Dawn Chorus: PM flying blind into brain drain

Hipkins said the appeal of pavlova and the All Blacks would be enough to keep people in ‘middle Earth’ but many Kiwis will be eyeing up a jump across the Tasman. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The Kākā

TL;DR: PM Chris Hipkins has acknowledged the Government is flying blind on net migration to Australia after the weekend announcement of a four-year pathway to dual citizenship for the 300,000 New Zealanders living there since 2001 and the ones eyeing up going for bigger salaries and after-housing-cost disposable incomes.

Hipkins told reporters the figures couldn’t and haven’t been modelled, although he was still confident the much-more-assured pathway to citizenship would not increase the numbers of New Zealanders migrating to Australia, even though net migration of NZ residents trebled to over 1,000 a month in the year to the end of September.

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Flying blind into a bigger brain drain