TLDR: Just quietly, the Australian Government took a major step forward on Friday night towards granting unfettered and full access to its welfare system for currently ‘second class citizen’ New Zealanders wanting to stay in Australia, and young skilled New Zealanders thinking of moving permanently across the ditch.
Australia’s Immigration Department announced the temporary closure of applications for a currently difficult-to-access and over-loaded pathway to residency, saying it was considering a much fuller and faster opening. It also created a taskforce to clear the current backlog of applications quickly, which will help Australia find up to 195,000 new permanent migrants in the current financial year. Australia increased its planning range for permanent migrants from 160,000 earlier this year and said New Zealanders would have priority.
The move confirms Australia remains on track to announce the major easing of rules about New Zealand’s 600,000 ‘second-class’ citizens living in Australia ahead of the next Anzac day. New Labor PM Anthony Albanese agreed at a summit in July with PM Jacinda Ardern to work on speeding up full residency, in part because of growing worker shortages there. Since 2001, Australia has made it difficult for New Zealanders who arrived after then to access disability insurance and other health and education benefits available to Australian citizens, even though they pay the same tax rates.
I include more detail and analysis below the paywall fold of the changes over the weekend and the extra pressure it puts on employers here to keep young skilled staff stuck renting here who are tempted by wages that are 30-40% higher and by the ability to save much more for housing deposits after rent costs over there.
Elsewhere in the news in our political economy over the weekend and this morning:
Listen to this episode with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Kākā by Bernard Hickey to listen to this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
