- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmit.online
People are leaving New Zealand in record numbers as unemployment rises, interest rates remain high and economic growth is anaemic, government statistics show.
Data released by Statistics New Zealand on Tuesday showed that 131,200 people departed New Zealand in the year ended June 2024, provisionally the highest on record for an annual period. Around a third of these were headed to Australia.
While net migration, the number of those arriving minus those leaving, remains at high levels, economists also expect this to wane as the number of foreign nationals wanting to move to New Zealand falls due to the softer economy.
The data showed of those departing 80,174 were citizens, which was almost double the numbers seen leaving prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
When I see headlines like this about colonised places I like to dream that the indigenous people get their land back and eventually wave goodbye to the last settler/colonizer.
I understand and, in principle, agree with the sentiment, but I feel like “indigenous” implies people who’ve been there since prehistory and Aotearoa was uninhabited by humans until about 1320 CE. The “indigenous” Maori only beat the Europeans there by a few hundred years.
Like Vin Diesel said, “winning is winning,” but still, we’re not exactly talking about the kind of margin people like the Aboriginal Australians or the Native Americans had.
I don’t think anyone alive is a coloniser.
The only people that live in new Zealand are locals and immigrants. Even if you removed all the immigrants it would still be full of full blooded white kiwis that have never lived anywhere else and potentially never even met a relative that has lived anywhere else. They are a New Zealander.