The second was labelled Australia, with which I was quite happy. I was also happy in 1955 when I made the ritual trip to Britain, and found I could work and vote, as if I were a British subject. My father came to Australia in the 1920s to represent the family firm Putauru Pine and Pulp, which went belly-up. He too could work and vote.

He had married an Australian girl, Alice Emma Barton. I was born in 1931, in time for the Great Depression, and then the Second World War. My father joined up, at the age of 36 in 1940 or 1941, trained with broomsticks on the Gunnedah showground, and then went off to the Middle East until he was called home with the rest of the Australian Army. He lived here for the rest of his life. I could get a New Zealand passport, he told me many years ago.

I dismissed the thought. Why would I want a New Zealand passport? I was born here to a mother whose family had its roots deep in Australia, and which had contributed our first prime minister (who was not a direct forebear). My father had lived here for more than 60 years. I had no connection with New Zealand at all. Neither, it would seem, has Barnaby Joyce.