From Salt Lake to Sydney, Beehive to Beehive

An actual Kiwi kicked dirt in my face. I was in Wellington, New Zealand, on a family trip when my daughters and I came face to face with a North Island brown kiwi at the Wellington Zoo. My face was just above the enclosure’s fence when the kiwi started to dig for food, its powerful little legs blasted me full force.

Despite the symbolic equivalent of the Great Salt Lake spitting in my eye — the trip made clear for me that Utah’s got a lot to learn from both Australia and New Zealand. Utah may be a polite place, but it’s just not very welcoming these days. And that distinction matters a whole lot.

Comparing the state of Utah with countries like Australia and New Zealand may seem a little out there. But when you look into it, they’ve got a sizable number of similarities.

Both Australia and New Zealand are U.S.-state-like entities floating in the Pacific. Utah’s economy is about the same size as New Zealand’s, and Australia’s economy is about as big as Florida’s. They’re all pioneer societies, with early residents traveling great distances with great dangers along the way (and appropriately proud of that heritage). All gave votes to women relatively earlier than in most other places. All are tourism heavy, with robust agricultural sectors, and Australia and Utah share a mining conglomerate as a major business partner (Rio Tinto). New Zealand’s greatest symbol — the kiwi bird — is threatened, prompting the country to adopt extraordinary measures to save it — just as Utahns are growing ever more concerned about saving the Great Salt Lake. And, finally, New Zealand’s parliament is called the “Beehive,” and across Australia, including in the majestic Queen Victoria Building in Sydney, you’ll find beehive motifs and symbols in many, many places,  just as in Utah.

There are many reasons to connect, compare, and contrast Utah with these great Pacific states. All are polite places, to varying degrees. (Australians prefer rougher talk, but generally mean well.) Utahns stand out for their politeness, conveying decency, so much so that phrases like “disagree better” and the “Utah way” have become routine planks on the stump for Gov. Spencer Cox.

But there’s always a step beyond being polite in speech. That is to be welcoming — to act in such a way as to pull together all kinds of people into the community. And in that respect, Utah fails quite badly compared to both Australia and New Zealand.

The Kia ora (New Zealand) and G’day spirit permeates the air in and amongst Aussies and Kiwis. Banners make it explicit—everyone is welcome and all are part of the community, wherever you go on those islands.

In contrast, several local pundits report Utah’s legislators seem far too eager to go the other way. Holly Richardson, a former legislator who is now the editor of Utah Policy and a columnist for the Deseret News, when asked to sum up the most recent session, called it “less friendly towards members of the public, towards members of the media, and I think less friendly towards people on the margins,” and summed it up in one word: “unkind.” On PBS, Richardson pointed out how “unwelcome” the legislature was making people in the LGBTQ+ community feel.

Columnist Robert Gehrke of The Salt Lake Tribune recently worried about an over-focus on “national culture war hot button issues,” that “could do real damage to (Utah’s) reputation nationally and internationally.” And when the session ended, Gehrke’s summation was fairly negative — of a “legislature wanting to do things to people rather than for people.”

Australians and New Zealanders know they live in faraway places. It’s hard to get there, and so they must make do with what talents come ashore. Similarly, sitting in the netherverse known as the “Intermountain West,” Salt Lake City is one of the most remote state capitals in the United States. This fact makes it slightly more difficult to relocate here. (While it is true that distance hasn’t kept away newcomers, certainly far more would emigrate if Utah were more geographically proximate to other larger populations.)

Australia, New Zealand, and Utah are all in global war over talent. It is a major aim for each society to build a diverse, talented group of citizens that add to their economies.

Talent is mobile. Many commentators and politicians love/hate to point out the fact that many Californians — talented Californians — have helped boost Utah’s economy over the past decade.

What they neglect to observe is — easy come, easy go. Just as easily as many of those emigrants came, they may simply pack up their Silicon Slopes businesses and head for Australia or New Zealand or Colorado.

Apparently Utah has forgotten this, politically speaking, by deliberately choosing to be an unwelcome place for some. Perhaps political leaders are confident that there’s a slice of society they can simply do without. That Utah doesn’t need their talents, their labor, their expertise, their tourism dollars, their ideas.

This is a mistake, and, as The Salt Lake Tribune’s Andy Larsen has pointed out, early signs of a “brain drain” are already here.

It turns out it produces a backlash when you kick dirt in people’s faces. That’s the kind of thing birds do — not good people or good politicians.