First years impressions

We have now been here for 12 months having visited the country many times for a holiday. As we are retired we find that our pension goes further than in UK. Motoring is cheaper. The standard of the road system is appalling.
The speed limit is 60mph every where. The police hide and book you as a matter of revenue gathering.Also the issue of parking is very underhand the wardens are afraid to face you so you get the ticket by post. The standard of driving is quite bad by uk standards. Everything you buy has Tax at 12.5%. The crime rate here in Auckland is just as bad as the UK. We have had our car broken into, and our house burgled $4500 (?1500) goods stolen. We had insurance. The police gave us a crime number as in the UK , nobody apprended.
The health system is nowhere as comprehensive as the NHS in UK a doctors visit costs $45 upfront.( ?16.) All prescriptions are charged at cost minus a small government subsidy. Wages are below the UK level.
Proportionally as many freeloading on state handouts as up there in UK. Although the authorities deny it the level of race prejudice is about the same as up there.
The weather is better and most things English are available in the shops. The TV programmes are not too bad but you need sky if you want a good selection. Englsh news is available twice a day on sky news and BBC World is also available. It is not a bad place but could do better.
A good comparison is The Republic of Ireland before it joined the EEC.

[Inzvestor]

Cripes, sounds dreadful.

Health care standards are better in NZ as you can get to see your doctor at a time convenient to you. I agree it does cost more but the level of care is higher and the doctors take more of an interest in your wellbeing.

The police are there to make our roads safer. There are more roadworks in NZ, but most roads are safe to drive on at 60mph. Is there a need to go any faster and run over little kiwi's (the kids) ?

If you don't break the law (speeding) then there is nothing to be worried about.
The police also have cameras in vans now (parked on the side of the road) as well as ute's too.

You're right about the government handouts - there are many that can be obtained, and the system is abused.

The level of crime is similar to the UK and more of an issue is made of it due to the population numbers (eg if you only heard the news about 1/3 of London then I'm sure crime stats would be an issue there too)

Hope you're second year is better.

Hi - I am a Canadian who migrated 5 years ago to the sunny bay of plenty in NZ. They call this place paradise cause you can fish all year round, and you get the most sunshine hours right here. I am moving back to Canada in the next 2 years... why leave paradise?? Well - I am an I.T pro who is very underpaid for my skill-set, I find managers and directors can get away with treating staff with little or no respect. There are gangsters everywhere that will deliberatly pick on you if you are not Maori, walking down the street at night is a very scary experience as the police do not carry guns and even if there is a problem and you phone them for help, if you are very lucky they may show up the next day, even in cases of assault (as has been reported in the local news). The cost of living is just average but wages are definately lower for the average person. The workers compensation is very low for workers injured on the job, for workers unable to return to their field of practice getting absolutely no re-training or help other then a welfare type system. Currently there are ongoing protest and acts of vandalism due to the unrest of the Maori population, and ongoing battles regarding the treaty between the government and the natives (Maori's). The racism is constantly in your face between the whites called 'pakeha' and the Maori and the Islanders, and it is from every direction. Kids on the street disrespect little old ladies because they are 'Pakeha' and there are heaps of drug and alcohol problems that are not addressed.
In Canada I lived in a major city that also had gangsters and drugs, but the gangsters stayed within the gangster circles, here kids as young as 10 years old will skip school and hang on the street, wearing gang colors, swearing at the police with abandon. On the surface NZ looks nice, but I know quite a few south African and Canadian immigrants that wish they never made the decision to move here. I personally know of 4 Canadians that after being here for over 5 years, are moving back to Canada because the country is going downhill, more violence, more rasism, more crimes against women and children. And I live in a fairly small town, not the big city where some forms of bad behavior are expected.
I just thought maybe some of you reading these, who are going thru so much to get here should really think about this side of life here too. Like I said - it looks nice, but it is not the pretty picture the government paints for the rest of the world. This is a bi-cultural country, not a multi-cultural country.

[Nigel]

Hi All,
Interesting reading about other's experiences in N.Z.
My wife & I moved to Palmerston North in 2002 with our then 12yr old daughter.
We just packed up, sold all, I came on a visitors permit, got a job as a Toolmaker and then applied for permanent residency. We figured if it all went wrong we'd have a nice 3yr holiday in N.Z.
We left Eastern Ontario, Canada, near Montreal/Ottawa. Also a nice place.

Both my wife and I love N.Z. Yes the standard of living ( money wise ) is lower. Energy costs eg: power, gas are much higher, but that is not what we moved here for. If money was the issue the U.S. would probably offer the highest standard of living.

Access to Tramping ( hiking ) is awesome. Within 1-1 1/2 hr of Palmy I have the Tararua and Ruahine forest parks and an awesome array of huts and tracks, tons of hunting, no season for deer here. Hunt all you want as deer are a pest.

My wife found a great job and loves the low key lifestyle. Kiwi's work very hard in our experience, ( not unlike Canuck's!! ) and we found very little culture shock at work.

As far as crime, racism etc... I don't really know what to say...yes petty crime is a problem here in Palmy. But it's a University town....Massey...so kids hoon around on the weekend, but Montreal was also scary at night...

The tension between Maori and Pakeha is palpable in the news, not a problem on the streets and workplaces i've visited.
Canada also has native issues, but we have them confined to " reservations". Do a search for " Oka crisis " on Google news to see how relations between Mohawk and whites are in eastern Canada.
My point is that we'll make of something what we want. Both positive and negative.

So as Canadians in N.Z. for going on 2 yrs, we love it.

Nigel in Palmerston North.

[Nonie]

Hi. Ireland has always seemed to me to be much closer, as a system, to NZ than England is but no, the NZ you describe is not like Ireland BEFORE it entered the EU. It sounds just like it now! Except, we pay 40-60 Euro for a doctor's visit (approx 80-120 NZ$) plus medicines up to a ceiling of 72 Euro per month; our roads are still awful (I travel two hours and more each way every day to work, and that's by bus!). I live in a very small town and a 14 year old boy was murdered by a 15 year old down our road for his mobile phone. I lived in London for 7 years and spent two years in The Hague and it was VERY difficult to get used to living in Ireland again - never quite managed it which is why I'm really looking forward to leaving again.

Everyone is going to be different and have different experiences and if I was going to emigrate just for money, I might as well move from the country into Dublin! Are you sure that you didn't move over there and expect to have a more relaxed pace of life but with all the amenities on offer in the UK? Lots of people do that and they invariably get disappointed and dissillusioned. Don't mean to preach but I did get caught by this when I returned to Ireland - I believed everything I had read in the papers, progressive, great economy etc.etc. Didn't realise that was only in Dublin. So this is why I'm reading everything about NZ that I can get my hands on - I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than bitterly disappointed.

in my humble opinion it's all a question of attitude..

i don't mean to upset anyone or get anyones back up...

in the original posting on this topic, x pom talks about "english tele", and "english things in shops" and the whole piece of text comes over as them looking for england with year round sunshine and zero crime and zero social problems...

i like to think i'm a bit more of a realist... if i wanted english things in shops and on tele i would emigrate to somerset or dorset...
You only need to look at the new zealand herald to see theres crime..
but also for a national broadhseet (im guessing its a proper paper) there's a big concentration on new zealand news rather then world news as you get with the times or the telegraph over here....

i hope i'm right... :?

I have been living here for six months, and also agree that it is not all that they advertise. I've lived in several different countries, and the last 3 years I lived in the US, so maybe my expectations were to high.
Here are my comments:
- Health. It's terrible, the doctors are really mediocre and the only things they prescribe are Water with salt or Panadol. I gues it's because Kiwis are big in drug use/abuse. Insurance is OK, money wise, but still, yiu need 4 to 5 visits in order to get something done.
- Crime - I'd say it's the same as in any other big city. The thing is you NEVER see a damn policeman, other than when appear to give you tickets for driving at 51 Kph. I live in a very exclusive suburb in Auckland, and we get the usual 4 to 5 break-ins a week. I NEVER go to the maori 'hoods. Maori's here, sadly are in the same situation blacks were in the US in probably the 80s.

Drugs- Man, people smoke pot ON THE FREAKIN streets!, and teenagers are always inventing new drugs mixing even gasoline with other stuff.

Tourism- Kiwis are good at marketing themselves, it reminds me of Costa Rica. Yes, its nice, but it's not really as it's pictured. Most of the attractions/landscapes are average as best. I went to a place called Ascention, and Kiwis love to compare it with Napa valley, man, what a joke, it's somebody's backyard with some grapes, compare to Napa or Sonoma.
Housing. I pay 3,000 NZ dollars a month for my house, and it's just a nice townhouse. Rents and House prices are absurd. I work in IT and still have my US salary and I can barely make it. and we are talkin 6 figures here. I don't know how a local profesional earning 60 K (NZ $) can afford homes that will sell for half a milllion, for old crappy homes with just 1 bathroom. Kiwis have some of the highest debt levels.

Television - It's 2 years behind american TV. Even small cities in latinamerica have better cable TV. I have the satellite with all the bells and whistles and I can only get 4 movie chanels, 2 of them with 80's movies only.
In summary, as soon as my contract ends, I'm outta here, and don't be fooled by the Lord of the Rings. If you take the tour to see Hobbit town, they drive around a farm where the film was shot, but there's nothing there but Rocks!, and that cost 60 Dollars.
What a rip-off!