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CANBERRA - With an election looming and a continuing transtasman stampede, gloomsayers are returning to the "last one out, turn off the lights" warning for New Zealand - provided the apparent brain drain leaves someone smart enough to figure out how the switch works.
But across the Tasman, there is a similar wringing of hands as young, talented Australians flee their own land for greener pastures, for much the same reasons Kiwis leave home, and raising the same fears of a severely depleted pool of intellect and skills.
Yet in both countries research is showing each country's diaspora is not nearly as scary as it seems: while we howl at the moon over our losses, we tend to more than fill the gap with migrant numbers and talent.
Further, while vanishing youth and talent is scary and depressing, researchers believe that in the medium to longer term it could turn our way as Kiwis return home with far greater skills, experience and knowledge.
And with the globalised world the way it is, we two bit-players are going to have to accept and adapt to the good, the bad and the inevitable of a thoroughly mobile world.
There are risks in losing youth and talent to the world, quite apart from the loss of investment and potential: researchers warn that while educated and skilled migrants more than fill the gap in numbers, problems may reduce their ability to fully replace departing Kiwis.
And global competition for skills is rapidly growing, meaning it will become harder to attract talent to a tiny country halfway to nowhere. Immediately, Australia will not only be vacuuming skilled Kiwis across the Tasman, but also doing the best it can to divert the broader southern migrant flow in its direction.
Both countries are now also trying to turn their large diasporas to their advantage, by tapping into expatriate networks around the world and harnessing their goodwill for homelands most retain strong affection for.
This applies even in Australia, our great migration bogeyman. Ever since the 1960s, when travel costs plummeted and the relative appeal of Australia increased, New Zealand has agonised at successive waves of young Kiwis flocking across the Tasman,
Along with the natural pull of a larger, more diverse economy with a kinder climate, Australia's mining boom has acted as a magnet not only to Kiwis, but to Australians from other parts of the continent.
Other states are equally disturbed by the loss of talent to Queensland and Western Australia: this month, South Australian Premier Mike Rann will be in Auckland for a careers expo to try to lure Kiwis to his state.
A Treasury working paper on migration by researchers Hayden Glass and Wai Kin Choy, provocatively titled "Brain drain or brain exchange?", noted that in the past two decades about half of all departing Kiwis have moved to Australia.
Further, the proportion of New Zealanders going to Australia has been rising since 1991, and the number returning falling, meaning that the increasing numbers of Kiwi expats there are less likely to come home.
But Glass and Choy say that the transtasman flow is not a brain drain.
Instead, it is part of a common labour market that - rather than draining New Zealand of the highly skilled - has allowed the migration of a broad mix of Kiwis who might otherwise have been screened out of Australia.
"New Zealand consistently loses its citizens to Australia, but they are not just the highly skilled," Glass and Choy said. "Instead, they are representative of the general population of New Zealand - that is, there is no brain drain to Australia, but what might be called a 'same drain'."
And while New Zealand loses people to Australia, it gains them from Asia, with a more variable flow from Britain.
In the longer term, the nation gains more than it loses. In the final half of last century, losses to Australia more than offset by migration from other countries, gaining a net 273,500 from the exchange.
Across the Tasman, Australia has also been agonising. The Senate was so concerned it set up an inquiry into an Australian diaspora that has produced a global expatriate community of an estimated 859,000, equivalent to 4.3 per cent of the nation's resident population.
The Senate's legal and constitutional committee reported concern at the loss of young, well-educated Australians and the potentially damaging impact on the nation's economy. More than two-thirds were professionals, managers or administrators between the ages of 20 and 34.
Most went to Britain, western Europe, Asia, the United States and Europe, for the same sorts of reasons Kiwis leave home - money, opportunity, lifestyle, family and a range of other, complex, factors.
Like New Zealand expats, many will not be coming home.
But the Senate committee reached similar conclusions to Glass and Choy in New Zealand: the feared brain drain may in fact be a "brain circulation" that in the end produces more gains than losses.
Glass and Choy noted that New Zealand's immigrants were more highly skilled than its emigrants, and that while there were reasons to be concerned about large, continuing losses of skilled migrants, "a brain drain is not unambiguously a bad thing".
A key reason for this optimism lies in Kiwis coming home. Waikato University has noted that return migration is more common that often appreciated, with up to 25,000 coming home every year - equivalent to half the nation's annual immigration target.
"The level of productivity and, hence, the national welfare, may rise if those skilled workers who went abroad return to the home country with improved productivities," Glass and Choy said.
Even if they do not come home, expatriates can boost New Zealand.
Bond University researchers Alison Green and Mary Power found that even in Australia, expat New Zealanders maintain - even strengthen - bonds with their homeland.
A survey of Kiwis living in Australia found that two-thirds felt their hearts remained in New Zealand, most maintained close social, emotional and contact with their homeland, and most kept in touch with events at home.
This is similar to a broader, global, survey by the internet-based expatriate networking organisation Kea, which found that most maintained some form of economic connection to New Zealand, and that 80 per cent felt the country had been moving in the right direction over the past decade.
About half said they would, or were likely to, return home. A further 26 per cent had yet to make up their minds.
Such findings have been encouraging to governments in both Wellington and Canberra, which have noted efforts by a range of other countries to tap into the expertise and goodwill of expatriate communities and are framing policies to follow suit.
A range of other policies, generally based on incentives to keep talent at home and attract expatriate skills back to the country, have also been launched or are being considered.
The light is still burning bright in the window.
