OE exodus: how do we lure our smart young things back home?

Steve Stannard is a former academic and small business owner at Massey University in Palmerston North.

OPINION: Much is being made of the wave of young Kiwis moving abroad this year.

Many will do delayed OE, but quite a few will also leave for higher paying jobs and experience that they can’t get here. One day they will come back; I hope.

When I came to New Zealand twenty years ago as a young academic, I quickly learned that if you want to win a Nobel Prize, you shouldn’t be here.

The people, the money, and the resources just aren’t there to do the kind of cutting-edge research that’s needed. They’ve never been; just ask Alan McDiarmid or Earnest Rutherford, our Nobel laureates, who lived elsewhere to do their groundbreaking research.

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But you come to live here because it’s a great place to live and breathe, and in Palmerston North, a great place to raise a family. But then it’s almost inevitable that your kids will leave, at least for a while, to broaden their horizons.

I have two grown children in Europe who practice their craft and do things they couldn’t do here. Haven’t seen them in a long time, but hopefully before the end of the year maybe I will. Whether they will ever return to NZ to live I don’t know.

Bright young things going away means ideas, expertise and enthusiasm disappear. It also punches a hole in our tax return. More critically, there’s a positivity about young adults, and when that happens, the lights get a little dimmer.

If NZ Inc., like any major organization, suffered such a loss of valuable young talent abroad, someone would be asking rather difficult questions of ‘the board’ about the opportunities or culture in the workplace. Hopefully someone in the government will.

A more important question is how do you get them to consider coming home and bringing that talent, broadened horizons and hard-earned money back to Aotearoa?

Hiding from Covid worked for a bit, until it became clear that the dreaded virus was going to get here anyway – only with a delay – and while they were gone, NZ had become one of the most expensive places in the world to buy a house or food in proportion to wage earning capacity.

Perhaps more critically, to attract and retain you need to have a place where there are decent jobs and plenty to see and do outside of work. Of course we have spectacular mountains and beaches, but frankly also in other places. And once you’ve been to Queenstown six times, you won’t have to go back.

So we need things to happen. On a national scale, think of World of Wearable Arts, the ‘Wings’ airshows, grapevine concerts and international sporting events. Things that are entertaining, and a little different every year.

Local events can be even more important for attracting and retaining people, especially for the regions. Does a city have a good indoor pool for the kids with classes? Is there an active hockey club with a turf and a strip of football fields? How are the walking routes near the city? Are there any good pubs and dancing places?

But in the past two years, so many activities and events have been canceled that many of these local activities have been curtailed. Some clubs have ceased to exist.

In addition, the highly risk-averse nature of our lawmakers has made organizing events, especially those that use public spaces such as roads, nearly impossible.

Many cycling, triathlon, running or other vehicle related events that require even a little space on the road have been canceled. The reason is that Waka Kotahi is now so “safety conscious” that the required traffic management is beyond the reach of anyone but professional outfits and major road companies.

I’m told that even Santa Claus is considering not coming to his annual parade because his top elf doesn’t have the required new traffic management qualifications.

I feel that over the past two and a half years the enthusiasm to create vibrancy has been extinguished by a combination of fatigue, fear and new ‘rules’, the latter of which are promulgated with no end date. Constrictive rules with no end in sight predict a future that isn’t exciting or compelling.

If we want to attract and retain people to New Zealand, especially the provinces, we need to encourage events and activities that create liveliness, rather than making it more difficult.

But now it’s so easy not to organize them because there are too many hoops to jump through.

It’s a kind of “cancellation culture” that has insidiously crept into our lives and needs to be unraveled from the highest level if we want to return to be seen as one of the world’s most livable places. A place where young and aspiring want to live.