The number of New Zealanders moving to Australia set a record last month, and the flow of people moving here from other countries continued to slow.
Statistics New Zealand figures issued yesterday show 47,800 Kiwis crossed the Ditch to live in the year to October.
…
Before the election, National leader John Key described accelerating losses to Australia as a “vote of no confidence” in the Labour-led Government.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10544876
This was an issue that National based its entire campaign on yet even when victory was close people were still fleeing across the ditch. Now to be fair a move often takes months to plan however if the shifts to Australia were tied to the government as National has been claiming for many months the polls suggesting a National government might have put the break on. And of course it didn’t.
New Zealanders have always been crossing the ditch to Australia and there are numerous reasons why one might want to move there. Some do it because of the more diverse job opportunities that come with a higher population, some do it because they want experience in finance that they can take with them to Europe. I’ve also had a personal friend tell me that she left because of the big cities and laughed at the mere existence of the idea that people like her were leaving because of the government.
November 27, 2008 at 11:39 am
[...] NewZblog tries very lamely to blame National for the high migration in October 2008, arguing it should have reduced because National was ahead in the polls. [...]
November 28, 2008 at 10:25 am
Haha – “people were/are leaving New Zealand, not because they were tired of Labour, but feared the likely election of a National-led government, and what that would do their wages and conditions.”
That certainly is more plausable than the “vote of no confidence” English school of thought. The only thing that surprised me is that DPF took the post at face value, when in fact it is a more subtle criticism.
November 28, 2008 at 11:13 am
He seemed to ignore the real meat of my post that is about some of the real reasons people are leaving.
As a side note I’ve been comparing the traffic logs between now and the last time we were mentioned on Kiwiblog and must ask: David, if you’re reading this, have you been shedding some readership recently?
April 24, 2009 at 2:19 pm
I thought it was just because they couldn’t stand the weather in the land of the long white cloud any longer:) In fact I explore just this in an article called Why do so many people move to, or want to move to, Australia? It is all quite tongue in cheek though and doesn’t really explore the deeper political or economic reasons behind the escalating Kiwi exodus so thanks for your input with that!