Brain drain here to stay

By GREG ANSLEY

CANBERRA - The transtasman brain drain will not be stemmed by the agreement ending New Zealanders' automatic right to permanent residency in Australia, a study says.

Melbourne researchers Bob Birrell and Virginia Rapson said the deal would instead allow Australia to cherrypick New Zealand talent, and push the unskilled back to the welfare net at home.

Describing New Zealanders as the emphatic losers in the agreement, the Monash University centre for population and urban research study said the transtasman flow was already a serious problem for New Zealand.

In the past three years, the exodus of New Zealand professionals to Australia had almost doubled to over 4000 a year.

There had been a similar surge in the annual loss of tradespeople.

Including associate professionals, senior and intermediate clerical workers, and sales, service, production and transport workers, New Zealand lost almost 30,000 well-educated and skilled people to Australia between 1997 and 1998 and 1999 and last year.

Immigration had not made up the loss, with up to one in 10 migrants moving on to Australia, and a heavy concentration of professionals among those who decided Australia was a better bet.

Over the same three years, 23 per cent of the net flow of permanent and long-term professionals into and out of Australia had come via New Zealand.

The study said Australia was picking the cream of New Zealand's skills. This was hardly calculated to enhance transtasman harmony.

The researchers also cast doubt on hopes that the new agreement - which restricts access to the dole and other key benefits - would significantly slow the general stampede that had swollen the expatriate Kiwi community to around 435,000.

They said it was not clear that the new rules would limit the broader movement of New Zealand citizens to Australia.

New Zealanders who did not meet Australia's selection criteria were still privileged compared with people from the rest of the world.

Even if New Zealanders could not gain permanent residence, they could stay in Australia, work there and obtain some benefits not available to other visitors.

If employment prospects were brighter in Australia, New Zealanders were likely to continue moving across the Tasman, the researchers said.

Those who returned were more likely to be people who had not found work and were coming home to New Zealand's welfare net.