Not mentioned in this article - our corrupt, self interested government abruptly cancelling a bunch of much needed infrastructure projects when they came into government, leaving whole sectors in limbo and their workforces leaving for Australia.
this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
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This is a massive driver, especially in the building industry. KO is the countries biggest builder, it employs a huge number of builders (as subbies).
Without the ability to forward plan, with the big KO projects. Building companies are going under.
Its not just more jobs for more money over in Aus; working conditions are much much better over there thanks to their union movements maintaining influence while ours were deliberately undermined by the 80s "Labour" government, then the 90s National governments.
The fair pay act which Nactional Fist are scrapping would have finally started to bring the balance back into employment negotiations - and while some of it would have been to cause pay to go up, a lot of the focus would have been on ensuring consistent work conditions across industries.
Alas that's gone now and the gap between us & Aus will just continue to grow.
If our unions are considered better, how bad is it over there?
Unions effectively lost all legal status and recognition in 1991 with the employment contracts act and they have never fully recovered.
Since then it's come back a little with the Employment Relations Act 2000, which is in place today, but there is no sector level bargaining (the new govt immediately repealed the fair pay agreement legislation the last govt passed), it's incredibly easy for employers to pass on collective agreement conditions and sympathy strikes are unlawful (I think this might be the case now in Aus too?). In fact all strikes are unlawful except in bargaining for a collective and for health and safety.
Unions are mostly confined to public sector roles these days, although there are a few in other sectors.
Government with horrible polices
The article is pretty thorough and I think shows that this isn't exactly some crazy unheard of thing.
At a glance it seems this graph of NZer arrivals in Australia is not unexpected. I'm not convinced the COVID hole is even filled yet? As in all the people that would have moved to Australia but couldn't because of COVID. Based on this graph it looks like they wouldn't have all made it across yet.
Is the y-axis scale logarithmic?
The y-axis is just crap....non-linear but not a log scale...
No not logarithmic but now you mention it, it doesn't start at zero. That would throw off first impressions I think.
Still, I don't think the drop over COVID has been fully offset by the increase.
You'd be surprised how many Kiwis have fled to Brisbane. Not a recent trend by any means.
I'm the son of one of them. Mum came over to Brisbane in the 60s. She married an Aussie bloke and lived on the West Island the rest of her days.
Why Brisbane? I was there once. It was hot and muggy and generally unpleasant. I don't remember having a great meal there, I don't remember seeing anything particularly spectacular. Just seemed like a hut and muggy city.
Melbourne OTOH was dynamic and fun and had spectacular food.
I was there once. It was hot and muggy and generally unpleasant.
Seems a fair summary.
Gold Coast (east of the M1 at least) has the beaches and rainforest in the mountains to at least.compensate. I lived and owns an apartment on the ocean there for a few years, as I couldn't afford NZ, lots of Kiwi's there as well.
But Brisbane at least has the Felon's Brewery right under that bridge. Really nice location that.
I didn't get a chance to visit that brewery. In fact the only brewery I visited in Australia was the little creatures in Fremantle which was in a large building like a warehouse. Good beer, good food but not a place you go for some peace and quiet that's for sure.
Haha, I believe Felon's was the only brewery I visited that wasn't part of my job. It's a small brewery and they only sell their beer on tap at that location. And they're doing really well. The view from their deck is phenomenal and the atmosphere is really good.