Migrants have cautionary tales about looking after the land

Tom Smith is a transtasman migrant in reverse - an Australian who does not want New Zealand to spoil its environment in a blind rush to get rich.

Smith, 34, a Green-voting Christchurch builder, spends his weekends skiing in the awe-inspiring Southern Alps. He rates the state of the country as "good" because "things are ticking along quite nicely".

"But a lot of it is based on unsustainable factors such as immigration and depletion of our water resources," he warns. "There is pressure on the water through a growing population on the whole planet. We are shafting this place.

"I don't follow your typical line of growth being good. The whole race is flat out going nowhere."

If he had a spare billion, he would put it into preventive health, helping people to change their lifestyles to avoid the diabetes, heart attacks and cancers that are driving health costs out of control.

Catherine and Tom Crossley, a British-born couple who run an aviation company from a farm near Invercargill, say New Zealand is a beautiful country but we are "slowly ruining it" because of waste management. "You can only recycle groups 1 and 2 plastic. The rest go to landfill," they say. The Government's Growth and Innovation Advisory Board expressed alarm last year when it asked New Zealanders to rate 12 things on a scale of importance to them, and found that the list was topped by the quality of life, the quality of education, the quality of the environment and the public health system, in that order. Economic growth came tenth.

But this survey has found that people like Smith and the Crossleys are actually rare. The vast majority of the 600 people interviewed, although they may be concerned about the environment, also want more pay and/or better services, at least to Australian standards.

Hamilton production worker Geoff Inwood, 48, is more typical. Just back after 18 years in Australia, he finds wages low and housing costs "diabolical".

"It's a beautiful country to live in. The lifestyle thing that New Zealand has, I don't think you can beat," he says. "But New Zealanders are poorer than Australians. Cars are cheaper here but housing and the cost of living are dearer." ... " Inwood would spend $1 billion on "health and getting the roading system sorted out". He's voting National.