Return of the minimal pairs

[petegray]

> In Britain, it is the tradition to identify the 'cut' vowel as a wholly
> distinct phoneme from schwa.

I've been following this debate with interest.
I just want to remind linguists, in case anyone's interested - in NZ, there
is no schwa.  The vowel in "bit" is used instead.  So there is no problem
whatever with h before schwa - it just doesn't occur.

Peter