The brain drain is on: 30,000 Kiwis wing it to Australia in a year

Thursday, 10 July 2025

Tens of thousands of New Zealanders packed their bags for Australia last year, with a net migration loss across the Tasman of 30,000 people.

Stats NZ released its net migration figures for 2024 on Thursday, which confirmed the “brain drain” remained high, at a rate similar to 2012.

While New Zealanders were emigrating to Australia, the country’s population continued to grow thanks to immigration from other countries. Net immigration from the rest of the world saw an extra 54,000 people move to New Zealand to last year.

That meant that, in total, net migration for New Zealand was estimated to be a 24,200 person gain for last year.

Labour’s Megan Woods said New Zealanders were leaving because the cost of living had got worse and they didn’t trust the Government to fix it.

“Christopher Luxon’s failure on the cost of living has driven a record number of people to move away,” she said.

“With 124,500 migrant departures in the 12 months to May 2025 year, this is the highest on record… When people can’t find work or afford the basics, talent leaves,” she said.

But Acting Prime Minister David Seymour said the high number of New Zealanders moving to Australia was part of the pandemic hangover.

“I’m not surprised that in the year after the government changed, we still faced very tough conditions. Remember, this data goes from January last year to December last year,” he said.

He said he was confident that, as time went on, fewer people would choose to leave New Zealand.

In 2023, Seymour said the result of 23,800 people leaving showed “Kiwis [were] voting with their feet”. Asked if the same could be said of these figures, he said it would take time but, “I believe New Zealand is going to be an increasingly good vote as this government goes on.”

Stats NZ said that most of the migration to Australia was from New Zealand citizens leaving the country. And for New Zealanders moving country, most of them had chosen Australia as their next home.

“The net migration loss from New Zealand to Australia in 2024 was similar to the loss of 29,400 in 2023,” said Sarah Drake, Stats NZ’s international migration statistics spokesperson.

Stats NZ noted the 2024 figure is the largest annual net loss to Australia since 2012, which was a record of 43,700 in that year to March.

A long-standing trend, the net migration loss to Australia averaged around 30,000 per year between 2004 and 2013. This figure dropped to an average of 3000 per year during the 2014 to 2019 period.

Sydney ‘made sense’

Speaking to Stuff earlier this year, Sophia Weaver, 28, said Sydney seemed like the best move.

“I visit there a lot for work, where I do distribution for a lot of Sydney-based companies here in NZ. So I’ve visited so many times over the past couple of years and it kind of just made sense. There are so many more opportunities. Better salary: It's a $30k pay rise for doing the same job.”

She aimed to be in Sydney for two years.

“I do love living in New Zealand. It is super hard to leave, but I’ll give it a go. I might fall in love and it might be a permanent thing, but, at the moment, I’m aiming for about two years.”

She said moving to Australia seemed relatively easy, compared to London.

“I was pretty lucky in terms of a flat. A room opened up at one of my friends' places, so I think that would have been the biggest challenge, trying to find somewhere to live or a sublease, but I didn't have to go down that route.

“That's the thing, it's not like this huge investment. It might be for other people, but for me, I just had a room in a flat. I only had a couple of pieces of furniture.

“You hear of people saving for London and they've got to save 10 grand.”