The guy was talking out his arse. Northland is fine as far as people go, and it has some of the most beautiful countryside up those ways too. Small towns, though, but not dissimilar in size and “Sweet fluff all happening” as the majority of the South Island.

People from the South don’t usually venture up to Northland too often because it’s far too expensive. Or they’re racists and don’t like that Northland is full of brown people. Ask any Kiwi if they were surprised that, of all the places for a mosque to be shot up, it was in Christchurch.

That flips for Northland people going down South too. Why go down to “Honkeyville” just to freeze your arse off and wonder why the only breakfast option they have is plain toast?

Literally, NZ is like maybe four towns dressed up as cities, and everything in between is farm farm farm church pub farm farm pub church farm farm farm beach overpriced tourist cafe pub church farm farm farm - with a lot of it populated by small town farmers, Church goers and surfers/fishermen who are friendly enough but won’t be able to get through five consecutive sentences without saying something racist or bigoted.

tl;dr - NZ isn’t murderous but we’re pretty good racists.

Source: I grew up in the South and my wife is from the north of the North. We’re equally racist to our mixed race baby.