Last week I chatted to Wallace Chapman on Radio New Zealand’s The Panel about becoming an Australian citizen, the ceremony, the culture over here, the pros and cons, and what I miss the most about home. Unfortunately, the Zoom connection dropped out at one point which sucked up a little bit of time and cut out one of my zingers, but if you want to, you can listen to the conversation here.
Because I am a numpty and don’t trust myself to say words goodly in order right the communications professional, I started writing out some thoughts to prep myself for the conversation. What follows is my semi-edited brain dump, with some reckons on the parts we didn’t get to chat about.
I’ve been living in Australia since 2017. I moved over here for a job at a not-for-profit to manage the communications on a federally funded alcohol and other drug harm prevention program. While it turned out that particular organisation was actual bugfuck bonkers, there were no similar jobs in the AOD sector in New Zealand and it paid better than roles at the same career level.
My partner and I thought the move would be temporary. But here we are — seven and a half years later — and we’re both working good jobs, live in a co-housing development, and are pretty happy.
The path to citizenship
Way back in the mists of time, when Australia was ruled by a party who saw boat people in the spindrift of every wave, it was hard for New Zealanders to get citizenship.
So when I moved, it wasn’t at the top of my to do list.
That changed in 2022 when then NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced they would make the pathway to Aussie citizenship less cumbersome for Kiwis living in, paying tax, and generally contributing to Australia.
On ANZAC Day 2023 Chippy and Albo made those changes. While the process is less cumbersome, the form you have to fill in is still arduous. It took me about 2 months to find all the info I needed and to get documents (e.g. my NZ birth certificate) ready. After paying the money and hitting submit, my application went into the dark box of the Department of Home Affairs for about 2 months until I got an email inviting me to an interview and to sit the citizenship test.
The test itself was relatively easy (for a person who has English as their first language and is vaguely aware of the Australian political system). They give you an eBook to read called Our Common Bond, which whizzes through the +60,000 years of culture and civilisation on this island before white people got here and goes straight to a very saccharine outlook on what it means to be an Australian and the values the state expects of its citizens.
After the interview — which was once again, for me a white English-speaking male, easy — I was shepherded into a room under bright fluorescent lights with banks of computers and did a 20 question multiple choice test. Five of the questions are ‘values’ questions. You need to get all five of them correct and at least 75% right over all. Pretty good odds.
Obviously I passed the test, and three months later I got a letter from the Minister of Immigration to tell me my citizenship had been approved. Just over another month later I had my citizenship ceremony.
Welcome to Country
Like many things here, the ceremony was very laid back. The room was festooned with Australian, Aboriginal, and Torres Strait Islander flags as well as native plants. As we filed into the room a local artist was playing Australian songs on his guitar. He did play ‘Better Be Home Soon’ by Crowded House, who are, no matter what an Australian will tell you, a New Zealand band.
The Welcome to Country — kind of like the Australian version of a pōwhiri or mihi whakatau — was by Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung elder Uncle Andrew Gardiner who is a bit of a local legend. He’s on the First Peoples’ Assembly Victoria, the group which is guiding the state to treaty with the Traditional Owners. Which was a good reminder that as a migrant in a country of migrants we’re all living on stolen land and citizenship was a right denied to first peoples until very recently.
We did the pledge in two groups, the ones who wanted to say “God” and the others who didn’t. I didn’t. There was a small awkward-looking portrait of King Charles, and it was positioned in a place where I (sadly) couldn’t flip it face down.
Once the magic words were said, we all got to shake the hand of the mayor, the local MP, and Uncle Andrew, receing our certificates and a small native Australian plant (mine was a Wynyabbie Gem. We all sang the Australian national anthem and after an array of Australian delicacies — sausage rolls and party pies — were on offer.
New Zealand is pretty bleak right now
Don’t get me wrong, I love New Zealand and while distance makes the heart grow fonder, sometimes it can also bring glaring flaws into sharp focus.
Right now the country is being run by a CEO who thinks he’s still running an airline (except the planes keep breaking down, a geriatric political zombie who has been in Parliament longer than I’ve been alive, and an insufferable high school debater who grew up to be the leader of a death cult.
Every so often I do get nostalgic about Aotearoa. I’ll look at jobs on TradeMe. I’ll search for blocks of land out in the bush. But then practical brain kicks in and I just don’t think it’d work out for the following reasons.
Housing: I live in a beautiful apartment that is part of an enviro-friendly, socially conscious development. It’s high-quality construction that encourages connection between residents and best of all was vaguely affordable. There is simply nothing like this on offer in New Zealand at the moment. Housing in Melbourne is cooked, but in NZ it’s well-done burnt-to- a-crisp cooked.
Transport: In Melbourne I don’t need to own a car. I can walk, cycle, and/or public transport pretty much everywhere I need to go. Importantly, this is affordable in terms of dollars and time. I belong to a car share thingy where we can grab a car/van for a reasonable price if we need to move something or go on a weekend away. Back in Wellington it’s taken years and years and years to build a cycle path that cookers are scattering tacks on to presumably to kill cyclists and let’s not even talk about the shit-canning of the Auckland light rail.
Job: Since leaving the bonkers NFP I’ve pretty much worked in the same job which I bloody love. But what I would say is there are heaps of jobs here and they generally pay more. Also things like long service leave are mandated by law with penalty rates and stronger unions meaning better outcomes for workers generally. On top of the higher pay, lower effective tax rates (unless you’re super rich), and the stronger dollar there is also…
Retirement savings: In Australia your super is (generally) paid additional to your salary. At the moment that means you get 11% minimum (on July 1 2024 it goes up to 11.5%) on top of your gross income paid directly into your retirement fund. So if my gross salary was $100,000 a year, that is $11,000 going into my super. In New Zealand with Kiwisaver you chip in 3-10% of your gross salary and your employer can chip in a paltry 3% and often that is included in the overall salary you see advertised. Even when you take into account the government KiwiSaver contribution, it just doesn’t stack up!
General vibe: Overall, New Zealanders are ignoring the big issues: climate change being the biggest. The Government is actively working against Māori, who make up almost 20% of the population. They’re looking for market solutions to problems governments can and should be solving. It’s sad. It’s depressing. I still believe New Zealand, and New Zealanders, have so much potential to be kind and look after each other, lead the world on climate change, and make the country an attractive place for the million or so Kiwis who don’t live there to return and contribute.
That’s not to say that Australia is any better. The overwhelming defeat of the Indigenous Voice referendum last year, the debate about nuclear power at the expense of renewables while a significant proportion of electricity still comes from compacted dinosaurs, stamp duty, Murdoch media, slightly worse internet, mining magnates getting pissy when someone makes fun of them, mining magnates getting pissy when they can’t mine somewhere and so start to Trumpify Australian politics, Vegemite (NZ Marmite is superior), the luxury tax on electric vehicles, complete lack of kūmara (but growing awareness about feijoas), no ACC. This list could go on (thanks for the suggestions, Val but I guess the long and short of it is that nowhere is perfect, but from my point of view, and an increasing number of New Zealanders — including Kiwi elephants — Australia is, for now, the place to be.
So you’re an Australian now!
Sure. I can honestly say I’m super privileged to be afforded this right and glad to be a dual citizen of two functioning democracies with healthcare, education, and some semblance of working social welfare systems. Some of the people at my citizenship ceremony were refugees, asylum seekers, or just people from countries the west has dicked over for the last couple of hundred years.
Other bonuses are
- the Australian government (hopefully) can’t 501 deport me,
- if I get made redundant I can get Centrelink payments, and
- I can now vote in local, state, and federal elections.
A couple of questions Wallace didn’t get to were “What advice would you give someone [from New Zealand] before they jump on the plane [to Australia]?” and “do you feel like an Australian?”
I don’t know if I ever felt like a New Zealander. What does that even mean?
I honestly think the the entire concept of states is fucked and I don’t really hinge my identity on birthright by geographical happenstance. While it’s nice to share cultural similarities with a bunch of other people and have sports teams to support, I’m not going to be rushing out to get a Southern Cross tattoo any more than I rushed out to get a Laser Kiwi tattoo. In fact, both the tino rangatiratanga and Aboriginal flags are so much nicer, easier to draw, and better symbolically than the actual flags. But that’s a whole ‘nother argument.
My advice to any Kiwis thinking about coming over is that it’s not quite as easy as people say. You’re away from your home, your family, your friends, the familiar sights, sounds, and smells. For all the similarities the minor differences still trip me up. I still get ripped on pretty hard whenever I say “fish and chips”, “six”, or “deck”. For the benefit of anyone who doesn’t understand: Australians would hear that as “fush und chups”, “sex”, and “dick”. Similar to how I had problems explaining I was writing for Webworm (“Wibwum”) when asking an Australian company for comment about why their hydrogenated coconut oil was using risque SEO.
A whole rich cultural morass of references exist, which my Australian friends and colleagues have to patiently explain to me. My favourite being “What is the charge? Eating a meal? A succulent Chinese meal?” Conversely, I have to explain to Aussies why they can’t eat my ghost chips and need to always blow on the pie.
It does take a while to find your groove over here. But the beauty of living in a city that has the population of the entirety of New Zealand (in the same space as four lake Taupōs1) is that there are many grooves you can dip into.
Stuff dot co dot en zed often often runs insipid stories from “expats” (I hate that term) but I am always interested to see how others fare out in the big bad world. The two through-lines on all these stories seem to be:
- cost of living is lower/wages are higher somewhere else, and
- lack of jobs/career development in New Zealand.
These are both things any self respecting Government can and should tackle. I have a lot of reckons about these things, but rather than droning on and on I’m keen to hear from other Kiwis abroad about why you’re not home, or from Kiwis at home who want to move abroad, or folks who have moved to New Zealand, or if you just think I’m being a privileged and pretentious wanker. How’s it going? Email me back.
Stay safe, stay sane
<3
JJW
- For Australian readers: Lake Taupō is roughly 30,800 MCGs. ↩︎
