We're a country that prides itself on having each others' backs, not breaking them

What's annoying me this week? Well I'll TELL you, since you asked.

Fruit picking was my first 'real' job.

I was twelve years old when I started, and I think I did it for five years, over what passed for summers in Southland. By comparison to some, my conditions were good: usually only six days a week, and only up to twelve hours.

But the supervisor, an older kid, bullied me relentlessly in front of the other kids, to the point I would skip the lunch break, and keep picking fruit alone. I got sunstroke one day, and simply fell to the ground between the rows of bushes.

But the worst was the pain in my back. The standing work, picking raspberries, I could do pretty well. The bending work, over the strawberries, was excruciating.

Look, I've got genuine sympathy for fruit and vege growers - for anyone who's taking a financial hit. This year is beyond difficult.

But if I read one more article featuring some bombastic bloke from the agriculture industry traipsing in loafers through his field of slightly manky courgettes while making a sad face because New Zealand has no work ethic then I AM GOING TO LOSE THE PLOT.

Honestly, I've got more empathy for the effing courgettes.

These people, I guarantee, don't have the stamina to work two to three months, seven days a week, 14 hours a day for minimum wage. But they've got endless stamina for complaining that other people won't do it.

Which leads me to my second point.

We're told folks from overseas are more suited to these jobs because they have a better work ethic (although our national enthusiasm for hosting poor foreigners evaporates pretty quickly at the end of the picking season).

'Better work ethic' sounds suspiciously like some kind of metaphor.

Because this thing of non-white people working inhumane hours in appalling conditions for only a subsistence reminds me of something and I can't quite put my finger on the word but I think it rhymes with 'slavery'.

Lazy dole-bludging kiwis vs silent and obliging foreigners: the courgettes may be rotting in the fields, but this year's harvest of nasty stereotypes is a bumper crop.

I ask myself, what price are we really paying for our cheap courgettes? And I feel kinda sad. After all, we're a country that prides itself on having each other's backs, not breaking them.