Kiwis Living and Working in Australia

Kiwis are allowed to live and work in Australia without becoming a permanent resident or Australian citizen (provided one supports themselves and doesn't have a criminal record).

We moved to Queensland, Australia over three years ago, seeking a different experience and better work opportunities.

We're treated like permanent residents for some things. We were able to get distance education fees waived on medical grounds when our son did distance ed for 6 months. We received the government stimulus package payments and get childcare rebates from Centrelink.

We are entitled to rebates on medical expenses including free eye tests and free doctors visits if we get services from someone that bulk-bills.

We are not entitled to receive a carer's allowance of $30-$50 per week since our son was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, because we are not citizens. We do not qualify to become citizens because we don't have a close relative (ie parent or sibling) that is a citizen.

If we were doing a job that is considered essential like a teacher or nurse and are under 45 years, then we could become permanent residents after a year and a citizen after 3 more years.

New Zealanders living Australia are entitled to receive a first-home buyers grant of around $7000. 

My husband has a background in truck driving and warehousing, and found work fairly quickly. He did temping initially, and is currently driving around the Brisbane region.   Hubby's truck and trailer licence transferred over easily, but he had to do a forklift course because Queensland don't accept NZ forklift tickets.

My husband is earning approximately the same as he was in NZ, but has better conditions - no night shift, no weekends. Some people can earn $100-150k working in mines, but the work is hot, dirty and volatile, and usually rip-off accommodation is the killer. It didn't appeal to us as a family, but could be worth considering for single people or child-free couples.

I wanted part-time work to fit in with raising our young son. We noticed that jobs in general were better paid than in NZ, including retail. I started with a part-time position as a merchandiser and now work part-time for a publishing company as an assistant. I wouldn't have been considered for either role in NZ, and I've never seen these kinds of jobs available.

We think the pay is at least 25% higher than in NZ. Tax is not paid on the first $15,000. My husband still gets paid penal rates, which are a bit of a distant memory for NZ. Compulsory super is on top of our salaries, not subtracted out of it, which gives us a little extra too.

We've heard people say that Queensland is about 20 years behind NZ and other states of Australia in the way they do things - banking, workplace cultures, opening hours etc. It's probably true. But then, maybe it was a better lifestyle in NZ 20-30 years ago - back when retail people didn't have to work insane hours & actually got penal rates.

We live on the outskirts of Brissy, and find it much more affordable than when we lived in Auckland. It usually takes us less than half an hour to get to work. Other cities like Sydney and Melbourne may be more expensive to live in.

We've noticed the price of petrol steadily increasing, but it has a long way to go before it catches NZ's prices. Groceries are approximately the same. We are driving later model cars than we had in NZ - both cars are under 5 years old instead of a cars that are 10-20 years old.

Eye-glasses, furniture and appliances are cheaper and the latter two can be negotiated down, saving $100-$200 per item (someone from the UK told us it's actually expected).

Electricity has increased in cost since we've been here and we get stung for water rates if we use to much water (which fortunately, we don't). Our phone/internet isn't particularly cheap, but from memory, we get more for our money (broadband etc).

We thought the food in NZ tasted better when we first moved over - we think because of the drought. A lot of the meat is cyrovaced for longer shelf-life (which we dislike) and the beef was grain-fed in the drought. Our meat and other fresh produce taste a lot better since the drought ended.

The first house we lived in was a cockroach-infested oven. I'm not fond of creepy crawlies, and the cockroaches are BIG and can fly. Saw some massive spiders too, although we've only see a deadly redback a few times.

We're now in a better house that has decent air-conditioning and is shadier with fly-screens. Good for keeping creepy-crawlies out and keeping our cat in. We adopted a cat and a lizard. It is recommended that cats are raised as inside cats, because Australians tend to not be very cat-friendly and also because cats can be eaten by snakes etc. We needed to get a permit to keep up to two reptiles.

There is plenty to do in South-East Queensland - theme parks on the Gold Coast, art galleries, zoos, beaches, parks and concerts. There's been so many international concerts that my hubby would have loved to have gone to, but we're still trying to get on our feet after coming over with practically nothing.

Our dog has to be on a leash or use special dog parks, but that wasn't too big a deal with him getting older. We enjoy the nice weather for most of the year (summer can be a big uncomfortable for us, though). We enjoy the colourful birds and lizards. I've only seen one wild snake, which happened to be a dangerous red-bellied black snake, when going for a walk in a forest.

We still enjoy the novelty of having colourful birds visit our garden, hearing frogs trumpeting loudly after rain and having a green-tree frog or lizard take up residence in our letterbox.

We were in flood affected regions of Queensland. We think the recent earthquakes in Christchurch, NZ were far more devastating and will be much more difficult to recover from.

We like the climate except in summer - when it's rather too uncomfortable for us kiwis from a cold climate. Each summer, we ask ourselves - why the heck do we live here? But then we love the warm autumn/winter/spring.

Will we ever move back to NZ? Possibly. I'm not keen while NZ is still very shaky with earthquakes - I think NZ is going to find it hard to recover from this recent tragedy. We have more work options here - we're not keen on going back to lower wages with the same cost of living.

We'd be disappointed if we had to go back to NZ without the chance to visit around Australia first. If something terrible were to happen to my husband, I might go back, especially as we aren't citizens.

We've close enough to visit every few years, and family have been over to visit too.

Kiwis moving to Aussie

Christchurch earthquake

Considering homeschooling my son with Asperger's