Mike's Minute: NZ vs Australia – there's an easy winner

We're still losing people to Australia, but not as badly as we were.  

Stats out yesterday tell the story.  

If I could pick a country right now, I would go with New Zealand and by some margin. I haven't always said that.  

Of course, most people go because they are going to go. If you want reasons to stay or go, and justify it to yourself, you can always find them.  

The same way, overall, the number of people moving to or from Australia will always be in their favour because they're a bigger country. They have more options. That's not about quality, it's about size. 

At the margins though, the point is it's slowing because the tide has turned. If you accept most western nations are right now in a quagmire of sorts, we, little old New Zealand, are doing quite well thank you.  

We are safe and isolated, we are robust and resilient, we are increasingly in favour by expats looking to return.  

As part of the overall migration numbers released yesterday, we still don’t have enough people. Our net gain is meagre, bordering on worrying.  

As too many countries, including Australia, scrap over migration numbers and being flooded with new arrivals we, in a way, have the opposite problem.  

A country needs to grow to offset the lack of births. A lot of countries, including ours, face the same issue. 

The trick is getting the right people and the right numbers. We seem to have settled on a pretty solid skills formula for visas, but the numbers are not where they need to be. Our net gain at the moment is 20,000, at the peak it was 130,000. If 130,000 was too much, 20,000 ain't enough. 

Employers still can't get talent, and the unemployment rate and talent are two different things.  

But this country is growing: 2.6 %. Look up the IMF forecasts out this week and see who else is growing at that rate or more – there aren't many and those who are, are either massive, i.e. India, or chip related, i.e. Taiwan. Australia certainly isn't. 

When you line up inflation, work, tax, debt, angst, immigration, and housing, Australia is not a patch on us. The cycle has turned, the numbers have turned, we are right where we want to be: on the up.