Comparing migration to Australia

I could write this in my Stuff blog, but I’m going to write about Winston instead for them. So I’ll do a little fisking of this graph published by John Pagani in his blog (and originally from The Standard he says).

First of all John uses gross migration to Australia. Most people would say that the more useful figure is net migration, taking into account those Kiwis who move back to New Zealand.

Secondly it almost makes it look like no-one left to Australia before that nasty John Key took power. But let’s add on the three years prior to that, using the quarterly net migration stats from Stats NZ.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that things are good, just because they are not as bad as the three years previously. I think the level of migration remains a big concern, and that the Government needs to undertake more extensive economic reform to lift productivity and hence wages.