Australia or NZ

GavandSteph · 18-08-2007, 10:26 PM

Hi Guys

Have any of you had experience of living in NZ. We are torn between the two & want to know the reality of living in Australia as opposed to NZ. We have friends in NZ & are aware of living costs etc. Does anybody know which would be the better choice for a family & why?

Thanks

daveandgeorge · 04-11-2007, 08:43 PM

hello,

we currently live in auckland and are considering moving to australia. we have 2 small children and the life for them over could not be any better. the only problem is the cost of living. my wages are quite low although i work long hours and the house prices are pretty steep. if we could afford to buy a house here we would stay, no questions asked. as it stands we are looking at adelaide or melbourne, just because i can earn a lot more and the house prices are a little less

hope this helps

dave, george, hollie and maia

GavandSteph · 04-11-2007, 08:52 PM

That does help, thanks. We experienced the same thing. Our dilemma is based around work. We are both teachers & almost certain of work in Auckland. Australia's housing is cheaper but we're unsure of employment. Do you have NZ residency or do you have to go through the entire visa process again? As you no doubt know, this is also very expensive. Good luck with the job hunting.

daveandgeorge · 04-11-2007, 09:09 PM

hello again,

we originally came over here on a 3 year work visa but after 7 months we got permanant residency. does this mean we can go to australia on our n.z residency? we have asked the australian immigration service but had no reply as of yet. we also have a proper baby kiwi and on the immigration site it mentions that you might not need visas if you have a new zealand citizen as a child. it's just a thought for us at the moment, we will have to see how much it will cost first. it will save us lots in airfare when we have holidays. i think that you would be ok for a job in australia if you are both teachers. if you came to n.z i would advise you to go for residency first as it does cost you a lot to go through it twice. it cost us around $4000 nz to get residency, this was on top of the money we had to pay in england to get our work visas and our daughters student visa even though she was 2 at the time.

dwa33 · 05-11-2007, 12:20 PM

Hi, Probably best summed up as "If you've got lots money go to NZ, If you want to earn lots of money go to Australia".

We've just moved from NZ to Geelong and we have three young kids. Basically after 10 years in New Zealand we were driven out of NZ by rising tax, declining salary (after inflation) high house prices and little or no government support for raising a family.

Having bought into the NZ housing market 9 years ago we were able to cash up and move to Australia earlier this year. Same kind of job but significanly higher salary, plus 17% on top for superanuation, regular salary increases, family support at $140 extra a week, cheap housing, $10,000 first home buyers grant, $4,000 baby bonus (which we just missed out on), and tax refunds for loads of stuff...the list goes on!

Also the big bonus with Australia is that you can buy rental properties and trade off any loss against your PAYE tax. So the interest on your rental mortgage, depreciation and repair expenses get written off. So, if you buy a rental property, the tennant pays half and the tax man pays a quarter leaving you to buy a house over time at a quarter of the cost :) and you don't need much capital to lay down to get a few rentals on the go.

So, for NZ it seemed that we were aways one step behind. Wth one income as my partner was looking after the kids it just wasn't stacking up financially (which it did 10 years ago). Now we are in Australia we can earn and make money on one salary and have a very good standard of living.

The big downside is that my experience of Australia so far is that it's not a place I will fall in love with. Having fallen in love with New Zealand I do miss many things - clean, green, tolerant, environmentally aware and just all round soft and esy going. Australia is a lot more coarse, very industrial and job focussed at the expense of the environment (e.g. log and pulp the native forests in Tassie because it generates jobs - how stupid is that?). NZ is generally very health concsious with a fit and healthy outdoor lifstyle. Australia has a long long way to go on that one. They have a pretty big obesity problem in Australia, and in NZ I could go a week without seeing anyone smoke, but here I can't even walk ten paces in the Melbourne CBD wthout breathing someone elses smoke - It's gross.

I mus admit after ten years in New Zealand I was geting a bit bored but not having any money did add to this probem as we couldn't get away much. A bit of extra cash to send the girls on a weekend shopping trip to Sydney, or whatever would have made a big difference.

I guess I feel I'm in Australia to make money and retire at 55 so I can go live the (southern Hemisphere) summers in New Zealand and cycle round France eating crepes the rest of the time!

Hope this helps

PS. Don't want to put a downer on Australia - Australia is still ten times better than England :) It just doesn't quite have the Kiwi quality of life

mutikonka · 05-11-2007, 01:15 PM

We lived in Auckland for a few years before moving to Sydney. We loved NZ but found it quite limited in terms of job opportunities and the standard of living is not as high as Australia.
It's a beautiful country but also a bit insular and reserved sometimes - especially the South Island - I think there are more tourists than locals in summer.
We always thought NZ would be a nice place to retire to, but for work we picked Australia. What dwa said about NZ being clean and green, laid back etc is very true, whereas Australia has a much harder attitude towards the environment [dig it up and chop it down ...].
So it really depends what lifestyle you want.
We decided we were city folk at heart and chose the cosmopolitan attractions of Sydney. And about 25% of the NZ population seem to have relocated to Perth.