For young Brits it is seen as a bucket list destination with beautiful scenery an outdoor lifestyle, but locals from the same beautiful island are leaving in droves.
With a population of just five million on a land mass not much bigger than the UK, official figures show more than 1,500 Kiwis are emigrating from New Zealand every week with a declining economy, unemployment and gang crime cited as reasons.
In the year to June, 80,200 of its citizens moved abroad, nearly twice the amount before the Covid-19 pandemic. In the same period just 24,900 of them returned, according to Stats NZ, its official data agency, giving a net loss of 55,300 people.
Economic reasons have seen more than half of them heading for neighbouring Australia. Official migration figures show Kiwis aged 18 to 30 make up 40 percent of those moving abroad.
However, now many are in older age groups, with children and mortgages. Nigel McKee, 34, moved to Perth with his wife and two children from Kerikeri in the Bay of Islands in late 2022.
He is being paid double what he earnt as an engineer in New Zealand. One of the reasons was a surge in gang-related crime.
He told the Sunday Express: “I’m a big bloke but I couldn’t go to the pub without worrying about getting into a punch-up with a gang member. We didn’t feel safe because of the gang presence. It was nuts.
“There is a general consensus among my friends back home in New Zealand that the grass must be greener elsewhere.”
Jordon Boorer, 32, has moved his family from Dunedin on the South Island to Perth. He got work as a digger driver in the mines in Western Australia’s far northern Pilbara region to provide for his partner, four-year-old daughter and 16-year-old stepson.
He said: “We came here for the lifestyle and more money. Lots of my friends are really struggling back in New Zealand. Here we get nine months of sunshine and my wages have doubled, which means we can live on one wage and don’t have to put the kids into childcare for ten hours a day.”
Australia has retained a buoyant economy, largely due to mining, but New Zealand’s central bank warned this week that its economy is heading towards a third recession since the start of 2022.
Inflation is at 4.7 per cent, nearly one percent more than Australia, with skilled jobs hard to find and interest rates at 5.25 percent. There are fears unemployment will rise further from 4.6 percent.
Another factor blamed on many young Kiwis leaving was the strict two years of lockdown under former Labour prime minister Jacinda Ardern that banned any travel.
The gap year or OE – overseas experience – was a right of passage after school or graduation, but now there are fears many will not return if the economy does not turn a corner.
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said his government needs to “build a long-term proposition where New Zealanders actually choose to stay in this country”.
David Seymour, a government minister and leader of the libertarian Act New Zealand party, told the newspaper: “It’s important we recognise that lots of people go and come back, but it’s also the case that we have a net outflow and that is not sustainable.
“There is also a cyclical element to this. Whenever New Zealand’s economy is performing worse than Australia’s there is a flow of people across the ditch.
“But New Zealanders are also still reeling from poor decisions made by the previous government.”
To make matters worse, Australian employers with vacancies are running recruitment campaigns to actively poach workers from New Zealand and other countries.
Regardless of the situation, young Brits will, no doubt, continue to head to New Zealand and Australia for their gaps years, to cross off that line on their bucket lists.
