Feature
Far-flung whanau
by Bruce Ansley
Continued from page 2...
Is any of it working? Immigration Minister David Cunliffe cites four million hits on the website in its first two weeks. The Australian launch “went well”. The rest? Too soon.
Taking something of a rose-tinted view, Cunliffe denies that we’re a low-wage country. “We’re fortunate in our wages, we’re blessed with a beautiful environment and a harmonious society by world standards and a social wage which is even higher than our financial wage would indicate, social security benefits, free stuff which others pay a lot for. If you want to join a golf club in Tokyo or medical care in the US, you’re going to be paying a whole lot more than you pay in New Zealand.”
No one is rushing the ticket counter, yet. Says Callister, “We have the idea of New Zealanders going to London, sitting in some terrible squat, going round Europe with a backpack, then coming home. But a lot of these people have been overseas for a long time. They’re entrenched. They have partners, good jobs. A lot of them are not going to come back, and if they are, it’ll be short-term or when they retire. Our lifestyle, work-life balance, we’re not that wonderful in New Zealand. We just think we are. There’s a heck of a lot of places in the US and certainly Australia that are more family-friendly than New Zealand. We’ve got this myth that it’s a great place to bring up kids, but other places are, too. And people are having fewer kids.”
Perhaps they will come back one day. Bedford cites earlier studies of returning migrants that found they weren’t coming home for jobs or money, but because this is a great country to bring up their family. Terrorism and climate change could even be good news. “I’m convinced that in 20 or 30 years New Zealand will be fighting off the people who want to come,” says Bedford. “The biggest group will come from Australia. We’re definitely beginning to experience climate change and Australia has a huge problem: they will not have water.”
Meanwhile, immigration is filling their shoes – possibly. Immigrants have a history of being underemployed, or unemployed. “Our best and brightest are leaving, and we get the best and brightest from Asia, but they drive taxis,” says Callister. “It’s a really serious problem. I know a really well-qualified surgeon who eventually went back to do a nursing degree. He really loved medicine, but couldn’t get registered here. That’s a sheer waste of talent,” says Didham.
In the meantime, the world has, despite 9/11, got smaller, cheaper, easier to get around. Sometimes it’s hard even to spot the expats: who really knows where Sean Fitzpatrick, Lucy Lawless, Sam Neill or Rachel Hunter are living at any given moment?
Bedford’s studies show high numbers of supposedly permanently departing New Zealanders are shuttling in and out of this country – and Australia. “When you talk to Americans about their relationships, they’ll live on the east coast, their parents live on the west coast, they go home for Christmas and birthdays. I do the same. It’s just a bit further to fly,” says Gamlen.
Mary Robinson, the first woman President of Ireland, famously put a light in her kitchen window for Irish emigrants. As a last resort, perhaps Clark could do the same.
