[Stammer]

[quote:7b2ac]New Zealanders, in return, are seen by Aussies as being dull, unsophisticated yokels, and mocked as 'South Seas Poms' on account of their supposedly closer ties with Britain.[/quote:7b2ac]

[quote:7b2ac]Sheep jokes

There are a large number of (mainly crude) sheep jokes. As befitting the trans-Tasman rivalry, Australians tell these jokes about New Zealanders, and New Zealanders tell them about Australians. (The English on the other hand reserve the sheep jokes for the Welsh.)

Some sheep jokes also take differences in the accent (see below) into account. In one example, a farmer who is having unnatural relations with a sheep is asked if he should rather be shearing the sheep, to which he replies "I'm not shearing this sheep with anyone!" Here shearing is taken to be the pronunciation of the word sharing spoken with an Australian accent (in New Zealand, unlike Australia, shearing and sharing have the same pronunciation).

Other sheep jokes (or "ewe-phemisms") include puns on song titles which contain the word ewe. For example, a performing band may announce they are playing the song "There will never be another you", and follow up by saying this is particularly bad news for any Australians in the audience.

While other people make jokes about New Zealanders and sheep, New Zealanders themselves are not averse to a bit of sheep humour. [1] In mid-2000, Grant Gillon, a New Zealand Member of Parliament, caused controversy when he asked the following question during a debate on genetic engineering: "I want to ask the minister whether, no pun intended, it's appropriate in this case for a woman's body parts to be inserted into a sheep when that has normally been the domain of Tory males?" NZ Herald article[/quote:7b2ac]