Max was earning more as a dishwasher in Australia than as a university-qualified environmental monitoring technician back home in New Zealand. He is among a record number of people leaving the country.
Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of wonderful things about it, but living there is much worse than visiting. It is very normal to have mould all through your house and have to wear your coat indoors in the winter because you can’t afford to heat and the house has no insulation, we have staggeringly high levels of poverty for a “developed” country. Yes, people are friendly, the nature is some of the best in the world, and the lifestyle is relaxed. But the disparity between incomes and cost of living means most normal people are really quite struggling to make ends meet, the health system is a shell of its former self, and things are just overall getting worse quite rapidly. I know that’s not unique, most of the Anglosphere has basically the same issues, but we already started at the lower-income end of that group.
I understand. I wasn’t aware of that. I don’t think those problems were around when I was there, or at least not as severely. And yes the nature is amazing. I’d go there on holiday all the time if it wasn’t 24 hours actual flight time 😭
Ignore the doomer. There are some ratty old houses around, but there are also plenty of places that are modern and well insulated. We’ve had something of a building boom over the last few years, driven in large part due to changes in zoning rules, so a huge number of town houses and apartments have been built. It’s also possible to retrofit insulation to an extent, which we’ve done in our house. We now have underfloor and ceiling insulation, as well as double glazed windows.
A lot of rentals have been retrofitted wherever possible, as there are now minimum standards for rental properties.
Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of wonderful things about it, but living there is much worse than visiting. It is very normal to have mould all through your house and have to wear your coat indoors in the winter because you can’t afford to heat and the house has no insulation, we have staggeringly high levels of poverty for a “developed” country. Yes, people are friendly, the nature is some of the best in the world, and the lifestyle is relaxed. But the disparity between incomes and cost of living means most normal people are really quite struggling to make ends meet, the health system is a shell of its former self, and things are just overall getting worse quite rapidly. I know that’s not unique, most of the Anglosphere has basically the same issues, but we already started at the lower-income end of that group.
I understand. I wasn’t aware of that. I don’t think those problems were around when I was there, or at least not as severely. And yes the nature is amazing. I’d go there on holiday all the time if it wasn’t 24 hours actual flight time 😭
Ignore the doomer. There are some ratty old houses around, but there are also plenty of places that are modern and well insulated. We’ve had something of a building boom over the last few years, driven in large part due to changes in zoning rules, so a huge number of town houses and apartments have been built. It’s also possible to retrofit insulation to an extent, which we’ve done in our house. We now have underfloor and ceiling insulation, as well as double glazed windows.
A lot of rentals have been retrofitted wherever possible, as there are now minimum standards for rental properties.