A Kiwi nurse says she earned $170,000 in Australia in a year and it “freaks” her out how high wages are. A teacher about to make $97,000 a year in Brisbane says it’s tough to read about the profession back home. They are among the NZ health professionals and teachers
New Zealand to Australia: Kiwi teachers and nurses share what they make across the ditch
Top row (from left): Carlee Williams, Kylie Newman, Jeanene Monahanhere, Nadine Perenara. Bottom row (from left): Whaan Tawha, Susan Flashoff, Tammy Miller.
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Perenara earns an annual salary of $94,000, which will increase to $97,000 next month.
“It’s actually really rough reading about what’s happening with teachers back home.”
Perenara has a Bachelor’s degree in early childhood Pasifika and she said if she wanted to teach primary school in New Zealand she would have to pick up extra papers and study again.
“But I was able to transfer and get my studies accredited and gave primary school teaching a go in Australia through word of mouth.”
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Susan Flashoff moved from Te Puke 15 months ago. She works in Western Australia about 30 minutes south of Perth.
As a new teaching graduate, her salary is $74,000 a year.
“There are plenty of schools that need staff. I love the school I am at. And the lifestyle is great too. Classes are 25 to 30 but it depends on the school. Resources are pretty good. But there is a big difference from state to state.”
Jeanene Monahanhere from Rotorua has been a nurse for 20 years and is working in Aurukun - an Aboriginal community in Far North Queensland.
She has been in Australia full-time for two years but previously did some fly-in, fly-out contracts.
Money was a big motivator, she said.
“I have cleared $170,000 for the year which freaks me right out.
“As a single person, how the heck do you save in New Zealand to buy a house? I love the challenge of remote work and there are so many more options and development over here, which makes sense given the size difference.”
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The Far North of Australia also offered more bang for your buck when buying property, she said.
“I can get so much more for my money. Lifestyle-wise - I don’t second guess myself at the supermarket and I save $3000 a fortnight. Six years ago I took out a loan to do an overseas tour but now I can plan and just book.
“Sounds weird but the financial freedom is amazing.”
Whaan and Gayle Tawha have been in Western Australia for about 10 years. Whaan is a fly-in, fly-out teacher and Gayle works in Aboriginal communities.
“We’ve gone from living week-to-week in New Zealand, to owning investment properties in Australia. Combined, we make about $230,000 gross,” Whaan said.
“As a remote teacher, I’m entitled to Remote Service Leave every four years which means I can take six months paid [leave] or cash it out and keep working. Every seven years I’m entitled to long service leave which means I can take six months paid leave or cash it out and keep working (minus the cash remote service benefits).”
He said there were other benefits such as subsidised travel, housing, and utilities, and in some areas housing and utilities costs were covered. Whaan was from Hamilton and Gayle was from Napier.
“For me, it isn’t just about the pay, it’s the benefits also,” he said.
“My entire teaching career in Aussie has been spent in remote Aboriginal communities. I did a few relieving stints in Perth and Gold Coast but was always headhunted back to, or near Aboriginal communities.”
The couple’s principal property was in Gold Coast and they were about to buy another. He said lots of Kiwi teachers and nurses were saving for their dream property back in New Zealand, or paying their mortgages off in New Zealand.
He was a spray painter by trade, and teacher by profession. “We’re rewarded financially for our genuine worth in the workplace.”
“The first few years were tough. We always knew if we hung in there, the tide would turn, and it did. We wouldn’t have made it without the support of family who were already here.”
Krystle Stehlin is a registered nurse living in Perth who moved about five months ago from Palmerston North.
“Back home in primary health, I was getting paid $23 an hour. Here I’m doing the same job on $38. In the hospitals, nurses get upwards of $50 an hour which is just unheard of back home.
“We left because we wanted a change and New Zealand was getting very expensive and pay wasn’t raising to meet our needs.”
In her view, nurses in New Zealand were overworked and underpaid significantly. The pay in Australia was “great”, she liked her team and boss, and the workload for practice nurses was “very different”.
“There is not a lot of autonomy, it is still very much doctor-focused. Back home nurses do a lot more in primary health so I’m trying to get my head around the much slower pace.”
Kylie Newman from Wellington is a fly-in, fly-out nurse who moved to Australia in 2003 to travel and has been there ever since. She worked in the Aboriginal communities and made about $130,000 a year.
She said the pros were the money, lifestyle and how easy it was to save for a house.
“I brought a house for a reasonable price. There is so much to see and it’s easy to get around and I can afford more holidays.”
The downside was being away from family and it was expensive to visit.
Carlee Williams, from Tauranga, said she had doubled her Kiwi wage working as a Youth Programme co-ordinator in Melbourne.
“Back home I struggled and felt like I put such effort into my work and I couldn’t even reward myself and my daughter by going away on a holiday. I remember feeling dread every week not knowing how I would pay the bills when I lived back in New Zealand.”
Now she got to go away for weekend trips and “enjoy my life”.
Williams owned her home and her daughter was thriving and had just got a job as a flight attendant.
“We are finally living life. I’ll always love home but feel disappointed that good people are living on the bones of their butt.”
Tammy Miller is a Hawke’s Bay-born teacher and musician living in Melbourne and earning nearly $75,000 a year.
“The lifestyle here feels comparable to Aotearoa; I’m a homebody so I don’t have much interest in getting out to restaurants, clubs or events. The music scene is just as much of a struggle as it is in Aotearoa and, in some ways, more of a struggle.
“However, once I made a couple of connections, I was able to get stuck into recording original music at industry-level quality, which has been a goal long sought-after.”
“Despite this, I’m able to still save money after covering expenses, which is a luxury I haven’t had prior to living here.”
’Workforce emergency’
New Zealand Post Primary Teachers’ Association Te Wehengarua acting president Chris Abercrombie said the union was deeply concerned about skilled and experienced secondary teachers moving to Australia.
“We simply don’t have enough teachers in our schools here. It essentially means that students, particularly future cohorts of students, are being short-changed.”
Abercrombie said there were plenty of wonderful, experienced secondary school teachers in Aotearoa who were no longer teaching because they could get better pay and work/life balance in other careers.
“We know that many of them would come back to teaching as it is an amazing and incredible job, but they will only return if the pay and conditions are significantly improved.”
Abercrombie said Australian salary rates varied from state to state.
- A beginning teacher in New South Wales was paid about A$80,000 (NZ$88,000)
- The top-of-scale rate for New South Wales classroom teachers was A$119,000 (NZ$130,900)
- In New Zealand, a beginning teacher started on about NZ$56,000
- A teacher at the top of the New Zealand scale would be paid NZ$90,000.
Last year 125 teachers who had left teaching responded to a voluntary survey. Almost a quarter said they were leaving for jobs outside teaching while 73 left because the workload and other demands were too great, and they wanted a better work/life balance.
A survey in March that 127 principals responded to found the average numbers of applicants per teaching position were the lowest on record at 1.6 New Zealand applicants per position and 3.2 overseas applicants, compared with 3.4 New Zealand applicants and 3.6 overseas applicants before Covid in 2019.
New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) president Kerri Nuku said the sector was under pressure with at least 4000 nurse vacancies across the country and health sector.
“So this is a workforce emergency. It’s not uncommon for nurses to do an OE so we normally see nurses travel. However, this is different and concerning if too many of our nurses leave in pursuit of better working conditions and better pay.”
Rates for nurses in Australia varied between states, but 2022 rates for Queensland provided by Nuku, compared with NZNO’s collective agreement with District Health Boards for August 2020 to October 2022, showed:
- An enrolled first-year nurse in Queensland earned A$60,496 (NZ$66,550)
- A registered first-year nurse in Queensland earned A$67,080 (NZ$73,790)
- An NZNO member’s base rate was NZ$59,834 for a new graduate registered nurse and registered midwife
- An NZNO first-year enrolled, obstetric, Karitane nurse and nurse assistant base rate was NZ$54,432.
In April, Radio NZ reported 4951 nurses had registered with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency to work in Australia since August. However, it did not measure how many went on to take up work.
Health Minister Ayesha Verrall said that since March 2017 the number of nurses employed by Te Whatu Ora increased by 4899 nationally.
Te Whatu Ora also asked the Employment Relations Authority to approve interim pay equity rates for nurses that gave most a pay increase of 14 per cent or more and additional funding for 500 nurses was announced in Budget 2023.
“While the growth in overall nurse numbers is encouraging, we need every nurse we can get in Aotearoa as we respond to pressures on our health workforce, exacerbated by Covid and a global shortage of health workers.”
Initiatives under way included targeted recruitment campaigns, funding to support nurses to return to the workforce and gain registration, financial support for internationally qualified nurses to become New Zealand registered and continued investment in the Voluntary Bonding Scheme which funded graduates to work in eligible hard-to-staff communities or specialties.
Education Minister Jan Tinetti said data retention rates were about the same as they had been historically at 87-88 per cent and the Government was committed to growing, attracting and retaining a diverse and highly qualified teaching workforce.
She said actions it had taken to support this included a domestic marketing campaign and scholarships to attract students to the profession; matching new teachers with schools that need extra support with staffing; attracting former teachers to return by making the Teacher Education Refresh fees-free; and speeding up the processing of various teacher applications to get them in classrooms faster.
It had also made it easier to hire teachers from overseas including by reducing recruitment costs, offering relocation grants up to $10,000 per teacher and removing other financial barriers and adding all qualified teachers to the Accredited Employer Work Visa Green List
Relocation website: ‘It’s been crazy’
A free website set up eight years ago in response to the growing number of Kiwis already living in Australia - and those planning to move over - has more than 120,000 users and rising.
NZRelo founder Mark Berger said every day it was inundated with inquiries.
The employment portal on the website has 75,019 jobs listed for every industry in every state and territory in Australia.
The website had multiple partnerships to offer specialised services with everything from furniture removal and shipping to car rentals, car imports and superannuation and KiwiSaver transfers.
Berger said he noticed a gap in the market after moving to Perth “so essentially we’ve turned into a Citizens Advice Bureau”.
“No one has acknowledged that moving to Australia for a few years, making some coin and coming home again is actually part of the Kiwi lifestyle.”
The website consistently had about 140,000 views a month while a page on school-year differences was getting 700 hits a day.
Its collection of Facebook pages included ‘Kiwis in Brisbane’ and ‘New Zealanders in Australia’ and collectively had more than 400,000 followers and group members.
“We’ve seen an increase of 350 per cent with over 200 people a day joining individual Facebook groups. It’s been crazy.”
Kiwis were searching for jobs in trades, construction, healthcare, teaching and roading and were attracted by higher wages, lower living expenses more sunshine and compulsory employer contributions of superannuation of 10.5 per cent.
Australian employers loved Kiwi workers, Berger said.
“They have great work ethics and a high sense of urgency. If you lose your job in New Zealand you can go on the dole and have access to financial support from the Ministry of Social Development. In Australia, it’s like walking the plank - if you fall off you get eaten by the sharks.”
Carmen Hall is a news director for the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post, covering business and general news.
