Gen Z Leaves New Zealand for Australia Amid Wage Gap (Full Transcript)

[00:00:01] Speaker 1: I paid for the actual present, I think.

[00:00:05] Speaker 2: So Matt, last time I was sat on this show, we saw this little video of you walking along a beach from somewhere on the other side of the world.

[00:00:13] Speaker 3: Oh yeah, when you were on vacation. I was working, supposedly.

[00:00:16] Speaker 4: I was working. I was working. So I went home for Christmas, Australia, and decided to just head across to New Zealand to do a couple of stories. And one of the stories we looked into was that a lot of Gen Zers are moving from New Zealand to Australia, and why that's kind of different is because a lot of them are moving permanently. Like, they don't necessarily have plans to move back. So we thought we'd take a look at it. We're here in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, because we've heard that a lot of people are moving overseas, especially to Australia, and a lot of those people are quite young. So we thought we'd come check it out. One of the people who is going in February, her name is Georgia. So we're going to go have a chat to her now and find out a little bit about why she's making the move. Hey, Georgia. Hey. When? When? Georgia Waring is a student trying to break into the creative industries. This is a nice flat. Thank you. With no success finding work locally, she started planning to leave New Zealand altogether.

[00:01:16] Speaker 5: You're going to miss it? Oh, absolutely. I'm going to miss this flat. Like, this is the ippy centre of the city. Talk me through what you're going to take and why. Okay. So this is, like, the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat.

[00:01:28] Speaker 1: Yeah.

[00:01:28] Speaker 5: So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat.

[00:01:33] Speaker 1: Yeah.

[00:01:33] Speaker 5: So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah.

[00:02:20] Speaker 4: So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat.

[00:02:26] Speaker 1: Yeah.

[00:02:26] Speaker 4: So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. So this is the one-bedroom flat. Yeah. Recent data from the agency puts the median weekly income in New Zealand at the equivalent of $579, while Australia's median weekly income is around $1,005, according to the country's Bureau of Statistics. 24-year-old Hayden Fisher moved from Wellington to Sydney at the end of 2024.

[00:03:02] Speaker 6: I moved here mostly for money. It felt like, I don't know, even as I worked harder and I got better jobs and made more it still felt like things weren't working out. I was still losing money. I was still, you know, putting groceries on after pay, that type of thing. And yeah, I found like just being a normal retail sales employee in New South Wales was a higher paying job than being the general manager of a bookstore in Wellington.

[00:03:33] Speaker 4: And how does that make you feel? Like when you left home, do you miss home? Tell me how you feel about that.

[00:03:39] Speaker 6: It felt like, I don't know, the people being prioritised were not young people. There were all these signals that they didn't really want us here. And more and more people I knew like took off to Melbourne or Sydney or London or wherever.

[00:03:54] Speaker 4: Along with stagnant wages, the price of houses and rent in New Zealand has increased exponentially in the last 20 years. Rents went up by about 83%, while house prices tripled, according to New Zealand's Reserve Bank. Independent politics and economics journalist Bernard Hickey says that's the main issue driving young New Zealanders away.

[00:04:15] Speaker 7: The problem at the heart of everything, housing, is just too expensive. Not just to buy, but to rent. New Zealand has some of the most stressed renters in the world. We have the highest proportion of people in the lowest quintile of earners, so the poorest group. The highest proportion of people in that group who pay more than 40% of their disposable income in rent. We're the third most stressed group of renters in the world, behind Colombia and Chile. It's more expensive to rent here than in the United States, and way more expensive than in Australia. It's so hard to fix, we don't want to even talk about it in public. So a lot of our politicians have stopped talking about trying to solve the wage gap between Australia and New Zealand. No one wants to talk about this.

[00:05:02] Speaker 4: In fact, no one from New Zealand's ruling National Party, or their coalition partners ACT, or New Zealand First would be interviewed for this story. But New Zealand's Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has acknowledged the economic strains being felt in all areas of the country.

[00:05:17] Speaker 8: Look, things have been tough. Real tough. Mums and dads and businesses and New Zealanders up and down the country have actually struggled to get ahead.

[00:05:25] Speaker 4: For Georgia, the decision to move is bittersweet. What are you going to miss most about New Zealand?

[00:05:31] Speaker 5: Probably my family. That's going to be a huge part of it. I was really happy though when I did tell my mum about moving, where she went, actually you're like, go for it. That sounds like a great opportunity for you. I hope I'll come back a lot. That's why it's so convenient to be in Aussie.

[00:05:57] Speaker 3: When you were spending time with Georgia, even off camera because I know you were with her for a while, did you get the sense that she was looking forward to moving, or was it something like, this is just what it's come to? She mentioned leaving her family, so how was she feeling about it?

[00:06:12] Speaker 4: I think it's like everyone moves for different reasons, right? You can't blanket rule on everyone saying it's all financial. I think the vibe I got from Georgia after spending a few hours with her was very much like she was excited to go to a bigger city and get work that would pay her a wage that she wanted to be paid, whereas she couldn't get that in New Zealand. But then speaking to Hayden, what he said that I didn't include, but it was quite emotional, he said he didn't feel like he had any choice but to leave because he was like, it's really hard to love a country that doesn't love you back. Which is a pretty tough thing to hear from a 24-year-old, you know?

[00:06:49] Speaker 2: It's not fun. I feel like this is really kind of a global trend as well, like more and more young people are leaving the country they're from, especially kind of, I see it a lot like UK and Europe. And I guess it's not unusual for young people, you know, young people are always the ones that emigrate, right? But I guess like historically it's always people looking for new opportunities and a better life, but it seems to be that more and more people are leaving because financially they have to.

[00:07:20] Speaker 1: And that idea of housing crisis, especially in the cost of housing, has been a huge thing in the UK, probably worse now because of COVID. And you know, someone like me, I was in the incredibly fortunate position, my mum let me live at home rent free until I was nearly 30, which allowed me to work an internship in London and allowed me to save up, but for a lot of people, they don't have that luxury and they're kind of in London, especially kind of stuck in this vicious cycle of earning that money and then seeing it almost immediately all go on rent and bills.

[00:07:55] Speaker 4: Yeah. The OECD said that like prices in the last 15 years in OECD countries of rent has gone up 28% and house prices have gone up 58%. So New Zealand has its own unique circumstances to do with the economy too, but the housing thing is so true. Like if you owned a house 15 years ago, it's now worth 58% more in an OECD country.

[00:08:14] Speaker 3: Yeah. You were mentioning like living at your mom's, the European commission put out some numbers last year that said the average age of people living at home in all of Europe is 26, a little bit over 26.

[00:08:25] Speaker 1: I did pretty well then.

[00:08:27] Speaker 3: But it just shows that people, especially as we go from generation to generation, you're getting squeezed both ways. You know, wages aren't going up and houses are. And so it's not necessarily people aren't leaving to find adventure now or they're not moving somewhere. They're leaving somewhere. You know, that mind shift has kind of changed. So it's going to be a story and a trend that will be coming for a long time.