Stats NZ data shows 79,000 Kiwis left for Australia, seeking better job prospects and wages.
New Zealand’s unemployment rate is 5.1%, with Australian salaries on average 33% higher.
The Greens’ alternative budget proposes new taxes, which critics say could widen the pay gap.
Given such matters are in vogue, I hereby request a pay equity claim.
Rather than race or gender, the presence or absence of one’s C-word, this claim seeks to compare the wage of a New Zealander with that of his/her/its Australian equivalent.
The sad but inevitable trendof Kiwis packing up and crossing the ditch continued this week. Stats NZ data confirming 79,000 Kiwi economic refugees fled the country in the year to March, two-thirds to the lucky country. Fewer migrant arrivals added to a net migration gain of 26,400, the lowest since post-Covid muddled 2022.
Thursday’s booming Aussie jobs report helped explain why. They’ve got plenty on offer. April employment increased by 89,000, almost four times pundits’ predictions. A workforce participation rate of 67.1% ran close to record highs.
New Zealand’s unemployment rate, last unchanged at 5.1%, is still a whole percentage point higher than the Aussies.
Their salaries are on average 33% higher than ours. The sun just shines brighter over there, doesn’t it? The pay gap is real, guys.
Bitter disappointment met those looking to our political leaders for answers this week. They appeared too busy dropping C-bombs, fighting bans over pistol gestures and calling each other “sausage eaters” to respond with anything remotely approaching sensible.
Enter the Greens, who’ve completed their first week in recent memory without a single MP arrested or waka jumped. At least they attempted to address the great transtasman pay equity claim. Unfortunately for everybody on this side of the ditch, it was more bonkers and la-la land than the plan, a term I use here loosely, sold to us at the last election.
Their alternative budget included new or increased taxes on inheritance, wages, property, businesses and even jet planes. It went off like a shotgun, the shrapnel hard to miss.
None of the 70,000 Kiwis who left this country over the past year were chasing higher taxes.
Economic opportunity, job prospects and higher wages are what they seek.
Much of the unemployment gap can be traced back to our Covid-era Government overspend and money printing and then overcorrection by one A. Orr, previous overlord of a bloated fiefdom we call the Reserve Bank.
He hiked rates higher and much quicker than the RBA, peaking at 5.5% compared to their 4.35%.
The lesson is simple in hindsight, the more vodka you drink the night before, the worse the hangover the next morning.
The Greens want to lift Government debt beyond 53% of GDP while spending billions on unworkable promises our labour force can’t sustain, let alone our finances.
Despite the possibility he could be sitting across the Cabinet table from them in a year’s time, Chris Hipkins at first pretended he hadn’t read the Greens’ budget. Then, despite reading it, he bizarrely refused to rule out any of its contents as off the table. This document is as devastating for his chances of reclaiming the prime ministership as it is for closing the Aussie wage gap.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins during his pre-Budget speech in Wellington. Photo / NZME, Mark Mitchell
Like most pay gaps, the issues are mainly structural. Our long-term problems haven’t changed since the publication of the then-Government’s first ‘2025 Taskforce’ report in 2009.
Its title? “Answering the $64,000 Question: Closing the income gap with Australia by 2025”. The gulf is pretty much the same now as it was then, at 35%.
For a family of four, the gap represents $64,000 a year.
The report identified familiar problem areas; productivity, infrastructure, the size and spend of government as well as its ownership and poor management of assets. A universal pension discourages personal savings. The Australians have $4 trillion in pension funds; our KiwiSaver balances collectively total a little over $100 billion.
New Zealand used to be a prosperous country, the envy of the world. The reason we are not is because of structural problems we keep failing to address or partly addressing, then changing governments and reversing course.
Let’s hope there’s detail in this week’s Budget to at least start fixing some of this bigger stuff. On behalf of those who’ve already fled our shores, I hope this pay equity claim is promptly settled.
If not, the best thing about New Zealand may continue to be its proximity to Australia.
