Mike's Minute: Sir Ray Avery is part of a growing trend

I feel bad that Sir Ray Avery is leaving New Zealand. He is far from the only one; the stats tell you the embarrassing story which is that we currently have more people leaving than arriving. You wonder when that will actually stop, when do more people arrive and who are those people? Most of the people leaving right now are the younger ones and we can only hope that some of those will be back. Ray is leaving for the predictable reasons - he's over this place and sees more hope in Australia. I met Ray first time around when I hosted the inaugural New Zealander of the Year Awards - back in the days when I think there was only one New Zealander of the year, not several. I didn’t know a lot about him, so it was an evening of discovery. And what struck me is how many people in the room that night that loved him and loved what he had done for the country in terms of where he came from and what he had achieved. My fear for Sir Ray though is he is heading to a country that might in a very short period of time, not be the magnet so many of us think it is. There's a jobs summit this week and that’s really just a smokescreen for up ending the labour market in favour of the unions. They are going where we are, proving yet again ideology is a very dangerous state of mind. Because you don’t want to be where we are and all the Australians have to do is look and learn from us. They want industry-wide pay deals which are our Fair Pay agreements. They hate the gig economy, they call it a cancer. They want structure; they want pre-ordained hours and deals and wage rates and protections - the very antitheses of the gig economy. They more broadly have the same issues we do in terms of lack of labour and massive job gaps. Where they might - might - have an advantage is; 1) they seem more prepared to let more people in to the country and, 2) they announced last week more areas of exploration for mining and oil. When you are making as much as they are in a world desperate for energy even a Labour Government can’t turn that tap off. Not related to the jobs summit but eerily similar to us, is of course their indigenous voice idea. The only upside at this stage is it is so light on detail that whether it’s the Machiavellian reorganisation of democracy our lot are implemented is not known. But Sir Ray may arrive wherever he is heading to in Australia and wonder for a while whether he's actually left New Zealand. Either way, he is part of a trend and in this specific case they will be a better country for his presence.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.