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Interesting article from The Australian:
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Interesting article from The Australian:
Why Kiwis who can fly the coopBernard Salt
23jun05
IT'S not our fault, New Zealand. We Australians can't help it if more than 300,000 of your countrymen preferred living in Australia at the time of the 2001 census, up from 90,000 in 1976.
We didn't entice them; they came of their own volition. Perhaps they were spellbound by our magnetic personality.
Perhaps this lot are really Kiwi aesthetes who have been transfixed by the depth of Australian culture. Perhaps they were entranced by the physical beauty of the Australian race?
Or perhaps it is a deep and an abiding love of the Australian people that holds New Zealanders here in such numbers. Then again, perhaps not.
I suspect that New Zealanders are here in big numbers because Australia offers the broadest range of jobs within striking distance of their home.
Some Oz-based Kiwis may also simply prefer to live in cities that offer greater critical mass: Auckland is, after all, only marginally larger than Adelaide; and Australia does have five times the population of New Zealand.
For decades, young and mostly male New Zealanders have moved to Australia: Russell Crowe, Joh Bjelke Petersen and Derryn Hinch all migrated to Australia as young men.
This process has left an odd imprint on the Kiwi demographic profile (see New Zealand chart).
In 1976 there were more New Zealand men than women up to the age of 20; thereafter the men evaporated or, more correctly, emigrated, leaving a surplus of women in that country to the age of 40.
Men aged 20- and 30-something left New Zealand in the 1970s to do what they called (and still call) their overseas experience, or OE.
New Zealand is a small and remote nation that benefits from the exposure of its people to larger economies and cultures: Britain is preferred; Australia is closer.
The problem was, and remains, that the Kiwi OE is a predominantly male affair.
Also, what starts out as a visit can convert into migration: hopelessly romantic New Zealand men take one look at Australian womanhood, fall head over heels in love, and end up staying a lifetime.
If more men than women leave New Zealand in their 20s, then issues of gender imbalance complicate life for unpartnered women in the 30-something cohort.
By 1991 there were 7600 more 30-something women than men in New Zealand.
If there's not enough blokes for heterosexual partnering, then society's mores shift to incorporate the concept of time-share men.
Liberal thinking about non-committal sexual relationships must be more advanced in New Zealand than in Australia.
We should regard the Kiwi as a sort of miner's canary signalling social change.
Fast-forward to 2004 and the number of New Zealand women exceeded the number of men each year between the ages of 26 and 53; in the 30-something age group alone there were 23,800 fewer men than women.
In 2004, a 34-year-old heterosexual Kiwi woman had the poorest numeric prospects of any woman under the age of 85 of finding a partner the same age: many men in the 34-year cohort would have left New Zealand in the late 1990s.
What started out as a modest outflow of mostly male youth in the 1970s has turned into a full on, shaky-island haemorrhage.
Young New Zealand men have been sucked out of that nation for at least a quarter of a century.
This has led to the rise of a highly matriarchal society: New Zealand now has a female prime minister, a female governor general and, until recently, a female chief justice.
Not that there's anything wrong with this arrangement; it is simply very different from Australia, where the gender balance has historically favoured fellas.
But all New Zealanders should be concerned about that nation's loss of youth.
Taxpayer dollars nurture and educate locals - from pre-school to university - who are then apt to up-and-off to better opportunities overseas, where they then pay tax.
How good is this for the host country? It gets the skill and the tax-paying capacity while some sucker in another country forks-out for 25 years of care and education.
It could be said, my fellow Australians, that New Zealand is being mined by our nation for its human talent, and its young men.
The reason it is important for Australians to understand this relationship is that I think we could be headed down the same path as New Zealand.
During the 1990s Australia too began tithing its 30-something men in particular to other, bigger, economies (see Australian chart).
This brawn-and-brain drain is leaving Australia with more women than men in the 30 and 40-something age group.
This is an important issue because it signals the role that Australia seems to be fulfilling in the global economy. First, New Zealand and then Australia have evolved as little more than satellites on the edge of the global solar system.
Gravitational forces exerted by northern-hemisphere economies now suck from Australia our youngest, brightest, most ambitious and perhaps even prettiest to what is perceived to be better life opportunities. (This doesn't bode well for those of us who stay: we must by definition be old, stupid, complacent and ugly.)
Australia now struggles to recruit health professionals from overseas; in the modern world labour with universal skills flows like water between competing nations.
But in this global market larger economies may not be as benign as we Australians were to, say, New Zealand, over the past 30 years.
Australia could be specifically targeted by aggressive economies as a good place from which to pluck young graduates in computer technology, health services, finance and engineering.
Australia has always thought of itself as the lucky country: our immigration program simply regulates the flow of people wanting - no, yearning - to come here.
But I think we will increasingly need to develop defensive migration strategies to protect and retain the skilled labour we have nurtured locally.
This makes good sense on several levels.
It protects taxpayer investment in youth; shores up the gender balance in the reproductive age group; and strengthens our cultural independence and sense of national identity.
I think it is fair to say that New Zealand has had to fight especially hard to retain these qualities in the latter decades of the 20th century.
Australia needs to ensure that globalisation does not lead to the plundering by others of our youth, energy, intellect and men. I think we need to protect against the possible Kiwification of Australia to ensure others do not do to us, what we have done to New Zealand in the past 30 years.
Bernard Salt is KPMG partner in charge, property advisory services
[email protected]
23jun05
IT'S not our fault, New Zealand. We Australians can't help it if more than 300,000 of your countrymen preferred living in Australia at the time of the 2001 census, up from 90,000 in 1976.
We didn't entice them; they came of their own volition. Perhaps they were spellbound by our magnetic personality.
Perhaps this lot are really Kiwi aesthetes who have been transfixed by the depth of Australian culture. Perhaps they were entranced by the physical beauty of the Australian race?
Or perhaps it is a deep and an abiding love of the Australian people that holds New Zealanders here in such numbers. Then again, perhaps not.
I suspect that New Zealanders are here in big numbers because Australia offers the broadest range of jobs within striking distance of their home.
Some Oz-based Kiwis may also simply prefer to live in cities that offer greater critical mass: Auckland is, after all, only marginally larger than Adelaide; and Australia does have five times the population of New Zealand.
For decades, young and mostly male New Zealanders have moved to Australia: Russell Crowe, Joh Bjelke Petersen and Derryn Hinch all migrated to Australia as young men.
This process has left an odd imprint on the Kiwi demographic profile (see New Zealand chart).
In 1976 there were more New Zealand men than women up to the age of 20; thereafter the men evaporated or, more correctly, emigrated, leaving a surplus of women in that country to the age of 40.
Men aged 20- and 30-something left New Zealand in the 1970s to do what they called (and still call) their overseas experience, or OE.
New Zealand is a small and remote nation that benefits from the exposure of its people to larger economies and cultures: Britain is preferred; Australia is closer.
The problem was, and remains, that the Kiwi OE is a predominantly male affair.
Also, what starts out as a visit can convert into migration: hopelessly romantic New Zealand men take one look at Australian womanhood, fall head over heels in love, and end up staying a lifetime.
If more men than women leave New Zealand in their 20s, then issues of gender imbalance complicate life for unpartnered women in the 30-something cohort.
By 1991 there were 7600 more 30-something women than men in New Zealand.
If there's not enough blokes for heterosexual partnering, then society's mores shift to incorporate the concept of time-share men.
Liberal thinking about non-committal sexual relationships must be more advanced in New Zealand than in Australia.
We should regard the Kiwi as a sort of miner's canary signalling social change.
Fast-forward to 2004 and the number of New Zealand women exceeded the number of men each year between the ages of 26 and 53; in the 30-something age group alone there were 23,800 fewer men than women.
In 2004, a 34-year-old heterosexual Kiwi woman had the poorest numeric prospects of any woman under the age of 85 of finding a partner the same age: many men in the 34-year cohort would have left New Zealand in the late 1990s.
What started out as a modest outflow of mostly male youth in the 1970s has turned into a full on, shaky-island haemorrhage.
Young New Zealand men have been sucked out of that nation for at least a quarter of a century.
This has led to the rise of a highly matriarchal society: New Zealand now has a female prime minister, a female governor general and, until recently, a female chief justice.
Not that there's anything wrong with this arrangement; it is simply very different from Australia, where the gender balance has historically favoured fellas.
But all New Zealanders should be concerned about that nation's loss of youth.
Taxpayer dollars nurture and educate locals - from pre-school to university - who are then apt to up-and-off to better opportunities overseas, where they then pay tax.
How good is this for the host country? It gets the skill and the tax-paying capacity while some sucker in another country forks-out for 25 years of care and education.
It could be said, my fellow Australians, that New Zealand is being mined by our nation for its human talent, and its young men.
The reason it is important for Australians to understand this relationship is that I think we could be headed down the same path as New Zealand.
During the 1990s Australia too began tithing its 30-something men in particular to other, bigger, economies (see Australian chart).
This brawn-and-brain drain is leaving Australia with more women than men in the 30 and 40-something age group.
This is an important issue because it signals the role that Australia seems to be fulfilling in the global economy. First, New Zealand and then Australia have evolved as little more than satellites on the edge of the global solar system.
Gravitational forces exerted by northern-hemisphere economies now suck from Australia our youngest, brightest, most ambitious and perhaps even prettiest to what is perceived to be better life opportunities. (This doesn't bode well for those of us who stay: we must by definition be old, stupid, complacent and ugly.)
Australia now struggles to recruit health professionals from overseas; in the modern world labour with universal skills flows like water between competing nations.
But in this global market larger economies may not be as benign as we Australians were to, say, New Zealand, over the past 30 years.
Australia could be specifically targeted by aggressive economies as a good place from which to pluck young graduates in computer technology, health services, finance and engineering.
Australia has always thought of itself as the lucky country: our immigration program simply regulates the flow of people wanting - no, yearning - to come here.
But I think we will increasingly need to develop defensive migration strategies to protect and retain the skilled labour we have nurtured locally.
This makes good sense on several levels.
It protects taxpayer investment in youth; shores up the gender balance in the reproductive age group; and strengthens our cultural independence and sense of national identity.
I think it is fair to say that New Zealand has had to fight especially hard to retain these qualities in the latter decades of the 20th century.
Australia needs to ensure that globalisation does not lead to the plundering by others of our youth, energy, intellect and men. I think we need to protect against the possible Kiwification of Australia to ensure others do not do to us, what we have done to New Zealand in the past 30 years.
Bernard Salt is KPMG partner in charge, property advisory services
[email protected]
Regards
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