I saw a few posts asking about how much time to allow for immigration, so I thought I'd summarize my experience.
I submitted an online EOI for permanent residency on the 25th of Jan 04. My application was selected 26th of May when the threshold was 160 points, and I have just seen online (26 June) that my EOI has been successful :D and I will be getting an invitation to apply for permanent residency. So if my experience is typical, it looks as though if your points level is above the threshold there isn't much of a delay. Of course it may take longer for residency to be approved, but the guide to applications does say it is 'a short application form' (can anyone confirm that?)
Because my job starts in July, while we were all watching the thresholds inching painfully down, and I thought my three months in the pool were going to expire before I got anywhere near the threshold, I applied separately for a work visa (at the embassy in Berlin), which was ready in just over 2 weeks, although they said to allow five. I think you do need a job offer but getting a work visa does seem a much faster way of getting to NZ than getting a degree! Permanent residency isn't the only way, and some of the longterm work visas are 'work-to-residence'.
Hope this is cheerful news.
Another good source of advice online is a Yahoo mailing list called AustraliaNZMigrate:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AustraliaNZMigrate/
A lot of the discussion is based on Aus, but there are plenty of people well advanced with migrating to NZ as well.
(Oh, and x pom - why don't you go back to the UK if NZ is so awful? It's people like you who get the rest of us bad reputations as 'whingeing Poms'. Christ, if getting BBC news mattered we'd all stay in the UK)