Why are you leaving for Aussie?
1 in 80 New Zealanders left for Australia last 12 months. Emigration so far this year is 15% higher than the same months in 2011. 6,000 people attended the 3rd Aussie jobs expo in Auckland in 18 months this weekend. The question is becoming not ‘would you go to Aussie’ but ‘what was the final straw for you to decide to leave Aussie’. Here’s a few reasons.
- They’re taxing pollution and cutting income tax for all. National’s subsidising polluters and borrowing for tax cuts for the rich.
- Their unemployment rate has fallen below 5%. Ours is back up to 6.7%.
- Australia has a capital gains tax. We have a second housing bubble and a government asleep at the wheel.
- In Australia, governments that partially privatise assets get massacred.
- They have more paid parental leave than here. Parenthood is seen as an investment, not a cost.
- National’s plan for catching Australia is to do the opposite of whatever Australia does.
- In Australia, they get that if you want a high wage economy, you need workers’ rights and a high minimum wage. Here, National’s response to a record outflow of workers is to drive wages lower.
- In Australia, public holidays – including ANZAC Day – are Mondayised and, incredibly, the sky hasn’t fallen.
- We’re just sick of being lied to by a government that promises the world and doesn’t deliver- ‘close the gap with Aussie!’, ‘rebuild Christchurch!’, ‘we’ll get the bodies out!’, ‘36,000 new jobs!’, ‘fewer people on benefits!’, ‘cap, not cut!’, ‘crush them cars!’,’higher standards for ministers!’ – and we’re sick of the way Key and co won’t even front up when they fail