Although Australia and New Zealand have always shared a close relationship and both counties have for sometime attracted each others nationals to both visit and live, a new situation regarding country hoppers has been noted.

In a spate of New Zealand newspaper articles, New Zealand’s revenue minister, Peter Dunne, has described his country as a giant transit lounge as many immigrants ended up moving to Australia after stopping off in NZ.

Mr Dunne told Wellington’s Dominion Post, that nearly 20 per cent of the 37,000 New Zealanders, who went to Australia last year, permanently or for a year, were born outside New Zealand.

He says “New Zealand provides back-door entry to Australia because it has less strict immigration criteria…Most of those who moved to Australia in 2007 after immigrating to New Zealand were born in South Africa, followed by India and then England.”

The question being asked by many New Zealand nationals however that is in light of these statistics should New Zealand tighten its immigration policies in order to prevent those destined for Australia from making strategic stop gaps?

Or is this actually a positive factor which the country needs to build on, as once in the country they can then do more to encourage such migrants to stay and contribute to New Zealand’s greater to the economy and work force.