KEY POINTS:
A global network tapped into 25,000 affluent and well-educated New Zealanders overseas says there are another half-million expatriates offshore who could vote in this year's election.
The Kiwi Expat Association (Kea) - funded with a $250,000 Government grant in 2006 - helps businesses tap into New Zealand's global talent pool and extend international connections. It has members in 178 countries.
Now the independent non-profit organisation is using its full-time regional managers based in Sydney, Shanghai, New York and London to run a global campaign - Every Vote Counts - to encourage voting by the several hundred thousand eligible New Zealanders overseas.
"No-one knows exactly how many, but we estimate 500,000 - of whom only 28,000 voted in 2005," said Kea's manager of special projects, Nikitin Sallee, in Los Angeles. "That leaves hundreds of thousands of eligible voters missing".
A paper produced by the Treasury estimates about 600,000 people born in New Zealand are now living overseas. Almost 400,000 expatriates live in Australia and a further 60,000 in Britain.
Former Act Party leader Richard Prebble campaigned overseas in 2005 because he said the 174,255 young, educated and skilled people who had left the country under Labour best fitted the profile of ACT voters.
In fact, the parties' shares of offshore votes in the last election was mostly aligned with their share of the total vote, except for the Green Party, which gained 11 per cent of the offshore vote - more than double its poll at home.
The other main parties split the expat vote on these lines: Labour 38.3 per cent, National 40.8 per cent, New Zealand First 3.1 per cent, Maori Party 1 per cent, United Future 2.2 per cent, and ACT 2 per cent.
Auckland-based Kea chief executive Ivan Moss said the next election was looming, "yet many New Zealanders overseas don't even realise they are eligible to vote".
NZ citizens are eligible to vote if they have been in the country during the past three years, and permanent residents are eligible if they have been in the country in the past 12 months.
The rate of online enrolments by expatriates had more than tripled in the first four days of the campaign, according to data provided by the Electoral Enrolment Centre.
"New Zealanders living overseas are enthusiastic about voting once they know they are eligible and that the process is simple," Mr Moss said.
The Every Vote Counts campaign does not advocate voting for any particular political party, and does not use public funds.
An OECD study published in 2005, Counting Immigrants and Expatriates, found that among developed countries New Zealand had the highest proportion, 24 per cent, of its skilled workforce living outside the country.
- NZPA
