2008 saw a record exodus by Kiwis to Australia. In fact, this trend started building well before the credit crunch appeared, and has its roots in income differentials. But during 2008 it rose to record levels, eclipsing all other periods of emigration to Australia. Bernard Hickey reviews this disturbing, long-term trend. In the last twelve months 48,474 people left permanently for Australia. That is 133 flew that way, each and every day - a planeloan a day. But that is not to say it was only one-way traffic. But the numbers coming to NZ from Australia are way smaller, and it is the net of these two flows that is an all-time record. Also, people from a wide range of other countries are migrating here on a permanent basis. In fact these number more than are leaving for Australia, but overall net migration is shrinking to quite low levels. And it is clear that New Zealand is an effective back-door way into Australia - "migrate to NZ, get NZ citizenship, and then you can get into Australia". New Zealand is assimilating and training a talented workforce for our bigger trans-tasman brother. We need to do much better at retaining our own people; that is the challenge, one that we have failed significantly over the past 10 wasted years. As someone said, there is a skills war. Australia has won, and we don't even realise there is a competition ...
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