Before becoming prime minister in 2008, John Key made a campaign advertisement in Wellington’s regional stadium saying the 34,500 empty seats equalled the number of New Zealanders leaving every year. He vowed to turn that around – and it did, eventually.
For a brief period, the long history of New Zealand’s outflows to Australia exceeding those arriving reversed – aided not just by New Zealand’s then newly buzzing economy but also by a slowdown in Australia.
As we’ve long known, much of the trans-Tasman migration flows are driven by the push-pull of rising and falling economic activity in both countries.
New Zealand politicians have tended to quell fears over steeper outflows from Aotearoa with the rejoinder that many will return home. And, in any case, New Zealand can make up the losses by attracting migrants from elsewhere.
To an extent, that has been the case. Yet the equation is changing and, worryingly for New Zealand, perhaps permanently.
Earlier this month, the Australian government, in a report on the jobs market, confirmed the nation was facing the most acute skills shortages since the 1960s.
Thus, Australia, like New Zealand, is competing around the world to fill skilled-worker gaps and, of course, is aggressively tapping New Zealanders.
Most are aware of the widening wage differential between the two nations: ask any nurse, teacher or police officer working in New Zealand, although recent pay rises for nurses have closed the gap.
It’s not new that Australia’s wages are higher than New Zealand’s. What has changed is that Australia’s skills shortages are greatly enlarging the differential, just as its government reverses years of discrimination against many of the 700,000 New Zealanders already living there. And that’s not a coincidence.
Most Kiwis in Australia – and those yet to come – are now offered a pathway to Australian citizenship after four years’ residency, which, unsurprisingly, Kiwis are now applying for at the rate of nearly 400 a day.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins giddily welcomed Australia’s change of heart in April with the words that it marked a “blimmin’ good day” for Australia’s Kiwi diaspora.
It was also a blimmin’ good day for Australia, which overnight moved to enlarge the pipeline of skilled labour from New Zealand by offering an incentive for those already there to stay, and the lure of full Australian citizenship and welfare benefits for those yet to come.
Sure, we’re yet to see the official migration figures since the change was announced but the signs are ominous: last year, net migration to Australia was the highest since 2013 with a net loss of 13,342 to Australia, up from 5400 the year before. That’s undoubtedly about to leap.
Perhaps it’s time New Zealand had a serious conversation about the loss of its people to Australia before Aotearoa hollows out further and becomes overburdened by the young and aged with too many of its productive middle across the Tasman.
A good start would be for the new government to commission a study on the costs and benefits to New Zealand of the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement, which provides for the free movement of labour between the two countries. Surprisingly little recent examination has been conducted within New Zealand on the arrangement’s impacts. What are the projected outflows now that Australia has laid down a fresh welcome mat? What are the likely costs to New Zealand? How does it benefit?
It is 50 years since the travel arrangement came into effect – an opportune point, surely, for both countries to review it before another would-be prime minister returns to that bare stadium to bemoan more losses.
