OPINION: Australia will always claim our Kiwi success - it's part of their DNA.
This week, New Zealand film editor John Gilbert won an Oscar for best film editing for the Mel Gibson-directed Hacksaw Ridge.
Despite thanking his family back in New Zealand while he accepted the award, Australian media were quick to claim the Kiwi as one of their own.
Sure, Gilbert had edited a film shot in Australia depicting Americans that was directed by an Australian, but that suddenly doesn't make the Wellingtonian an Australian.
Also this week, Fox Sports Australia called Kiwi born and raised UFC superstar Mark Hunt an 'Aussie' five times in one short sequence.
Hunt grew up on the streets of south Auckland, and fights under the New Zealand flag. While he may train and fight occasionally in Australia, the 42-year-old is about as Kiwi as it gets.
So why do they do it? Why does Australia pick and choose what Kiwis it sees fit of being worthy enough to earn the title of being an 'Australian'?
Australia has appropriated our best and brightest for decades, in fact it goes all the way back to World War I.
Two of Australia's so-called 'true-blue' Aussie war heroes, Victoria Cross recipients Alfred Shout and Thomas Cooke were - you guessed it - Kiwis through and through.
It's estimated up to 2000 New Zealanders served in Australia's armed forces during WWI because they joined up across the Tasman.
Shout, a Wellingtonian, served with the Kiwi forces in the South African war in 1900, and was mortally wounded in the Lone Pine trenches at Gallipoli in August 1915 while serving with the Australians.
I've seen a couple of Australian-made documentaries about Shout, but the words 'New' and 'Zealand' were obviously left on the cutting room floor. Shout is constantly described as a 'true-blue' Aussie legend.
We've seen it in spades in the decades since.
Phar Lap might have won fame for winning a stack of races in Australia in the early 1930s, but the mighty chestnut gelding was most certainly from Timaru not Toowoomba.
Kiwi World War II hero, Sir Keith Park, is depicted as being Australian in the famous film The Battle of Britain. To be fair, this is more of a mistake by the British filmmakers.
When the All Blacks first played in Chicago in 2014, the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper described the All Blacks as being a 'legendary Aussie team'.
While we can't blame the Aussies for that, the mistake shows just how easily the two trans-Tasman cultures can be appropriated and assimilated.
So what Aussies do we proudly call Kiwis? Former Green Party co-leader Russel Norman comes to mind, but what about the other Russell?
Russell Crowe was of course born, raised and educated in New Zealand and doesn't even have an Australian passport.
Do the Aussies care that they claim our success as their own? I doubt it. They'll steal our winners any chance they can get.
Newshub.
