Two days after the news that one of my offspring and partner are to spend four months in Brisbane working to save money, a strong migration flow from NZ to Australia featured in the Weekend Herald’s “The Ozzification of NZ”. The estimated number of NZ citizens living in Australia is now 450,000, roughly 2% of the Australian population, and 12% of New Zealand’s.
The Herald (13 September, page B2) also cites findings of a 2005 study among 300 Kiwis living in Australia by researchers Mary Power and Alison Green from Bond University. Bond and Green reported on this study at our own ANZCA conference in Christchurch that year. They found Kiwis retained a strong attachment to their NZ identity.
Elsewhere in the Herald’s “meet the Kaussies” feature exploring and envisioning a shared future, is an interesting comment from expat Kiwi Rob Levison. He thinks “New Zealand looks to Australia as Australia looks to America or China. Australia doesn’t look back at New Zealand.” In aiming to be an effective head of an Australasian association, I find this image helpful, for it does speak aptly of our different perspectives. Add Power and Green’s research implying Kiwi expats look back longingly to New Zealand to Levison's image of us all shading our eyes as we look to the north, and we must conclude that although much binds us in ANZCA as ‘kaussie' academics, we gaze in different directions in a nationhood sense.
