A 27-year-old says his decision to move from Whangārei to Melbourne was “painfully easy” as it meant a decreased cost of living and massively increased wages.
Far more Kiwis are leaving the country than coming back with the latest Stats NZ data showing nearly 73,000 New Zealanders left the country in the past year, while only 26,000 returned.
Young Kiwis aged 18 to 30 made up 38% of those departures, mostly heading across the Tasman.
One of them was Sean Collier, a 27-year-old lawyer and stand-up comedian from Whangārei who moved to Melbourne two years ago.
“It was a no brainer. It was just a large economy and a relatively short distance away from home,” Collier said.
He said in the past year, he had seen about half of his friend group from university move to Melbourne.
“It makes me wonder who’s left at home sometimes.”
Collier said he moved to Melbourne a couple of years ago and at that time he found it relatively easy to get a job which paid almost double what he had been earning in New Zealand.
Accommodation costs were similar to New Zealand but supermarket shopping was a lot cheaper, he said.
“I’d say across the board cost of living decreased, wages massively increased, to be honest it was a pretty painfully easy decision and a lot of my generation have that view.”
Collier said he was relatively reluctant to make the move “but it was driven entirely by economic necessity”.
“I would like to raise my kids in New Zealand one day but at present frankly it’s economically inconceivable for most people.”
Collier said when he was working in New Zealand “it was basically pay check to pay check” and that was without kids and not living in lavish accommodation.
“I can’t even imagine what it’s like for people with like a young child to feed over there at the moment working just a normal job, yeah it’s just not realistic for a lot of people.”
There needed to be a hard conversation in New Zealand about what the country could offer to young people, he said.
In a global environment it was relatively easy for people to move and New Zealand workers were in demand and you could not just expect them to stay, he said.
A major help would be a pathway to home ownership which a lot of people viewed as completely hopeless, he said.
“Things like scrapping the first home buyers grant, the optics of that to my generation are terrible, you know it’s essentially the government saying we also think you’re never going to own property.”
The government last year confirmed it would scrap the First Home Grants scheme saying it would recoup $245 million over four years.
Some kind of student loan forgiveness scheme could attract people back, he said.
“There’s a lot of people that really would like to return but it’s just like why would you take a pay cut like that without some sort of economic benefit to you?”
It would be easier to own a home in Australia as there were more government first home buyer schemes available, he said.
“Just on top of that you just can earn more money here … like I know people that work in a cafe that earn more than my tradie friends back home … it’s outrageous.”
rnz.co.nz
