OPINION: Leaving the farm that is New Zealand
Fran O'Sullivan scribed a piece while I was traveling recently about stemming the flow of NZ expats. She has focused on an organisation called Kea.
In it she fingers governments left and right for not keeping expats at home or enticing them back. It's not quite that simple. Nothing a government realistically can do in NZ will ever entice me back to be just an employee, NZ never having favorable tax regimes for workers and still focused on being one big sleepy farm for its inhabitants.
In 2013 I qualify as a 10 year non-resident with an expat tax concession. Still on its own this won't get me back.
I want to put an idea out there. It is actually NZ business and the make-up of the economy itself that prevents young New Zealanders from coming back and leaving in the first place.
But unlike the doomsayers I do not agree that this is a bad thing.
Long term expats (those of us not on three-year bounce back OEs) are generally a horribly creative and difficult bunch of individuals. If we were "family orientated" or "team players" we probably never would have thought twice about returning and be back as soon as possible.
I was told when I took off overseas in 2003 that if you don't come back after three years you never come back. I'd stretch that out to five by today's standards but the point remains there comes a time when coming back to be just an employee is too hard. I reached that point after six months and knew I was going to have too much fun.
I had just landed off a plane from the Caribbean in New Orleans about to take my heels off certain to wreck the pantyhose I had on by jumping on to the drawbridge of a barge of a mad screaming notoriously difficult sexist client who only dealt in cash down the Mississippi. I had a "sh*t this is cool" moment about the time his suitcase full of cash opened and I noticed a huge ladder right up both legs of the pantyhose and my knee dripping with blood where I'd cornered it on the exposed steel.
I sat in the meeting on this freezing barge for two hours not acknowledging the continuing seething pain in the gash. The client became less difficult as he looked at it but didn't acknowledge the wound dripping on his steel floor and after the two hours offered me the first aid kit. Most clients in that job were similarly mad.
In NZ you are as a graduate after four or five years of mind-numbing study put on a professional career path that means sucking up to an HR department full of bitchy second and third rate BA graduate females, being more establishment than the old fools running the place or simply biding your time waiting for those above you to just **** off or die.
In the meantime banks lend billions of dollars for the lowest achievers in your class who left school at 15 to buy a piece of land and pretend to farm on it for the lowest ROI's on capital around so they can get tax free capital gains and leverage to buy more land that only themselves will get rich off.
And the decision makers and other collective knockers in New Zealand wonder why we leave for "flash jobs" and "big money" overseas and don't come back? Well we can't all be farmers with million dollar debt earning capital gains on million dollar property can we?
If you are a woman it is a special no-brainer. Women still only belong on farms if they marry a farmer. It is not something you can do on your own. There will be fewer women farmers farming alone than women CEO's and company directors.
NZ employers will never give you the opportunity as you receive overseas as quickly if not at all. As an expat there's been considerable money spent in hiring you and comparatively you are treated like a rockstar. Before you know it you have positions of responsibility you would wait 10 years in NZ to even be considered for. I got given staff. Something no NZ employer would have let near me. My management style in NZ is a legal hazard. In Asia it's called "systems and process driven" and required to get things done.
You get to travel to places you've read about in magazines, stay in a nice hotel and work there. While your contemporaries are back in NZ flying Air NZ link to Nelson for the day or overnighting at the Novotel in Rotorua.
Your clients are doing amazing things. Your contemporaries are dealing with branch offices of major companies. You've visited and worked with the head offices in Singapore or London.
Not a pleasant example but while your contemporaries receive a travel allowance to get to the North Shore to see the IRD, you've travelled to New York to meet with the IRS for a week.
It takes a special kind of person to be an expat because deep or not so deep down we are all a bit mad and loose and like it that way. This state comes from many years of not having rules. We tend not to like them. As long as you follow basic laws in the country you live, life as an expat accords you the right to get away with all manner of activity and blazen cheek. In NZ you must abide by the rules at work under hierarchy.
Derek Handley is a fabulous example. A New Zealander, he was born in Hong Kong and has floated around the world without borders. His family company of which he is a part of has done well buying and selling overseas and good on them. He runs around telling everyone now how we must be more sustainable and environmentally friendly yet he's a millionaire consumer jetting back and forward to the USA who is of all things flying to the bloody moon on Branson's Virgin. Expats can get away with that. Rules are for other people.
If Derek was born in New Zealand to a farming family without a global outlook he would probably have ended up milking cows with his siblings. And that is the problem NZ has. It has been able to get by being average.
Most NZers don't have it in them to venture past the comfort zone of Australia. The lifestyle beyond is pretty hard, forget about a harmonious relationship most of them turn tits up. Those that talk about how much money they could make overseas do not count as they will never go and do it.
So what will bring NZers back?
1. Family and duty is the first thing - nothing that a government can contribute there.
2. The next thing is timing. Whether it be the expat has just run out of steam, lost their job in a recession where they are living or has had enough, again nothing to do with government in NZ.
3. And the third thing I don't think is any form of employment or "jobs" as the left so cling to when they say "where are the jobs"? It is the chance to own their own business. O'Sullivan glossed over this but knows it.
That doesn't mean a whole host of grants and corporate welfare needs to be showered on the new bludging hipsters who then sell their companies offshore - high tech. But what it means is that corporate tax rates have to be considerably lower than countries where expats could set up their business, tax deductions for expenditure more readily available, work permits available to bring in expat expertise of folk you've met and liked overseas and a far looser approach by the IRD with regards the bureaucracy of business. In essence the government has to create a framework that replicates the conditions of its jurisdictional competition. Tinkering with tax laws has helped but not contributed much to this.
New Zealand policy makers need to realize that unlike a farm, the rest of the world doesn't have fences anymore. People who are capable can live wherever they like. New Zealand will get stuck with a nation of people born into the privilege of being land owning via their own parents, or those that cannot move because of family or their skills are not wanted elsewhere. Everyone in between is mobile.
What O'Sullivans piece pointed us to through KEA is that NZ may be better off leaving expats overseas. For as long as I've been working commentators harp on about needing to "add value" to exports, to invest in "high tech". For years NZ has talked of and tried these things. Yet we still thrive on very basic dairy produce.
Agriculture as a sector contributes to just 4.7% of GDP and only 7% of total employment.
This means 93% of the economy is not based on agriculture employment and 95.3% is not based on agricultural GDP.
New Zealand is 26% export-reliant on some of the least educated students at school in dairy farmers, pulling tits for a living in a low labour intensive industry and sending the basic product overseas. Is it any wonder NZ is where it is when some of least educated and qualified people are loaned $47 billion in finance (two thirds to dairy) with historically poor returns on that borrowing? Many farmers would have been better off sticking the money in the bank on time deposit without the capital appreciation over the years.
74% of exports are not from dairy. Federated Farmers will not tell you this statistic readily.
And is it any wonder that the brightest and more creative people seek a pond that doesn't have such restrictions or bias towards the sacred cow?
And is it any wonder that low skilled New Zealanders go overseas in search of jobs that the dairy sector just does not provide. Farm workers are notoriously underpaid and treated badly while the chosen few in the industry who will become owners not through real skill but by birth or bank, complain they cannot find staff. I do not blame low-skilled workers for choosing mines and Gina Rinehart over the NZ dairy industry. "Meaner" Gina treats her workers better.
Loaning a scientist a million dollars for an idea has to be better for the NZ economy than an uneducated sharemilker or farmer to buy overpriced land to milk cows on?
If education really is valued then so should those educated over those who are not. Governments have to stop treating the rest of New Zealand outside the land owners in the rural community as the spare to the farm's heir.
When I was in Germany I visited BMW which employs tens of thousands of people in Munich alone. The story is inspiring and the showpiece being the cars and the history behind the business. It is a real tourist attraction.
Fonterra I hasten to add would not pull the same crowd despite its one sided domination of New Zealand media and PR.
New Zealand isn't losing its best and brightest it is simply letting them go and be even better somewhere else. The trick is to keep them entertained long enough to take their offshore capital and set up a business or part of their global business in New Zealand or at least employ other New Zealanders from overseas. Statistically we have more capital than our contemporaries and every dollar we bring back to NZ is valuable.
New Zealand does thought have to look beyond blaming population migration and movements in an increasingly borderless world as an excuse for its dairy obsessed and therefore very limited economy.
You don't have to live in New Zealand to contribute to New Zealand.
Cathy Odgers is a tax lawyer based in Hong Kong. She blogs as Cactus Kate.
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Comments and questions56
I immigrated to New Zealand almost 20 years ago and largely agree with you. If one has a good head for contemporary business, New Zealand is not the country for you. I especially like the following paragraph by you:
"In NZ you are as a graduate after four or five years of mind-numbing study put on a professional career path that means sucking up to an HR department full of bitchy second and third rate BA graduate females, being more establishment than the old fools running the place or simply biding your time waiting for those above you to just **** off or die."
That a woman was able to write that is very revealing of the fact that ours is a post-feminist era. I deeply detest New Zealand HR professionals, sanctimonious mediocrities all.
Nice piece, agree with a lot of it.
Given your political leftist bent Jordan this comment above any other anonymous NBR troll below may force me to revisit my views ;)
Great article!
great summary , interesting facts , probably not enough rugby culture comment to keep most New Zealanders interested ...
Strewth ! what a fantastic article. Refreshing in its truthful bluntness.
How to explain returning to visit NZ it becomes all the more apparent how dowdy and run down the place is and after a while just a bit boring.
Sort of like visiting the country cousins who when leaving you feel the need to flip them a good luck shilling because they are just a bit, well, country.
Completely agree - sums it up quite nicely. Been away for 10 years, eventually will go back but never as an employee. You hit the nail on the head re HR, but it is the same story the world over - seems to attract the dregs.
Interesting article..
But doesn't explain, why with all the Intellgensia involved., the troubles of the World are Compounding?
Could it be that not only cows excrete effluent?
Left in 1988 never to return , the middle class of NZ have become the new poor. NZ is a beautiful place scenically but a depressing place mentally.
All this was so right 30 years ago and it does not seemed to have changed much. I came back after 5 years with 2 little USA-born kids because of family and the NZ beach house. But after 6 months as an employee that was it for me - either back to the USA or start my own business in NZ - the latter won and have not looked back.since
Very good points to stimulate debate while not worrying about the politically correct sanctimony that holds the country back. Some other things to bring expats back might include; incentivising expats back with student loan incentives rather than hunting them overseas; sorting out the social policy disgraces in NZ like 1 in 4 females are sexually abused in NZ before the age of 15; increase the population with skilled high net worth migrants rather than unskilled labour.
Wow! What an outpouring of vitriolic bile! The author doesn't so much have a chip on her shoulder as a whole McCain factory. One suspects her outright rejection of New Zealand stems from some childhood trauma. One also suspects she couldn't cut it in the New Zealand workplace. If this author seriously represents our "brightest and best" then God defend New Zealand!
No rckr I reject the notion that NZ is all about farming. It has to be more than that because farming isn't producing the returns the country needs to keep its standard of living. The stats tell the story, most of NZs economy isn't actually farming.NZs regulatory framework and policy makers seem to think otherwise.
There's plenty of expats brighter and better than I am and they won't come home or do business within NZ. That should concern you. I'm the one who has fronted with the debate and challenged the sacred cow status quo. That's what intelligent people do not launch an attack like you have anonymously on the author.
Billions are made from immigrants and international students convinced that they were coming to a place where people want to be.In reality the locals are leaving in droves.One of the biggest scams if you ask me.
I still wouldn't come back.
@Run, Cactus Kid, run! "cutting it" in the new zealand workplace means working long hours for low wages, if there's a better option whats the point in blind patriotism?
I've finished university with A grades spent a year looking for work and couldn't even get a job in a supermarket left the country.
I work half the hours and earn almost 3x the amount I would in NZ.
Since my quality of life and expendable income is a billion times better than in NZ, doubt I'll be coming back any time soon.
Yes "cutting it" is a funny term. It presupposes all of the rest of the western world is stupid for offering higher wages, better jobs and working conditions than NZ, a typical NZ isolationist attitude from someone who doesn't realize there are no international borders for mobile people like yourself. I guess you didn't "cut it" because you didn't find a job working in a supermarket!!
The Grass is Greener everywhere else but home here, for many.
Regardless, this is still my homeland and when I too leave these shores of the Land of the Long White Cloud, I will return that I am sure of.
Lots of truth but in some areas taking a bit of poetic license. Now go back and rewrite - your very applicable message got lost in a tinge too much vitriol'
Yes I will write it in a lovely nice sweet girly tone that wont get you upset enough to read it let alone comment like most articles before me about being a nice sweet New Zealanders living overseas counting the days to come back and conform to how New Zealanders shouldn't show any personality or emotion at all in their work.
That should do the trick. You should edit your own newspaper you are so good at this whole "capturing the audience" thing. Journos would love working for you.
Wow a tax lawyer providing advice on business. Like you would even know. Try being a business owner and not a salaried employee before arrogantly ranting away at things you dont understand.
Next thing you know we will be having salaried accountants running our big companies ... oh wait ...
Brilliant and incisive. I hope New Zealand's politicians have read this. Our policymakers need to take note. In my limited experience over the years the attitudinal difference between the top floors of Hong Kong, Shanghai or New York and Auckland is so great it can't be described to those who haven't seen and experienced it.
Sigh, I'm not a tax lawyer, don't believe everything you read. Was for four years in NZ before realizing I didn't believe in tax at all.
Am director of several companies with some shareholding and have staff.
And you are of course anonymous so could be typing behind your mothers computer for all we know.
And where am I giving business advice? I would hope not as it would be for free and we don't do that.
["Cathy Odgers is a difficult woman based in Hong Kong" - CK]
Why don't you believe in tax?
The problem with hard hitting commentary like this is that the kiwi ego cant really take it. Frequent returns back home I was enjoying regaling all as to the delights of work and life well travelled until the penny one day dropped that those stuck for whatever reason down under just hated the thought that the grass was not only greener but a darn sight more lucrative and they certainly did not want to hear that there were places elsewhere more stunning. Now when I here the song be loyal I just want to gag. Best to leave the fools stuck down under in poverty stricken ignorance.
Yes I would say a tame gentleman like Bernard Hickey is even too ego bruising for some of the trolls here.
Excellent article. I have just had 5 years in South East Asia. Dispite huge populations, the place is dynamic. No redistribution of money, no or little welfare, no minimum wage, much stronger family units and personal responsibility, far more respect between family and individuals.
When the NZ polititions come through these countries, honestly they must be asleep. It is just so progressive, innovative and go ahead mainly because of a go ahead attitude and rewards for your effort.
NZ is so bogged down in redistribution it continues to stagnate.
You're being sarcastic right? I moved to NZ from an Asian country. The reason they are 3rd world countries with so much poverty is BECAUSE there are no minimum wages or welfare to look after the unfortunate and helpless. If anything those countries should adopt NZ's welfare policies because providing enough for basic human needs is much more important than profit and expendable income.
ROFLMAO I think you are trying a bit hard to convince someone of your arguments! Maybe yourself???? ;)
The writer states "Family and duty is the first thing - nothing that a government can contribute there."
If Family is the first priority, wouldn't fixing the child abuse and child poverty problems in NZ be something that needs to be attended to attract people home or even keep them here?
Check the child poverty and child abuse stats - NZ is third worst in the OECD according the World Health Organisation. Make NZ safe for kids then families will want to live here and return.
Kate your distaste for New Zealand is noted time and time again.
Can you please move on to your new life now, New Zealand will gladly see the back of you.
Some of us aren't scared of hard work, and don't run away overseas for a higher salary. We build successful businesses here and we export as best we can, because we know, it doesn't matter where you are based, you can succeed if you are good enough. The same can’t be said for those that hide in the middle management of big companies overseas. If you don’t understand that, you clearly have never owned your own business.
Quite frankly I am surprised the NBR persists with your articles, your subsequent comments show you for the spoilt angry child you are.
Richard, I think you lack the perspective of overseas experience. Yes, lots of good people try to make a success of business in NZ but an awful lot fail despite hard work. And a lot of Government policy and legislation is really, really stupid and counter-productive.
I export to three and I have personally traveled to more than 60 (I'm 33 years old). Of course you don't have to believe me, but then I don't really care.
If you are good enough you will succeed here in New Zealand. If you are after an easy way to make money, go overseas and become a middle manager, or perhaps become a lawyer or accountant, but please don't preach to us who work hard every day to make our businesses successful.
Alan - Never a truer word. I know so many that have tried in NZ very hard, more than most and still fail due as you say to a lot of ....
I am left with the belief that much of the supposed success we see in NZ is nepotism, inheritance and luck.
You always get anonymous idiots. The problem with NBR's ghastly "system" is that you can't tell them apart. At least if they have consistent pseudonyms you can easily ignore the right ones.
NZ seems to have a fear of someone being successful and it must be spurned at every turn.
The latest IRD initiative to further investigate those few people we have with 50 million or more in assetts says it all. A real message to new entrepreneurs.
We forget that these few people can be domiciled in another country very quickly. They dont have to stay here and pay nearly all the tax.
"I deeply detest New Zealand HR professionals, sanctimonious mediocrities all." I whole-heartedly agree with this statement from above. I managed 2 stints as an expat many years ago, came home bright-eyed and bushy tailed and all fired up to do my bit to drag NZ into the real world. I had soon created my own company or two over the years, but the feeling was it was all too hard surrounded by so many naysayers. As time went on I needed employees or employment for myself at different times and HR "madams" were so stultifying that they crushed any initiative to get on and do things. Several times I have needed employment myself and ended up starting another business just to make myself a job, rather than wait endlessly for an HR maven to get off her (or his) backside to make it happen.
Great article Cathy. For those like Richard who have successfully developed a business in NZ , I don't think Cathy is criticising you .
The simple fact of the matter is for most young people ( graduates in particular) there are not the opportunities in NZ. Maybe put another way --we turn out too many graduates for an economy our size.
On more than one occassion I have been told that I am "too qualified" to take on, and will only leave "within a year".
Good god! Why not use my experience and abilities while you have got me, rather than decry some possibility that I "might" leave. On more than one occassion I have seen ways to lift a company's game and increase their sales or production. Some enjoy the ride, others close up in fear of succeeding.
Absolutely brilliant piece (although a little harsh on some of the great, and skilled people in farming). A nice contrast to the trite, NZ-focused rubbish in Fran O'Sullivan's piece.
Don't normally agree with you on a lot of things, but this is actually quite nuanced. Ex-FF big cheese Don Nicolson symbolised the farmshed backwater mentality when he said that "every NZer is a farmer" and that "diversifying the economy is a waste of time". If that's the case, then why aren't the likes of Fonterra taking on the world?
@Anon Monday, June 18, 2012 - 8:28pm: Companies like Weta Digital do actually get it, when they manage to invert the brain drain and attract talented foreigners and locals. Even then, the Wetas and Xeros of this world are still largely the exception. The SkyCity wheeler-deal is just the latest in the sort of "nepotism, inheritance and luck" you mention.
Cactus Kate must be having a mid life crisis to write in that style You need to go to Federated Farmers who will enlighten you on the farming facts about women who actually farm in their own right .
I returned after 25 years overseas and understand completely what Cactus Kate is saying. New Zealand always was comfortable with mediocrity confusing this with the egalitarian ideal. Successive leftist politicians are grinding NZ down, numbing young minds, resisting excellence (except in rugby) and demoralising the bright and inventive. But NZ has massive potential. It has energy in abundance both renewable and oil, gas and coal. Food production is not a problem and there are natural resources and a vast market just up the road in Asia. But the locals don't see it because they live on an island with limited horizons and wallow in a state of self delusion caring more about monetary entitlements than where this money comes from. The MMP political system is a joke allowing the fringe to take centre stage and crippling any Government from doing what they know needs to be done.
However there is hope. Instead of bleating about it the solution is to identify what you can do - and just do it!
What an excellent letter. MMP has turned into NZs handbrake. We cannot get a decision on anything let alone anything thats bold and futuristic.
I have been overseas and came back, got married had a kid etc. I tried to make my wife have an OE before we got married to open her eyes a bit but she wanted to spend all my savings on the wedding instead. Now, 3 and half years later she has had enough of her job and neither of us have seen a pay rise in 4 yrs (lawyer & banker). Both of us did well at Uni and have plenty of experience.........the only thing holding us back from hitiing Asia/Europe is family (as in - my wife does not want to move away from her parents and their babysitting ability). A lot of mates from Uni are based in London/Honk Kong etc and loving it. I give it 9 months before we leave NZ.............
This article is spot-on. I returned to NZ in 2010 from 16 years abroad and can't wait to leave. It is a monument to mediocrity, populated with deluded and witless plebs. I am a manager of people who resent any kind of change and drag me to the brink of hell with their negative, insular attitudes. After a few months, you realise just how boring this place is, and dead. Myself and my partner are slowly going mad, and wondering if we are actually dead ourselves, perhaps perishing on the plane over here and waiting in purgatory? We'll be out of here in 9 months.
A great article and worthy of the response it is getting
Enjoy living in an air-conditioned shoebox in Hong Kong, Cathy.
I have had a completely different experience in NZ, I came here from the UK a couple of years back after getting sick and tired of the miserable and restrictive way business in England is run.. I almost instantly got a really fun and creative job for a very progressive organisation who help aid small business growth here, within a year I'd had 3 promotions and now have direct reports and the sort of responsibility and salary that I would have seriously have struggled to get in England..
I think perhaps we made it work for ourselves in our respective migrations, because we wanted it so much and were jaded by what we were used to.. there will always be a success story and a failure story (and multiple perspectives) on any country's economy, society and work forces..
I totally agree on the farming sitch here though..
Very interesting debate. I returned 18 months ago after 18 years as an ex pat. Loved working abroard, loved living abroard. Not so easy coming back but fall within category 1 'Family'. Both my NZ born partner and I want to raise our four London born kids as 'Kiwi kids'. We want to give them the same identity we are proud to have and instil the values we consider NZ is great for.
Expect (and hope) they in turn will head abroard with their kiwi identities - and who knows we may follow.
Sorry there is nothing new in this article. It is the same old bleat which is red meat to negative thinking Kiwis.
New Zealand is what New Zealand is - a sparsely populated country that is remote. This creates a unique culture and lifestyle. It is like no where else and in my view it shouldn’t try to be.
The great thing about Kiwi culture is that young people are encouraged to go off and see the world. For some the world offers something that New Zealand can't so they decide to stay. For others they miss what New Zealand has and decide to return. Kiwi lifestyle is not for all Kiwis .
What I would like to see is people that write these types of articles be is brave enough to call it like it is . That they want something different to what NZ offers rather than finding ways to perhaps blame the country in order to justify staying overseas.
Then again some can’t make it on returning back home because they have the wrong attitude or perhaps they were not really making it any way before they left. For over ten years I have recruited professionals back to New Zealand from Europe. Often the hardest work is returning Kiwis. They can often have massive condescending attitude problems. They perceive themselves as some how superior to the Kiwis back homes because of their ‘overseas experience’. That’s not to minimize the benefits of overseas experience because many Kiwis who manage the attitude transition bring some great skills back by adapting what they have learnt to the NZ context. To me, many returning Kiwis just have no perspective. They expect the same range of jobs to be available in a population of 4+ million that are available in a 60+ million. Then when they fail on job interview they blame it on Kiwi small mindedness when in fact they did appalling interviews. Often they don’t take the recruitment process seriously because they perceive there couldn’t possible be any other candidate better than them.
As an Australian I moved to AKL with my NZ partner in 2004. We have since had two children and family life and social conciousness of the NZ populous has been a breath of fresh air in a world done over by capitalism. Natural beauty abounds like nowhere else on earth and fresh produce is second to none. We simply love living here.
However professional life in NZ is another story. As a Snr Manager in the IT and Telecommunications industry, there is simply not enough work in NZ. Out of the 7 odd years here, I have found myself out of work for around 18 months. Sadly not economically sustainable for a young family.
Your comment about HR I find very telling and brutally honest and it took me a while before I understood this dynamic of having to stroke the collective HR ego in order to sustain continuing work. HR is a very over-represented and influential group in NZ. I am not so sure that this is a good thing. I am more used to HR bending over backwards to gain your custom.
We presently find ourselves at one of those life's cross-roads. Whilst we love living in Auckland with our family home there. I find myself commuting every Mon morning to Sydney to be remunerated and appreciated commensurate to the level with which 20 years of experience typically offers. Nothing more, nothing less. Always in two minds on the Friday flight back home wondering how many more flights to go....... Should we stay or should we go? Torn between the social and the economic.
John in Amsterdam says it best I think. I am not a Kiwi, but my wife is and we are imminently moving to NZ after she has been away 12-14 years. Family is a key pull, but so too is the "can do" attitude that I find prevails in NZ (as by comparison to Australia for example). We are both well travelled, experienced but know that we shall not be shooting the lights out as regards corporate jobs...undoubtedly we will investigate independent business interests as neither of us are interested in working as employees - we don't here, so why there. I agree too that NZ is quiet and I will miss cultural elements of (say) working and living in the USA, Europe etc, but we love the outdoors, the fact we can live 2mins from a beach and live with soooo many less rules than in Aus or Canada or Switzerland for example. So, definitely swings and roundabouts, but then where isn't? I lived as a banker in London for a decade earning multiples more than in NZ and indeed more than I should have given my age and experience, but that lifestyle became shallow and brassy and I now seek somewhere where my kids don't live miles away from a decent city of some size, (n)or live in a small terrace in congestion. Will we go and live overseas again? almost certainly, but not for money or "management", more to expose our children to the world, so they too will leave the NZ one day and experience life, making their own choice where to put down roots.
As a PS, given its size and locale, the is NO way NZ could hold onto all its brightest and best, empowering them to achieve wherever they are is an endorsement of the "system" and those people in the main will be proud to spread the Kiwi brand globally; think Peter Gordon, Kevin Roberts, Ian Narev, Sarah O'Hagan, Owen Glen....to name but a few.
@Cactus Kate - if this is your pitiful opinion of NZ then maybe everyone would be better off if you stayed in Hong Kong. You have a very negative, narrow view of NZ, especially for someone who has supposedly traveled the world.
Cathy, you are fantastic and I think I love you, love this article.
Good article insofar as it has stimulated some great comments and debate, and it gave me the kick in the pants I needed to write this: http://www.kinfolk.co.nz/blog/a-battle-for-the-ages/
So thanks CK for the motivation. I very much agree with the idea that "you don't have to live in New Zealand to contribute to New Zealand" - that is an opportunity that NZ has not yet embraced. However - as I've outlined in Kinfolk post - a decent amount of humility and respect is a vital ingredient for any constructive exchange to take place.