Immigration Updates.
Filed under: Getting to New Zealand, Immigration Advisers, NZIS & Immigration issues
There’s actually been quite a lot happening on the immigration front here – I’e just been too lazy (and too depressed by it all) to blog about it. So Instead of writing an stream of rather sad and depressing posts – I decided to do it in one short sharp shock, and write an update instead.
1/ Immigration New Zealand being idiotic over relationship statuses.
It’s an annoyance that never seems to go away – but another couple are being harassed my INZ over the fact that INZ don’t believe their relationship is real. They have a baby together, and they are in fact married – but that is not enough for the bean counters and paper shufflers at INZ.
Despite him being married and with a child on the way, Immigration NZ visa services manager Jan Clark said proof of a shared home, finances, belongings and household chores were required to prove they were a genuine couple.
Marriage certificate and – dare I say it – an advanced pregnancy – isn’t enough???? A few years ago, I came across a poster on a forum who had to go through this farce despite being married for 40 years. Before joint bank accounts were common. At the end of the day lack of knowledge on the part of immigration staff does not constitute a lack of relationship on an immigrants part. So this isn’t a one-off situation.
Joint Bank Accounts and bills. It’s a necessity if you don’t want to have to deal with this kind of crap.
2/ More Kiwi’s employ slave immigrant labour.
This it has to be said, affects mostly ethnic minority or pacific islander immigrants, who seem to be less confident and knowledgeable about their rights and the law. That is not to say that western immigrants don’t get similar treatment, but it tends to be of a lesser scale (paid considerably less, conned into taking 2 year work visa positions and forced to do a job that differs markedly from that applied for or you lose your visa- that sort of thing).
In this case – a Wellington “businesswoman” – whose identity is protected by name suppression laws, employed 2 Fijians, did not pay them the minimum wage, and did not pay them holiday pay. She also employed them illegally while they were here on visitors visas.
3/ Immigration Adviser holds on to a passport for over a year.
This is a bit of an odd one, as I can’t find the adviser listed at the IAA, even under past licence holders. So hopefully this guy, Piliki Talanoa, will be prosecuted under the Immigration Advisers Licencing Act. His client, a hairdresser by trade, gave him the passport last September in order to get a work visa renewal. The agent apparetly closed his office down last month, at which point the police managed to get the passport back.
Mr Talanoa says Mr Cohen changed his mind about which category visa he wanted to apply for and that caused the delay, a claim Mr Cohen strongly denies.
A hairdresser by trade, Mr Cohen says he’s pleased to have his passport back and hopes to have a new work permit approved by Immigration New Zealand. But the delays have cost him the chance to apply for residency, he says.
“I have to apply for a work permit from the beginning.”
His advice to other people seeking work permits is to deal directly with Immigration New Zealand.
Mr Talanoa wouldn’t discuss why he abandoned his former office in Otahuhu so suddenly.
But property manager Johan Ackerman says Mr Talanoa had already left the property when the owners showed up to evict him.
Hmmm, there’s a story there – including why he doesn’t appear to have ever held an Immigration Advisers licence. Of course the IAA has no authority to read this article and act on its contents unless someone makes a complaint. The police haven’t charged Mr Talanoa with anything. Question is: why not?
4/ A good news story – 102 year old bypasses the system.
I say good news – as it undoubtedly is for the lady who has been given a 3 year visitor visa instead of the normal 6 months, and for her daughter. It’s not so good though for the hundreds if not thousands of people who refused help or consideration from the Immigration Ministry. So on the one hand I am chuffed to bits about this one, on the other hand it annoys me considerably.
The details are that Louise Sydes UK rest home was being closed, and rather than be relocated, she wanted to move to be with her daughter in Auckland. They contacted the Immigration Minsiter’s office and appear to have just asked them to let her stay. Ive read 2 articles about this – neither of them mention anything about going via Immigration New Zealand, or applying for residency via the family stream, or indeed having to pass the stringent medical tests.
Speaking from New Zealand her daughter Sue Pearson said she was ‘excited’.
She said: ‘Usually family members are only allowed to come for six months but we wrote to the minister of immigration who granted us permission for her to come and live with us.
Given the desperate needs of some people I have come across to get a visa to live in New Zealand, and the crap they have to go through to get it – IF they get it (often they don’t)- I cant help but be a little angry about this. It does kinda make a mockery out of the pain of other families who are refused the right to live together.
5/ Another Indian family facing deportation.
Pooja Kapila, whose husband Satinder is in Waikeria Prison awaiting deportation, was so desperate to avoid what she says is the death sentence of being returned to the slums of the Punjab that she refused to sign the documents presented to her at their Te Puke home on October 21.
They have been living here in New Zealand for 10 years. They have three children, one of them is a New Zealand citizen by birth, having been born here just one year after they arrived. This was before the loophole allowing this to happen was closed. Now I’m probably going to come over as heartless and cold on this – but I really think in case like this we cannot keep holding INZ to blame. Often from reading these kinds of articles, I find I end up making a judgement (based on very little information) about whether I feel the families should be allowed to stay or not. I really cant work out why in other cases I feel compassion, but in this one I don’t. Perhaps it’s because the third child was born so soon after arriving, perhaps it’s because after 10 years of living in New Zealand Mrs Kapila needs an interpreter. Perhaps it’s because once again “celebrity” Immigration Adviser Tuariki Delamere is involved.
As is often the case with these articles – they are full of emotion, and short on facts. As is also often the case, the comments with the article are somewhat enlightening.
Why you need marine insurance when you emigrate – 2
There’s an article in today’s Herald from a Christchurch man whose goods are stuck on the Rena.
Mr Rhodes may also be left short on his insurance. His first thought was, “The ship won’t sink”, but he insured his contents in case anything was broken.
“We were pretty sure $25,000 would cover it, but now we’ve been going through everything … that insurance is not going to cover it all.
We actually created a spreadsheet of absolutely everything we were shipping. We were as picky about it as we were about budgeting – so everything was listed – and we gave everything a value. So by the time we organised the insurance – we knew exactly what we owned (which was a shocking amount of “stuff”) and how much it would cost to replace.
We worked out we needed cover for £44,000 worth of stuff. Scarily – about a 25% of that was for our books – and that was priced for replacements at UK Prices – which is considerably cheaper than NZ prices.
Yes it costs – but put that into context – $25,000 of cover even at todays exchange rate would only cover the replacement of our books (about £12,500). We are all notoriously bad for under valuing our goods.
So I really recommend – painful and immensely boring though it is – actually sitting down and cataloguing everything before you ship. There’s also another upside to this – anything you pack before the shippers get in (possibly like us you have your house “staged” for selling so a load of stuff is boxed up in advance) – you can actually number the boxes and add the box number to the spreadsheet. Makes finding the lemon juicer a helluva lot easier to find at the other end.
Why you need marine insurance when you emigrate.
See those “boxes” tipping over on the back of that ship? Some of those could contain the household goods of people moving to New Zealand. The Rena has been run aground on a reef near Tauranga. For ease – the Dom Post has a nifty The Story So Far section:
Wednesday, October 5
2.20am: Rena, a Liberia-flagged 235m vessel, was heading to Tauranga from Napier when it crashed into the Astrolabe Reef, about 7km north of Motiti Island. Maritime NZ said the cargo ship, which was carrying 1900 tonnes of fuel, was on a 10-degree list and some fuel had leaked from its hydraulic pumps.
Thursday, October 6
-An early morning flight by MNZ confirmed an oil slick stretching 2 kilometres.
-Four dead birds were found, covered in oil. An oiled wildlife response team was mobilised.
-The Director of Maritime New Zealand issued the owners with two notices. One, that a reputable salvor be appointed. Two, that MNZ can take control if it deems it necessary and the vessel owner must comply with the National On Scene Commander’s directions.
Friday, October 7
-Four little blue penguins and two shags affected by oil were rescued from Motiti Island. Six teams of responders are deployed and joined by 10 more teams on Saturday.
Saturday, October 8
-Fresh oil is spotted leaking from the cargo ship, which is on an 11-degree list, MNZ confirms.
-Specialists from around New Zealand and Australia join the more than 100-member strong oil spill response team led by MNZ. Three hundred defence force personnel are on standby.
Sunday, October 9
-Oil recovery teams head out on the water to collect oil. The oiled wildlife response is continuing
-About 10 tonnes of oil is pumped from the Rena to the bunker barge Awanuia.
Monday, October 10
-3500 tonnes of oily water has been recovered and offloaded at the Port of Tauranga.
-Clumps of oil are found washed up on the beach.
-Awanuia is currently alongside Rena and preparations are underway to transfer oil from Rena to the Awanuia, weather permitting.
Tuesday, October 11
- Environment Minister Nick Smith calls the incident our worst environmental disaster.
- Stormy weather in the region makes the clean-up difficult
- Maritime New Zealand issue warnings for volunteers to stop picking up clumps of oil.
Now, the captain of the ship is being charged, and faces a fine of upto $10,000 or 1 year in jail. His ship is leaking oil which will do substantial damage to the New Zealand environment and we have to pay to clean up his mess.
$10,000 or 1 year jail! That 10% of the fine, and 14% of the jail time he could face if he got caught giving immigration advice without a licence.
But that aside – what would you do if that happened to the ship carrying your containing?
I despise insurance companies – especially with the sickening way they are behaving in New Zealand right now with regard to the earthquake in Christchurch – but I also know I would stump up the cash and pay the premium to insure all my worldly goods when shipping them half way round the world.
Our shipping insurance cost £1,390 7 years ago (blimey was it really that long). It was 3% of the value of what we shipped. Looking at that listing ship – which is by all accounts about to break apart – I am glad we did.
Survey time – licensed Immigration Advisers
Filed under: Getting to New Zealand, Hubby's Views, Immigration Advisers
The IAA has just published the results of their third annual survey of client satisfaction with licensed immigration advisers. And what a fascinating read it is – No really, I mean that.
There were 5,781 immigrants invited to respond and 721 of them responded. So, the satisfaction of 721 people out of approx 45,000 emigrants to NZ are intended to give us a representative picture of how much better NZ would be if only everyone used a licensed immigration adviser.
The visa types for these 721 people is also interesting. 40% for Work visas, 20% Student, 20% Residency(what were the other 20%? ). So at least 60% of the survey respondents were actually applying for a Temporary visa. Not Permanent Residency. Seems like a lot of temporary visa’s still being dished out with a chunky advisers costs attached.
Oh and 5781 people, across approx 500 advisers. So that’s an average of just eleven clients successfully through the end of the immigration process a year. Sheesh – no wonder immigration agents have to charge so much if their professionalism & efficiency only manages to succeed with eleven clients in a year.
Lets put that into numbers shall we?
Just 12% of emigrants, including those on temporary visas, decided to use a licensed adviser in the past year. For a service which is supposed to be made sooo much better and easier by having a licensed professional on the case for you..
Anyhow.
The Executive Summary can be found here. It must be the only exec summary I’ve read in the past five years that goes on for eight pages.. Executive = doesn’t have the time to read the full report and needs a one page summary.
Ho hum, then again I am the sort of person who will read the whole 50 page report with appendices of statistical analysis. Short of conducting the survey myself, reading the full report is as close as you’ll get to doing original research – rather than parroting the officially approved line.
Still, moving on.
The actual summary page, first link above, provides some interesting snapshots.
The satisfaction benchmark is 65%. Hmm, seems a bit low. One in three customers not being satisfied is acceptable performance? Most customer sat surveys I’ve seen or heard companies rave on about set a benchmark of at least 80%.
In terms of Adviser Performance I find it most interesting that there are two area’s showing ‘below’ satisfactory performance;
information about Treaty of Waitangi and Maori customs/traditions (44%); and
providing services for a reasonable cost (64%).
Hmm – so irrespective of whether you were happy with your adviser or not, Price is still one area that advisers don’t even meet the paltry 65% satisfaction level.
The next nugget is even more fascinating, the satisfaction with exempt advisers.
It is just as good as with properly “professional” licensed advisers..
You what?? After all the rigmarole about how fantastic it must be for emigrants to use properly licensed advisers, they don’t actually do a better job than a random lawyer or Citizens Advice Bureau adviser? (clearly this does not apply to “advice” you can get for free off immigration forums or blogs – that would obviously cause you a great deal of harm and cause your intestines to explode through your eyes.
)
Still, the highlights tell us that in all the important scoring area’s there wasn’t anywhere that exempt advisers scored better than properly licensed advisers.
Except when you look at how many people were ‘very satisfied’. This is your 80% customer satisfaction benchmark, and only 43% of people using a licensed adviser were very satisfied. Compared with 50% who used an exempt adviser.
Interestingly, when Avalon wrote to the Immigration Minister a second time on this issue after receiving the obligatory fob-off and they tried to use the current sat survey to impress upon is how good these advisers were – she said:
In fact the survey also shows that Immigrants prefer the service given by the Exempt agencies – so once again – it’s hardly something the Immigration Agent Industry should be proud of. It suggests that potential immigrants would be best advised to employ the services of a lawyer and stay well away from Immigration Agents.
Hmm -looks like the situation has not improved in the last 2 years then. And they have some way to go then on more than meeting a clients expectations and really delivering a high quality professional service then! Overall satisfaction still remains at 75%, so three years into a licensing regime and those licensed advisers aren’t doing much better overall.Also – I just love it when statistics don’t actually show what people tell you they show – and I really dislike that the people tell us hope we are too dumb to notice.
Still on the positive side, the survey does show that an increasing number of clients of licensed advisers are satisfied with individual aspects of what their adviser does. Which in itself is a good thing, but still doesn’t answer why the vast majority of emigrants still don’t bother with licensed advisers. Presumably becuas ethey know its a rampant rip-off. And to be honest – most of the people that do really don’t need to. There just isn’t enough added value to justify the amount of money it will cost you. The actual step-by-step process to migrate to New Zealand is not that complicated. The thing that makes it hard for some people is the shite service and behavior of INZ – and no “adviser” is going to make that easier to deal with. I have still not met a single migrant whose agent actually dealt with the issues rather than just pass the crap back to the migrant to deal with.
Save your $$$ – you will need it to buy coffee with!
Auckland joins the 20th Century – just in time for the rugby
Filed under: Cost of living, Getting to New Zealand, Hubby's Views
One of the really odd things we found on our initial trips to NZ was the lack of an airport hotel at Auckland. With the number of international flights getting in at unsocial hours of the day, it seemed a big opportunity was being missed.
Now when I say airport hotel, I mean a hotel which is within a five minute walk or taxi ride of the terminal buildings. Not the closest hotel to the airport being a 20 minute taxi ride away. Which is what the situation at Auckland has been up until May 2011.
Plus of course as we have now discovered, the propensity of AirNZ to cancel direct flights to and from places (Wellington to anywhere out of the country for instance) and insisting that you have to bounce via Auckland to get out of the country. This means you fly back into Auckland really late, and either face a night in the terminal building or a journey of half an hour each way to get to a hotel. Because of course, AirNZ insist on booking you on the first (antisocial) flight out of Auckland to your onwards destination.
Arriving Auckland midnight sir? You’ll be wanting the 0630 flight on to Wellington then wont you?
Seriously, do these people not think! Six hours is too long to comfortably spend in either terminal overnight, since they do actually shut the things down as the traffic volume is nowhere near enough to justify keeping them open 24 hours – unlike Heathrow or Gatwick for example. But also too short to actually get somewhere else and get a decent amount of sleep.
<rant off>
We are now blessed with a Novotelat the airport. Which is within a 2 minute walk of the international terminal. Really, it is. They’ve built it at the end of the terminal where everyone piles out of customs & baggage reclaim bleery eyed and wondering where to go next. In fact, it’s between the ‘pay for your parking here’ parking meters, and the car park.
And it’s swanky. Somehow we got a room on one of the two ‘Premier’ floors, which seem to equate to the Executive rooms listed on the hotel website. Kudos to the receptionist who greeted us at somewhere around 2:30am in the morning – boy was he bright eyed and bushy tailed! Which was really nice to have someone checking us in who didn’t give off the ‘I’m on nights and I’m going to distribute the surliness around‘ attitude that you sometimes find. But also attentive enough to understand we were at the opposite end of bright eyed and that if a pillow had been placed on the counter we’d have probably fallen asleep there and then.
Very nice rooms, the latest entertainment options thought of etc. So if you happen to have a laptop or portable DVD player and want to watch a movie you’ve bought with you, you have all the normal cabling options available so you can plug the thing into the large screen TV in the room.
Plus the bar was still open gone 2am in the morning when we arrived on a delayed Fiji flight, with the coffee machine up and running at 6am at the bar in the morning when we have to ship out again for our Wellington return leg. When the website says it’s a 24 hour bar – its true.
Oh and they have very nice showers, with really good sound proofing in the rooms so we didn’t hear a single lift door go bing all night even though we were in a room next to the lift lobby.
Plus, like the Singapore Changi airport hotel, they’ll do rooms for during the day – but not buy the hour. Which is really handy for those late night flights out of Auckland which will take 12 sleepless hours to get anywhere.
So finally and just in time for the rugby world cup, Auckland has a decent airport hotel, yippeee!!
Congratulations to Mum and Dad
Today, my mum and dad got thier passports back with thier “permanent” permanent residence visas in them.
Just one more to go in about 7 months for my brother and then we are done with Immigration for good!
Making the most of the crap exchange rate – Lightsabres are cheap :)
Filed under: Cost of living, General Budgeting, Getting to New Zealand, Life in New Zealand
Let’s face it – the fact that £1 wont even get you a measly $2 on some days right now makes emigrating to New Zealand hideously expensive. When we bought our house, the rate was at $2.50 or there abouts, and we were practically crying our eyes out then! Right now, we need to bring over about $10,000 worth of £UK to pay for our upgraded insulation – it’s the difference between it costing about £3,500 and £5,000. It is no laughing matter.
Multiply that up for anyone wanting to emigrate and buy a piece of New Zealand? Well -we originally paid $135,000 as a deposit, bringing over about £54,000 which was the money we had from selling our UK home. That meant we had to take out a $265,000 mortgage. At current rates, that £54,000 would only get us about $108,000, increasing the mortgage we need to take out to $292,000.
The cost of the fall in the exchange rate for us personally would have been $27,000 in extra borrowing needed, and that pales once you look at the interest you need to pay over the life of the mortgage.
But is it all bad news?
There is a pale glimmer of good news in amongst the pain – and that is – it’s cheap to buy goods from other countries. We have spoken before about the hundreds of $$$ we save at Christmas by buying books from Amazon.co.uk rather than already overpriced NZ bookshops.
But this week, we saved about $140 on an amazingly cool purple Lightsabre (Mace Windu for my fellow geeks), courtesy of ThinkGeek.com, and the otherwise crap exchange rate.
From Reel Collectibles in New Zealand this would cost $329, plus $12 shipping. From ThinkGeek it costs $US99 , plus $US50 shipping. With a margin for the bank – because they can and they will always syphon a bit off, that came to $ 193.97 NZD.
I make that a saving of $147.03.
Or basically, the cost of a second lightsabre. Or 36 coffees for the non geeks. (Star wars Vs Coffee – Star Wars wins – it’s a close call though!)
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Meeting with IAA – What is immigration advice?
Filed under: Getting to New Zealand, Immigration Advisers, NZIS & Immigration issues
So to recap – my issue with the IALA is that the way it is written means that immigrants are the only section of the New Zealand public who are not allowed to give each other advice. Talking to Mr Smedts, the issue still revolves around whether the advice you give is “informal” or “Formal” and my own person piece of irritating claptrap “systematic” or “not Systematic”. Since nearly two years down the line, no one can actually tell me what those two things mean – we are still basically nowhere further on than when I first discovered that the IALA didn’t actually do what it was supposed to do.
As far as I am concerned, any advice I do happen to give to people is always informal and is in no way systematic and is therefore not covered by this law. I have never been an Immigration agent, am not an immigration agent and never want to be an immigration agent. I still find it quite offensive that this law essentially says that immigrants are too stupid to know that the advice they are given on forums or by people they meet on their journey is not being given by someone who works in the industry. (I would say who is not qualified to give the advise – but as yet no immigration agent is actually qualified – though that will change in the future).
Mr Smedts was surprised to hear from me that his staff have already told me, and his newsletter of November 2009 already states, that Blogs and Forum owners are deemed to be acting systematically (and therefore are giving what, under the law, is now called “immigration advice”), whereas people posting on forms are unlikely to be. I tried my best to explain that there is bugger all difference between advice no matter where it is written (blog, newspaper, forum, book) but I think we reached an impasse there to be honest.
Then we still have an issue that the IAA believes that an awful lot of harm and damage is being done to immigrants by this “informal advice” on blogs and forums. I would like to see one piece of immigration advice written on a blog mind you – because I would bet there isn’t any – other than what I have written that the IAA could deem to be advice if they chose to. (If you happen to be reading this and know of, or write a blog on such issues – do let me know!)
Yet, as part of the preparation for this meeting – I reviewed the three Bill Readings that the IALA went through.
And I still can’t see one speech by any politician from any party who even vaguely suggested that the harmful “advice” they were trying to prevent us from being harmed by was ever from another immigrant. The only people who ever mentioned it – in the submissions – were (you guessed it) Immgration Agents with a rather large vested interest in forcing immigrants to pay them money for advice they could have got for free before.
In fact the most classic illustration of what went so utterly wrong when the IALA was written is this, from the very first reading of the bill in parliament:
HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) :
This bill, though, could be termed the “Tuariki Delamere Protection Bill”. It is a bill to protect people from those who take advantage of immigrants who perhaps do not have a finely tuned grasp of English and are in a very vulnerable position. Those people deserve protection. The Serious Fraud Office said that Mr Delamere received $1 million from his Chinese partner in exchange for part of his company. It went on to say that he recycled the money to trick the Department of Internal Affairs, so that seven immigrants—supposedly millionaires, but who were in fact subject to misinformation—gained entry to New Zealand. Those people then found that their residency had been revoked, and they have since left the country. On looking for information regarding this bill and why this country might need it, I found that the New Zealand Herald was very enlightening. I quote from a piece from 16 November: “The SFO alleges Delamere falsely told the Immigration Service that seven clients had each invested $1 million of their own money in New Zealand—qualifying them for residency under the business migration category.”
So look – the IALA was set up to stop people like Mr Delamere causing harm and damage to immigrants (and the reputation of NZ), not other immigrants like me. So why:
Now to be clear – Tuariki Delamere was acquitted of all charges. Not because he didn’t recycle $1,000,000 dollars of his business partner’s money through 7 immigrants – but because technically it wasn’t illegal to do so at the time. It was however contrary to the whole sodding point of the immigration laws and beyond unethical and considered exactly the kind of thing that a new law was needed to prevent.
It was never considered necessary to write a law making it illegal for me to answer questions on how to immigrate to New Zealand.
Yet he has a licence and still makes a lot of money from immigrants to act as their agent, and I, according to Mr Smedts should not do anything more than cut and paste from the Ops Manual. If I do, I am customising the advice, and therefore am giving “immigration advice”.
An example I asked about.
Say I am asked by someone who has had a Kidney Transplant if they can emigrate here? My Answer would be (if it was legal) that you will basically have a bloody hard job getting in, because transplants are an Apendix 10 condition and that means you do not have an acceptable standard of health. You would have to apply for and be granted a Medical Waiver. I would then copy and paste the relevent bits of the ops manual with links as to where to find them.
Mr Smedts would prefer that all I do is the copy and paste bit. Saying you are going to have a really hard time of it is customising the advice, no matter how true it is. I have no idea why- it makes no sense to me, and to be honest I don’t think it ever will. And by the way – this didnt stop a fully licenced agent from NOT telling a client of his this information and costing the an awful lot of money in INZ fees, and the RRB & INZ [RRB case 15350 if the link doesn't work] taking a very dim view of the crap “advice” the licenced agent gave his client.
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Access to healthcare in New Zealand
Filed under: Getting to New Zealand, NZIS & Immigration issues
The UK Telegraph has just run a really useful guide to healthcare in New Zealand. Im afraid being a UK paper it really does relate the situation best for people emigrating from the UK, but that aside, it’s a very well written article and covers all the most important bits you need to know.
New Zealand’s healthy image is reflected in its remote countryside. But access to its health care system is tightly controlled for new expats, and it performs only marginally better than the UK
This relatively efficient performance is partly due to a mix of public and private health care. There is strong uptake of private health insurance (as in Australia), partially triggered by long waits for state hospital treatment.
The main issue here is that in New Zealand the policy for many serious illnesses seems to rely on waiting long enough to treat you that you die and it’s no longer their problem to deal with. Recently one of the District Health Boards stipulated 14 types of cancer that they would not even send patients to an oncologist for. This is where the chance for survival is slim, and if affected you would be sent back to your GP for “management” rather than be treated.
Also New Zealand justifiably operates a severely restrictive immigration policy. Like most developed nations, it does not want its care system even more overloaded. Waits for surgery can exceed a year.
Public hospitals are of good standard and well spread across the country. They treat citizens, or permanent residents, free of charge, and are managed at district level.
Not all treatments at hospitals are free. You may have to pay for some investigations depending on what it is for and who has referred you. Also, in some areas access to a hospital may not be available 24/7 in the more remote areas, so be aware of that.
This has not stopped waits for treatments, encouraging a big market in private medical insurance. Southern Cross Health Insurance, a non-profit-scheme, is the biggest operator. It claims half the market, which covers almost a quarter of all New Zealanders. Southern Cross also has its own hospital chain.
Private health insurance is expensive, and you should definaltly shop around and get some expert advice on what is best for you. Particularly look at what insurance covers in the way of cancer treatments. Many policy do mot cover it – because the public service does – but then you are back to waiting so ling they don’t need to treat you at all.
ARE YOU AN ACCIDENT VICTIM?
New Zealand has taken a novel approach to financing part of its public health system.
Any treatment deemed to result from an accident is not centrally financed, but funded by a tax on employers, employees and sources such as car registration. Treatment is open to all people legally in New Zealand, including tourists. One advantage is that it limits the spread of the compensation culture. It is not easy to bring an action for injury under New Zealand law. However, the system is often abused. “Once people know the ropes, they call everything an accident,” says one administrator with first-hand knowledge. “You have a neck problem and say you got it when you tripped, so you’re covered.”
Yep – its easy to get ACC cover for almost anything – which then makes it difficult for the more extreme cases to get cover at all. Like a lot of “benefits” a huge amount of money is wasted by bad management and policy. But the bottom line – even as a tourist – accidents are covered. Bottom line is that you also pay for it in ACC levies – especially on Car Tax – almost all of which is made up of the ACC Levy.
FAMILY DOCTORING
Patients pay to see a GP, and also for medication. But these payments are subsidised, especially for people with community health services cards or high-user health cards. Emergency services are primarily provided by the charity St John New Zealand, supported with a mix of private donations and public funds.
Expect to pay $30 – $60 to see a GP. Sounds expensive but generally it means you get to see a doctor, rather than the waiting room being full of people with spare time on their hands going because its free. People tend to make sure they NEED a doctor. You also get a decent consultation (usually half an hour with our GP), and the doctor actually talks to you rather than having a prescription half written by the time you sit down.
Note (thanks Sophie): Under 5′s get free GP visits depending on the surgery – so it’s well worth asking around. In some areas you will get charged for out-of-hours visits to a GP for them though.
TIGHT ENTRY CONTROL
Those seeking permanent residence in New Zealand must be in good health before they are accepted into the system. Simply buying medical insurance (although it is widely taken up there) is not enough. The reason given by the authorities is that they would not be able to prevent someone newly arrived with a pre-existing medical condition from using the public system, even if they had good private cover. Immigration New Zealand states that it “is not able to limit any New Zealand resident’s access to the health system, and therefore if you do not meet health policy, we are unable to accept offers to pay for private health insurance”.
I actually agree with that in priciple they just need to get rid of the imcompeteant twats making these decisions – cos it looks like the have some “corpses with certificates” determining who meets these criteria.
HOW DO NEW EXPATS JOIN THE HEALTH SYSTEM?
The short answer is that they don’t join at all, unless they have a work permit in excess of two years. Any less, and new arrivals are told to get private health insurance. Official advice is: “Government funding of health and disability services means that eligible people may receive free inpatient and outpatient public hospital services, subsidies on prescription items and a range of support services for people with disabilities in the community. “If you are not eligible for publicly funded health and disability services, you can still get the services, but you will have to pay for them, and should get health insurance.”
UK-NZ RECIPROCAL HEALTH COVER
Just as a New Zealander in Britain is entitled to free NHS treatment in an emergency, so the same applies to Britons in New Zealand. However, the health ministry stresses that this provision is likely to be insufficient. It says that those ineligible for full state care, and those relying on UK-NZ reciprocal arrangements, should buy private insurance “because the reciprocal agreements only cover immediate and necessary treatments”. It adds: “Visits to a general practitioner, non-urgent or discretionary services, rehabilitation, and repatriation are not funded within the reciprocal agreement.”
I really hate this. Kiwis visiting Britain get free GP visits and would get free prescriptions if they came under the same policy as a brit, as well as free hospital treatments. Going the other way – we have the same entitlement as a kiwi to pay for our healthcare. This is not what I personally call reciprocal!
HEALTH TEST
As well as the two-year work permit requirement, the authorities assess applicants to determine whether they are likely to be a burden on the public system. As ever, the test basically boils down to money. Are you likely to cost the system more than NZ$25,000 over four years? That’s under £3,000 sterling a year.
See post on Acceptable standard of health.
The immigration service employs medical assessors to resolve borderline cases. They weigh up any health condition or combination of factors, whether chronic or acute.
(or not if you happen to get the idiot who looked at my Dad’s case who didn’t know his arse from his elbow and end-stage kidney failure from normal ageing kidneys – a bit worrying.)
HEALTH INSURANCE FOR QUALIFYING EXPATS
People who meet the eligibility criteria decide for themselves how much coverage they personally want, above and beyond publicly funded services. A 55-year-old man could buy a comprehensive plan with reduced out-patient cover from Aviva for £2,144 a year (budget £1,501). Bupa International’s comprehensive cover is £2,938 (budget £1,704) for the same man. Axa PPP would charge £1,967 (budget £1,709).
Be very careful buying an insurance package from your home country for use in NZ. Most policies have exclusions based on the length of time you are outside they country. You must check your policy wording before relying on it.
Ive quoted most of teh article, but I really think it’s worth a full read-through.
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Why do so many Kiwis leave for Australia?
Filed under: Cost of living, Economics, Getting to New Zealand, Life in New Zealand
The herald ran a piece asking kiwis for thier thoughts on whether they are considering moving to Australia. I thought it was interesting because for a lot of immigrants there’s a bit of a toss up between going to Aus or NZ – things like this give a different perspective on the whole issue. A frequent complaint about us immigrants from Kiwis is that we only come here so that we can get residence for 2 years and then go to Aus. Of course it ignores the fact that people also get residence in Asutralia as a way of getting into NZ because it’s easer for people to get jobs in Australia.
It also completley ignores the fact that the vast majority of people so sick of New Zealand that they move to Australia – are KIWIS.
Not Immigrants.
Here’s a selection of some of the more colourful comments (inclusion in no way should be taken as a sign that I agree with these comments)- but I really recommend working through them all.
“NZ – where we are forced to pay global prices for our products – but cannot earn global incomes. As a social experiment, NZ is a failure, if not a disaster.
New Zealand employers need to realise that they are in a global contest for talent. To attract and retain the best workers they need to benchmark pay and conditions with the rest of the world, especially Australia.
Of course, we may never be able to match what is offered overseas but more of our companies must strive to become globally competitive to “raise the bar” on our wages and salaries. New Zealanders are some of the most mobile people in the world and have proven they have no qualms about leaving New Zealand for greater opportunities
I am going to Australia because of the complete lack of job security and career options in New Zealand. Five years out of ten NZ has a recession and there is no sign that change is on the horizon.
Number one is because of the money but a close second is all the PC rubbish that goes on in this country. A particular annoyance is the prefrential treatment of Maori and the amount of tax dollars spend on Treaty settlements that would be better used elsewhere.
Our polititions have been way too sucessful in making their policy buying billionaire mates very rich. Unfortunately they forgot to leave some leftovers for the local peasants.
Yes me and my family are moving in october, we have A young family with two kids under the age of three and the only way we can give them the best in life with more opportunities is if we move over.
I have to say I love new zealand but with our pay rates staying the same and only climbing A little each year but the price of everything going up including mortgages, rates, rent and normal cost of living were only going around in A little rat race and only have the option to move.
We live in australia (qld), but cant wait to return to nz, the weather is awful, too humid and hot, in the winter its always very windy so we dont even get to use our boat, the fishing is crap also.
The aussies dont look after their elderly and nz’ers get no help unless you become a citizen (not even nz flood victims), we wish we had never wasted so much money and come over.Its not all its cracked up to be, cost of living very much the same as nz, fuel rising, food prices high, nz is still the best place to be.
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