From 19th-century colonists to today’s super wealthy, New Zealand has been wrongly depicted as a ‘blank slate’
New Zealand has become the prime destination for the world’s wealthy elite. Their relocation could be to do with the country’s famous scenery and quality of life but it could also be that the pandemic has renewed people’s interest in New Zealand as supposedly the best place in the world to survive global societal collapse.
It’s true, as a recent study observes, that New Zealand is a set of isolated islands with renewable energy resources and a temperate climate. However, there is also a long history, intertwined with the country’s colonisation, of New Zealand being seen as a blank slate or empty land, open for the taking. That false image served to justify colonial settlement in the past. It’s now being used again to prepare the ground for further settlement by the super-wealthy.