Yoda.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is a summer special of the Front Page, The Enzid Herald's daily news podcast. While the Front Page is on summer break, we're taking a look back at some of the biggest news stories and top rated episodes from the podcast in twenty twenty four. New episodes will return on January thirteenth. Kiwis have left
New Zealand in record numbers this year. News reports covering monthly migration data have repeatedly announced new records of net migration loss, with the latest stats from the year to September showing seventy nine thousand, seven hundred migrant departures. Just over half of those leaving the country moved to Australia, while the law of the traditional uk oe is it's still taking people to London, but is moving overseas going
to make your life less expensive? In July, Enzet Herald reporter Ben Lay joined us after crunching the numbers to see if the grass is really that greener on the other side, Ben, let's get some figures on the table up front when it comes to New Zealand. What are the general averages when it comes to save house prices.
Yeah, so the zed national price according to property analysts core Logic is nine hundred and thirty one four hundred and thirty eight dollars.
And what about your weekly rentals and the typical salary I guess and householding comes.
Yeah, the national rent at the moment is five hundred and seventy three dollars according to core Logic. Again, and salaries can be measured in different ways. So in one story, we measured the household incomes and the ENDZ national household income is one hundred and two thousand dollars six hundred and ninety. We did that with the inflation calculator, So we took a twenty twenty one figure and we added salary inflation onto it to come up with that.
And we're talking about these because so many kiwis are flocking overseas, right, how many people are actually moving to, say the UK or Australia.
Sure, So, Stats and Z just released new figures this week and the sort of backdated figures they're a bit older, but it was for twenty twenty three and they found that twenty seven thousand more kiwis went to Australia.
Then came back the other way.
Now that is a lot, and between twenty fourteen and twenty nineteen we only had about three thousand more kiwis going across the Tasman But before that, thirty thousand people per year was about the average for the five years back before twenty fourteen, so it's not record highs, but it's definitely big.
Well, the numbers are beginning to trend up because what was interesting during COVID was we had a net gain from Australia and that's very unusual in their history. So for most years in the last thirty years, we've seen a net loss. So we're going back to what has been an historical hatter.
So let's go through both Australia and the UK topic by topic. How do house prices compare for people looking to really settle down in either country?
Yeah?
Sure, Well, let's put it in simple terms. London is the most expensive, so it's almost say a beast onto itself if the house prices is just way in excess of Australia and New Zealand cities pretty much because it's like a world city Rome. But when you take that out of the picture, I'm sorry to say, but New Zealand house prices are clearly the next highest, which is it's hard to sort of.
Stomach, isn't it.
But then beyond that, maybe then you've got Australian house prices and then the UK excluding London for those.
Younger kiwi's, maybe those looking to do an OWI for a few years or a couple of years, how does the rental market compare.
Yeah, so once again kiwis heading to London.
Rental prices are really expensive in London compared to Australia and New Zealand. So just for insane since London's typical weekly rent is one thousand dollars in the latest figures that we had, and you know, by comparison, Auckland's about six hundred and thirty six, So when you take London out of the picture, then it's actually fairly even the prices between all three countries.
So yeah, it's a bit of a mix.
But Australia may be a little bit more expensive than New Zealand and the UK toranting.
And the UK gets cheaper the further out you get from those big cities. Hey, much like New Zealand.
Yeah, sure, if you pretty much head north out of London, it starts to get cheaper, especially places like Sheffield, Liverpool and Leeds.
Yeah, a lot cheaper than in London.
And we all know anecdotally that the big draw card for going overseas is for the biggest salaries.
Do the stats.
Actually support that definitely in the case of Australia, Yeah, I think in one of the stories where we compared New Zealand household income compared to the Australian states, and it's pretty much below most of the Australian states. So if you take the Australian Capital Territory, we worked out that the household income there was one hundred and forty four thousand dollars per year and by comparison, New Zealand's was one hundred thousand dollars per year.
Will the under twenties are eight percent better off in New Zealand. At every other age group the difference grows to about twenty percent in the favor of Australia. Adding fuel to the fire, Let's also consider that Australian employers at eleven percent of super on top of these wages, well, in New Zealand we get a poultry three percent clearly with the best available data from both countries governments. Australia has more money to offer kiwis of all age groups.
Just anecdotally, There's one person we spoke to was a maths teacher. So he went from Hamilton across to Melbourne in Victoria and his salary jumps thirty one thousand dollars just by catching the flight basically, so he was a fourth year maths teacher. He's getting paid seventy thousand dollars in Hamilton. Then when he went to Victoria, he's salary jumped up to ninety one thousand dollar plus superneration which took it to one hundred.
And one thousand dollars in total.
And then when you look at some of the police campaigns that have been going on. Last year, the Northern Territory Police launched a very high profile campaign to get KIWI cops. It was to live in more remote parts of the Northern Territory, but yeah, it was still up to sixty thousand dollars higher than some police salaries here
in New Zealand. And just in terms of who might be going, police are actively recruiting, especially people in like healthcare doctors, nurses and even just on the weekend, I was speaking to a police officer who is from South Auckland and he just said that he thought there was up to eighty police from South Auckland that had headed over to Australia in the last six months he migrated from India. At some stage he's got a new baby with his newly married wife, or he's expecting he's one
month off having his new baby. So you can imagine the sort of pressures on someone like that when house prices are so high in Auckland about why it might be attractive to go across the Tasman.
Now is actually a pretty good time to bring up the fact that you will be able to tell from my accent, maybe not from yours, Ben, but we are both Australian and you know the irony is not lost on us for us too speaking about this topic.
A Yeah, that's right.
And you know, I feel like, having done a few of these stories now that maybe Victoria Police Orthern Territory Police should be paying me a little bit of commission for all these people we're helping sand across the Tasman. Right, We're here making the sacrifices on lower salaries just to boost Australia with all these talented Kiwis.
We just love our job so much, that's all. When we love New Zealand so much.
The UK, it's perhaps surprising to see that the opportunity for huge incomes isn't as glorious as it may seem. What if people you've spoken to said about the lifestyle and cost of living there.
Yeah, that's right.
So yeah, in the stories for both moving to Australia and the UK, we actually talked to the people running those Facebook groups that help people move. So Kiwi's moving to Victoria and kiwis in London, and so the guy who's running Kiwi's in London, he was saying it's great for certain skills, you know, like trade's. He called it actually a paradise for trades in the UK at the moment. Nanny's sort of tried and true job for kiwis moving across to the UK, and he said there's great money
to do live in workers a nanny. Other jobs not so easy if you're looking to be a receptionist or administrator. He said, there's lots of competition. You know, in Auckland you might face you know a couple of thousand people looking for the same job.
It can be millions in London.
On the other side of it, you know, there's always professionals that go to London and it's like a magnetic lure for them. They're going there for big salaries already, you know, they're highly trained and they can progress their careers. We talked to one couple. They're called Danny and Lee
mackenzie and they've been living in roode Rud. Danielle's a librarian and Lee's a musician and when COVID sort of dried up the musical opportunities for Lee in Rhodorud, that together with the cost of leaving pressures and the fact that Lee has a British citizenship encouraged them just to go and try their luck over there. So they've moved over to Sheffield in the sort of mid northwest of
the UK and they're getting on great. Like Dannie al was saying, there's just not much opportunity to progress as the library here because there's not many libraries. And when she got there, she's now in charge of three out of fifteen libraries in her local district.
She's close to.
Famous libraries and Lee is singing at beer festivals and in the pub scene, and yeah, they're both thriving, and they're on salaries equal or better to New Zealand and cheaper rent.
What are the supermarket and fuel prices like in both Australia and the UK. We've got to give these kids moving to London some relief.
Yeah, I mean, if you move to London then that's definitely your favorite. The supermarkets are a lot cheaper from what we've seen in what people say an acdotally, one person who just moved from the Herald across the London was saying Kiwi fruit is cheaper in London and dairy is, which is sort of hard to understand. Dairy in particular can be three quarters or even half the price in the UK to hear. Australia is also we found was also a bit cheaper countdown compared to all words, but
the costs less pronounced. And then when it comes to petrol, Australia is the cheapest and z comes in next, and then the UK I think feeling sort of geopolitical pressures, having a bit of a fuel crisis with gas prices going up.
Petrol hitting an average of one hundred and fifty point one pence a liter, that's the highest it's been since November, and diesel hitting one hundred and fifty eight point three pence a liter. Why the spike.
Well, when we woke.
Up to news of those missiles in Iran on Friday, the price of oil sword temporarily and despite that settling, we are feeling those echoes at the pumps, combined with a weeker pound compared to the dollar.
And then just anecdotally some of the things about Australia. There has been some mention about childcare being more expensive. Kiwis in Australia don't have access to as much services as Australians in New Zealand do, so that's some of the sort of hidden challenges when you move over there.
And I've seen some comments under your articles with people talking about taxes, fees and the like. Are there any hidden costs that came up in your research in either country?
Yeah, taxes is important, but we didn't look into it too closely for these stories, so I can't really say too much about that.
Hidden costs.
Like I mentioned earlier, childcare is one that just came up a lot in Australia.
UK sort of petrol prices.
Actually, I should say in Australia, buying a car is something that comes up a lot. So while the petrol might be cheaper, most people talked about buying a car as being quite a lot more expensive.
When you look at the numbers like this, it does seem like, particularly in Australia, there are some slightly better opportunities over there. Would you agree And do you think the New Zealand government needs to do anything to address this to try and kind of stop people flocking overseas for greener pastures.
Yeah, it's a tough one. I mean, the key one is salaries.
Everyone I spoke to almost that went to Australia is just talking about salaries.
They just tend to be so much higher.
And when you take the higher salary and compare it to house prices, it just makes a really tough pressure on locals here, especially in Auckland and other major cities in New Zealand. So it's difficult for the government to improve those things. As a property reporter, I almost argue that government has very little impact over the housing markets, so it's difficult for them to do anything substantial to
bring down house prices In terms of salaries. Often it goes back to sort of productivity and opportunities, doesn't it.
So I guess I really feel that if the government can focus on things to help productivity, more job opportunities, boost salaries, anything they can do to im roofhouse prices, and probably more importantly, a lot of things around infrastructure and just daily life, you know, so that people enjoy living here and don't feel the pressures of the costs as much because they're enjoying a really nice life.
Do you have any thoughts on moving back to Ossie.
I've married someone who is on the path to New Zealand citizenship, which he's just achieved, so we're not sure yet. That was sort of the main plan was to stick around for her citizenship, and I guess we'll be here for a while yet and after that not sure, but it's always a pull back for your own family and maybe the sunshine a bit warmer.
But you're from Melbourne, aren't you. Yeah, yeah, that's a bit of a stretch. Yeah, that is a little bit of a Thanks for joining us, Ben, Thank you, Chelsea.
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzed Herald dot co dot nzages produced by Ethan Siles with sound engineer Patty Fox. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the front page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.