Tony Alexander

Yeah, definitely.

This is a characteristic, I guess, for New Zealand.

We pretty much all view Australia as part of the labour market we can go into.

And as long as you don't have a bad conviction or you're not already a 501 deportee out of Australia, next week you can be on a plane and working anywhere across where we are now in Oz.

And New Zealand has a history where our migration numbers

tend to get moved around a lot by Kiwis going overseas or coming back.

In Australia, it's different.

For yourselves, it's more definitely the migration policy of the federal government.

For ourselves, we've had massive periods in the past, many occasions over the generations, where conditions are very strong in Australia, usually in the mineral sector.

We Kiwis will hop across to Australia, we say to ourselves, I'm going to work here for three to five years, make a nest egg and then go back to New Zealand.

Well, most do not go back.

There's about 650,000 Kiwi citizens and residents still in Australia.

And as I say, whereas in the past it was predominantly into the mineral sector,

This time around, the demand is coming from virtually all sectors in Australia.

You don't have enough builders, drain layers, carpenters, et cetera.

You don't have enough farm workers.

You don't have enough shop people to work in the shops.

You don't have enough people, obviously, in the rapidly growing mineral sector.

You've got a missile factory to build, eventually a submarine base.

You want to boost the armed forces about a third over the next few years.