New Zealand wants its workers back, Aussies welcome too

IF you fancy moving to Middle Earth, there are 1200 vacancies going this weekend.

The New Zealand government wants to reverse two decades of brain drain.

IF you fancy moving to Middle Earth, there are 1200 vacancies going this weekend.

With the booming New Zealand economy expected to create 50,000 new jobs in the next two years, Aussies and expat Kiwis are being urged to head over the ditch to help fill emerging skills gaps.

In a bid to attract the first wave and reverse years of brain drain, the NZ government is hosting a job expo this Saturday and Sunday at Sydney’s Town Hall, with 1200 immediate vacancies to fill.

There will be 30 employers from a range of industries including business, construction, engineering, trades, healthcare, IT and hospitality. They will be holding walk-in interviews for job hopefuls, so bring your CV.

New Zealand’s Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment Minister Steven Joyce said the country had come out of the GFC strongly with unemployment dropping significantly — currently at 5.4 per cent, compared with 6.2 per cent in Australia.

“More importantly we’re beginning to see signs of firms struggling to fill skills gaps,” he said. “We’re conscious of the need for them to keep growing, and the opportunity may well be to enlist expat Kiwis, but also Australians seeking a better quality of life.”

Mr Joyce noted that after years of brain drain, the Australia-New Zealand relationship hit an important milestone last month: for the first time in more than two decades, there was net migration to New Zealand in October.

The last time that happened was December 1993.

“It was 17 people — so basically a cricket team and a few spares. But it’s the symbolism of the turning point. To give you a feel, post the Christchurch earthquake in 2011, the net loss to Australia was getting up to 3000 a month.”

He said he expects the trend to continue for a while, although the debate would be for how long. “We have a robust economy and strength across a range of areas — food, construction, but also computer software companies and hi-tech manufacturing.”

Aussie chef Phil Morton, 33, moved to New Zealand five years ago. He says while salaries are not quite as high, it’s a more relaxed place to live and work.

“You’re away from the rat race,” he said. “You can drive coast to coast in an hour — if you want to go surfing, skiing, go to the beach, it’s all accessible. There are also a lot of opportunities to work closer to home, which means you’re not spending as much time in traffic.”

Mr Morton adds that the less unionised workforce made it easier to deal with employers. “You normally find because of the larger organisations with bureaucracies behind them, there’s a lot more red tape in Australia.

“Here you’ve got more small and medium businesses, and as a benefit of that the employers are probably a lot more involved with the employees as individuals.”

The Sydney New Zealand Job Expo comes after the travelling roadshow set up shop in Perth last weekend at Scarborough’s Rendezvous Hotel.

Mr Joyce said around 1600 jobseekers turned up to that event, around 60 per cent of whom were expat Kiwis. The rest were made up of Australians and others from countries such as Ireland.

“The companies were very happy,” he said. “The number of Kiwi expats who might have come over in the mid-2000s and were looking to come back was surprising.”

The exhibitors from the Perth event say they expect to be offering around 230 jobs off the back of the expo, with an additional 500 expected to be offered over the next six months.

So, why move to New Zealand, in 30 words or less?

“It’s a great place to work,” says Mr Joyce. “We have great career opportunities, a terrific quality of life — and we’re pretty good at rugby.”

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Originally published as New Zealand wants its workers back, Aussies welcome too