Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern won a concession from new Australian PM Anthony Albanese on Friday to find clear pathways to citizenship for New Zealanders living as second-class citizens in Australia, but perhaps the Government should be careful what it wishes for, at least from a jobs and employer point of view.
The change would remove one of the main barriers for older, more skilled New Zealanders with families who fear jumping the ditch because of the current exclusion of temporary (but taxpaying) Kiwis from Australian educational and welfare entitlements. Suddenly, employers here would face a truly level playing field, having to compete with wages 30-40% higher in Australia and living costs cheaper in many areas without the fear of second-class citizenship and few prospects for permanence.
The pressure is particularly intense right now, with Australian job advertisements surging ahead of New Zealand’s and recruiters and HR managers there combing job directories and linked In profiles here for new hires.
Ardern capped off a remarkably successful overseas trip on Friday by issuing a joint statement with Anthony Albanese that signalled changes to the ‘second-class’ citizenship status of New Zealanders who have moved to Australia since 2001, when entitlements to welfare and other Government supports were withdrawn.
Ardern’s news release included this snippet:
“The pair discussed changes to the situation of New Zealanders in Australia including ways to streamline New Zealanders access to Australian citizenship with agreement to identify options by ANZAC Day 2023.”
The joint statement went further in spelling out the desire to remove the ‘temporary’ status of New Zealanders there.
“The Prime Ministers committed to working together to achieve greater prosperity for our citizens. New Zealanders and Australians who choose to move between our countries represent our close ties and kinship.
“Both leaders agreed that no New Zealander or Australian should be rendered permanently “temporary” when it comes to residence in either country, and agreed to ensure viable pathways to citizenship.
“Reflecting the Prime Ministers’ shared ambition for the bilateral relationship, Australia and New Zealand will identify options to provide citizens of both countries better access to opportunities and benefits and enable more enduring social and economic integration outcomes by ANZAC Day 2023,” Ardern and Albanese said in their joint statement.
The problem for employers here is that this removal of the second class citizen status of Kiwis in Australia takes away one of the main roadblocks to an even bigger exodus.
That was illustrated last month in an exchange in Parliament between Health Minister Andrew Little, who is facing intense pressure to keep staff and recruit more in overwhelmed hospitals, and his Opposition counterpart Shane Reti. The question came after New South Wales’ Government announced plans to recruit 10,000 health workers with a A$4.5b package of fresh funding.
Here’s the Question Time exchange in full (bolding mine):
Dr Shane Reti: What impact, if any, could Australia's decision to spend $4.5 billion to grow their health workforce have on the size of New Zealand's nursing shortage?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: That remains to be seen, and of course New Zealanders going to Australia go in with their eyes open and they know that when they go to work in Australia, they don't have the same rights to residency as Australians get working here. They don't get the same rights from the National Disability Insurance Scheme over there that workers here get under our ACC scheme. Anybody going from New Zealand to work in Australia do not have the same education rights for their children as would happen in New Zealand, and there are a range of other conditions that makes Australia a challenging place to secure a workforce. Of course, that is a country—particularly in New South Wales and Victoria—whose health systems were under such extreme pressure that they were in fact overwhelmed by COVID, something that didn't happen in New Zealand. Hansard
Little revealed in the exchange that Aotearoa-NZ’s health system already had vacancies for experienced nurses of between 10-13% of its workforce.
Primed to go
The potential acceleration of the exodus to Australia was emphasised on Friday when MYOB published survey results showing 4% of consumers or 200,000 people were actively planning to move overseas to live and work. It found 20% or one million were actively considering such a move.
The survey of 500 New Zealanders found 50% of those looking to move believed they could get a better salary and 44% believed they could get an improved quality of living, while 21% believed Aotearoa-NZ couldn’t offer the lifestyle they wanted. Respondents indicated they could earn around $23,000 more per year overseas and 58% said Australia would be the country they would move to.
“This has the makings of a real crisis in the local jobs sector, with the lack of available employees making it even more challenging for many businesses to operate or expand to meet local demand,” said MYOB’s Head of Employee Services, Felicity Brown.
“At the moment, work shortages are hitting home across the board – from tourism, hospitality, construction and trades to healthcare and the tech sector – so a large movement of Kiwis offshore is going to be felt throughout the economy.”
The survey also found factors that might encourage them to stay included:
decreasing the cost of living (48%);
more affordable housing (27%); and,
the election of a new Government (20%).
The pressure driving New Zealand workers across the Tasman is currently intense, as this chart shows.
The devil will, of course, be in the detail of any agreements reached before ANZAC Day next year. There will be plenty of pressures coming back the other way in Australia, where successive Labor and Coalition (Liberal/National) Governments have cracked down on entitlements for ‘kiwi bludgers’. There is also the fear in Australia that recent migrants to New Zealand from China, India, the Philippines, the Pacific Islands and elsewhere will immediately jump the ditch to Australia as soon as they get New Zealand residency. Improvements in entitlements for New Zealanders there would exacerbate those fears.
However, those previous fears may be overcome by the same desperation for staff being seen at the moment in Australia.
51 Comments
If I was 28 with a good qualification and work experience, it would be a no brainer. Our children left NZ a few months ago, encouraged by us. We just hope enough taxpayer stay to pay our Super. If you get the policy settings as bad as this Government has, you wear the consequences.
Helen Clark was the original architect of getting Australia to restrict citizenship back in 2001 I think due to fears about money and skills leaving nz . I left nz before the gate closed in January 2001 and am now a dual citizen having had no problems gaining that as I had entered before the cut off date . Maybe they are planning a return to how it was , but I think Helen will warn jacinda of the consequences much as was mentioned in the article. Australia only needs to put a time requirement on length of nz citizens or residents before they can gain full entry rights .
Clark caved in however probably as much Oz domestic politics there was a lot of their typical racist dogwhistling going on at the time (might have been Oz election time ?) about Maori Pacifica, Asians & others with NZ citizenship "getting into Oz by the back door".
Never mind the 1B pa tax paid by Kiwis in Oz & "no taxation without representation"
If your job is on the migration skills list in Australia, you pretty much have zero problems in getting permanent residency there. Myself and friends, all in possession of multiple University degrees and professional jobs, could not qualify for residency. However, if our job was "on the list" we would have done so easily. So the difficulty only really lies for Kiwi's who are not on the skills list. So nurses would easily qualify for residency but a hospital department manager would not.
Aside from higher paying jobs, there is likely to be a migration of older Kiwi's who are now concerned about getting access to healthcare services. Not just because the system is seriously underfunded and under-resourced, but because access to those scarce services is now dependent on what race you are. Same for access to education in NZ, try getting in to medical school here if you are European or Asian - only a 40% chance. The more this Govt starts divvying things up by race, the more European and Asian Kiwi's are going to look to Australia where they will not be discriminated against.
The places reserved for Maori Pacifica students also have lower entry qualifications
National started this racist selection
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/300013258/medical-school-who-gets…
For this year’s intake, Otago had 202 places available for first year students entering from its intermediate year. (Otago does not take first year students from other universities).
Of those, 120 were given to those entering under a raft of categories.
Of those, 58 were Māori, 20 were Pasifika, 1 Māori/Pasifika and 29 entered through the rural gate. Eleven students went in under the low socio-economic category and one under a new refugee category. That left only 82 general entry places (40 per cent).
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/300013258/medical-school-who-ge…
And I would put money on it that the declining medical standards we are seeing in NZ have a lot to do with the fact that we select substandard medical school students, then push them through medical school while dumbing the teaching down so much that the special entry students are capable of passing. They then join the workforce and find themselves completely out of their depth. And then their patients start dying.
Thomas Sowell covers this issue extensively, here is a summary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVvnTByzTmA
KW - that is actually not correct. A quick google search found in 2019 that NZ Europeans made up 67.1% of domestic entrants to NZ medical schools (slightly higher than their 66.2% representation in the relevant age group of 19–29 year olds). Asians were 22% of entrants (21.2%of relevant age groups in pop).
Māori were only 11.8% of entrants (way below their 19.4% of the relevant age group), while Pacifica were 9% (10.5%)
source: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/kahu/how-university-medical-schools-decide-m….
Not true.
"For this year’s intake, Otago had 202 places available for first year students entering from its intermediate year. (Otago does not take first year students from other universities).
Of those, 120 were given to those entering under a raft of categories.
Of those, 58 were Māori, 20 were Pasifika, 1 Māori/Pasifika and 29 entered through the rural gate. Eleven students went in under the low socio-economic category and one under a new refugee category. That left only 82 general entry places (40 per cent)."
And lead to lower rental inflation here, as opposed to Australia:
Residential rents hit record highs as national vacancy rates plummet
Dwelling rents are 9.1% higher across the capital cities and up 10.8% in regional areas compared to June 2021.
Despite growing affordability concerns, rental markets are expected to remain tight for some time yet partly due to a shortage of supply following a long period of low investment activity between 2015 and 2021, but also due to renewed rental demand as international migration recovers.
John Key did the same. See how ANZ's profits have grown. He was also awarded honorary Companion of the Order of Australia, for "eminent service to Australia-New Zealand relations" and a seat on the ANZ Board as Chairman.
- ANZ Profit 2009 = $0.6b
- ANZ Profit 2015 = $1.5b
100%. NZ (or as we call it now, Aotearoa) will slide further towards becoming another poor Pacific Island nation with third world living standards and guest workers, while Australia retains first world status and powers on, making it even more enticing for young, skilled Kiwis to move there..
What happened in the last 30 years in terms of immigration will likely speed up in the next 30 years. The great population exchange.
We will need more people to look after elderly parents who’s children have left NZ for good, assuming children are not coming back.
Brings to mind the ongoing and burgeoning problem of how to recruit and how much to pay people who work in the ‘caring for people’ areas. Medical, retirement living, disability care. Are all first world countries doomed to import workers who will work for low wages forcing a constant expansion of infrastructure or conversely pay their own citizens enough to see these careers as worthwhile? This would presumably raise the costs of caring substantially, perhaps beyond the ahility of the public purse to subsidise. Meaning only self funded wealthy people could afford the care. Leaving the rest to fend for themselves as best they can. How did our ancestors ever manage? Maybe they either did not live long enough, suffered or their families rallied around. I think the latter. Where the immediate family and community riloed the gaps.
Maybe the generations that "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps" could just fend for themselves in these purpose built facilities.
Just wait until the Millennials take over and the wave of discontent sets in.
- "Why should we listen to your problems, you never listened to ours?".
- "Heh....well....if you're struggling that much.....*snigger* *chortle*....you could just cut back on.......the avocado on toast!".
The bottom line is that Australia, who are supposed to be our closest allies, treat New Zealanders worse than any other immigrant. It is a matter of fundamental decency that this should be eliminated, otherwise we really cannot have a relationship based on mutual respect. Basically it not a real relationship.
As for these people who are concerned that we will loose Kiwis as a result. What are they really saying. Are they really promoting the proposition that we should continue to be treated unfairly and without respect. This is consistent with our long term regime of suppressing wages in NZ by continually increasing the population through immigration. So the people raising these fears are the ones who are supporting and seeking to perpetuate the low wage low productivity economy. We need to address the basic problem directly and head on. We need grow up and unwind the immigration fueled low wage, low productivity economy. Those enterprises that cannot adjust, need to fail and the staff otherwise employed, move to more productive employment. The whole country will have higher average wages and be better off as a result. If our population drops as we adjust. Good. Very good. Just about every aspect of our infrastructure and public services are totally swamped and unable to service our present population. So much so that in a recent statement the government said that there is no way that they can afford to address the short falls. Pretty obvious solution to that. Reduce the demand on them by reducing the population.
Unfortunately, National who will win the next election are going to plunge us back down the path of the immigration fueled low wage low productivity economy where most people work for reducing real wages and house prices exponentially rise in favor of their landlord mates.
A little bit of OneRoof DGM porn.
More ‘for rent’ signs going up, as vendors give up on selling
An exodus of “young renters” from NZ could ease pressure in the rental market.
https://www.oneroof.co.nz/news/41805?
I have seen this graph back to the 1980s and even if you take out the current spike its an upward trend for the last 40 years. An ageing population is only making this worse and Australia has been welcoming immigrants pre covid flat out - hint - immigration wont solve this problem. We are entering a new world of decreasing working age populations and labour could well become king for those in well qualified and critical industries. Capital may have to take a step back as even with automation you need people to run and maintain things.
Get you kids well educated with a good work ethic and they will have options galore.
I guess nobody here has read this article then: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-61432462
They'll all be flooding back here very soon!
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