dd,

Thanks for the reminder about the Chinese vegetables posing as NZ products; I had forgotten that, and the fire blight apples that they sooked about to some unelected body in Europe. Birdseye is the only frozen food brand that is safe, and the last Australian producer left.

ttbn
We should be constantly talking up Chinese corruption in this Country. That land of bandy-legged dwarves, has usurped the Australian Politic without a word or a squeak. Masters at manipulation.

When the masters of political manipulation and money grabbing, meet the equal masters of greed, graft and corruption, our politicians, it can only go badly for Australia and Australians, ( whatever one of those is now)!

Birdseye Australia? Surely you don't mean that Nelson based food processor? Yes the Chinese product imported and relabelled is a problem, whether it comes from Tasmania or across the ditch?

Some folks will do anything for a quid, including selling out their own!

Interestingly, the cooking and chilling process is more economic as broad scale production if done with affordable energy!

And that's where the Kiwis with their large hydro schemes have the advantage, even as we allow privatisation and price gouging to hand every competitor for a quid, all the advantages!

What was it that PM Piggy Muldoon said? Ah yes, the exodus to Australia by kiwis was improving the IQ on both side of the ditch?

Were that not demonstrably so? We'd likely already have, walk away safe, molten salt, thorium power, a thriving car industry exporting to the world and be beating the pants of of our KIWI cousins/fellow ANZAC's!

We already excel at blame shifting and diabolically dithering! Now if you could bottle that? We'd be rolling in it! A la, Scrooge Mcduck.
Alan B.

Oz has more brains than NZ China and US put together and more Thorium . We're lucky and will cook vegetables at 1cent per 10,000 tons and buy Beijing's housing supply 15 times over.

The NZ v Oz spat is a column filler.

I checked the frozen Birds Eye Stir Fry vegetables for a 60% local ingredient result. Is there any better? Maybe not.

Globalisation
The frozen mixed marinara that was packed in China, contents by weight one assumes,

Vannamei, aquaculture prawns 21%
India, Blue Mussels 21%
Chile, 'wild caught' Alaskan Pollock 33%
?source, Japanese Flying Squid 25%

The consumer's hope is that there are scientists who through their own unsupported research might tell us when there are problems with imported (and local) foods, such as concentrations of heavy metals. antibiotics, Salmonella and so on. Because government, the great outsourcer of its own responsibility, relies on importers who in turn rely of the foreign packers, who rely on the foreign sub-contractors. However risk can be hidden, such as in Dept Health advice to choose fish that are low in mercury and then not more than a few servings a week. Next, find what a 'serving' of fish is. 150grams in this case, but half that for children.

Not matters that would likely be concerning federal politicians on their lurks and perks.

But over the years the federal Senate and House of Representatives have devoted large slabs of already short sitting days to Same Sex Marriage, although largely the fault of headline-hunting Greens and Labor. Now all they have to do is preoccupy themselves with hastening a SSM law through and they can implement those 'happy holiday' (more PC) plans for taxpayer-funded trips to overseas tourist meccas.

Australia runs better when they are gone. -Which is a debate that is going on over ACT government, that the residents voted against anyhow.

One only wishes that drains on the trough of taxpayers' money such as Labor's Sam Dastyari would leave and never return.

The real problem with fish, ours and theirs is heavy metal contamination that concentrates up the food chain.

I believe, none worse than mercury!

Which like most heavy metals polluting the natural environment. The principle product of coal fired power.

And robs kids of their IQ by several important/critical points and adults of cognitive ability?

Makes you wonder if all our pollies are overindulging in Musculus, lobster, crab and oysters?

Given some of the manifestly moribund decisions and or bun fights they seem to excel in? And time and money wasting distractions like SSM?

Fortunately contaminated sea food, is like the rain that falls equally on the innocent and the guilty. Meaning, the privileged and their kids are less safe than the underprivileged?

Given the latter's staple diet is high on cheap filler carbohydrates and low on seafood based protein. Fortunately, EDTA a safe to ingest reagent, is a historical and FDA approved, but out of patent, medicine for chelating lead!

Is widely used in laboratories the world over to precipitate many over heavy metals so, they can be filtered out of solution!

But not when used in medicine apparently? By order of big pharma, whose most profitable business model relies on treating symptoms rather than curing anything?

The more one digs for benefits of coal fired power, the less obvious and illusory they become!

Even so, not even clean green New Zealand fish immune from contamination which spares none!

Even those not contributing to the contamination with the preferred power generation!

It's the same ocean and many fish are massively migratory!

As for Chinese salmonella in Chinese stir fry/vegetables? Thorough cooking usually removes that as a real problem!

Don't forget to immerse your eggs in water to see if they float or tend to stand vertical even slightly, which may indicate the are rotten, stale or contaminated?

The only ones truly safe are fresh ones that lay completely flat.

Refrigeration from the chook's bum to the table, may extend a safe two week life into three?
Alan B.

Flying squid?

Was that flench flied or deep flied? And served on a deep bed of flied lice?
Alan B.

The squid has two fins, which are not the primary method of propulsion. Instead, the squid has a siphon, a muscle which takes in water from one side, heats it in Thorium with mercury catalyst and pushes hydrogen out the other side: jet propulsion. In Vietnam they sell for 1.98 PKH .

We're going of on a 'frozen foods' tangent here. NZ chose not to be part of the Australian federation. The sting never went away.

Australia is a small fish in a big pond. NZ is a small fish in a small pond that Australia pretends is a big pond, defending non-Asian hegemony for global non-Asian interests. Yet, it welcomes Asian money anyway, to escalate its real estate market and agribusiness.

NZ probably had the first aircraft in 1903 and has a space industry. It joins China's 'Silk Road' economy without Australia's consent and usually wins footy and supplies electricity.

"The rest of the time will be spent diligently ignoring each other."

Exactly, despite all the Anzac nonsense, historically that has been the reality. Now if that hare-brained Trans Tasman migration agreement were abolished, relations could return to normal.