Kiwi diaspora offers wealth benchmark

Friday 20th July 2001

The gloom that pervades many areas of business suggests to outsiders that New Zealand is incapable of producing wealth.

Not so. Just as our farmers have shown a great ability to come back from the dead, so too have our entrepreneurs shown they are able to prosper.

But many have chosen to prosper overseas - some because they don't like New Zealand race relations or social policy but most, I suspect, because they embrace the global economy and find it easier to earn a good living elsewhere.

In this Rich List, the 16th produced by The National Business Review or associated publications since 1986, we salute the Kiwi diaspora. No fewer than nine of this year's new entrants live permanently or most of their time overseas but they will always be Kiwis and deserve no less recognition for their absence.

Their decision to earn a living offshore is not evidence of a South African-style chicken run; more it reflects the ease with which New Zealanders young and old embrace globalisation.

New Zealanders have lived and worked outside the country since Victorian times.

It has not been all one-way traffic. We attract world talent and would attract much more if we adopted an Australian-style population policy.

Instead we have an immigration policy that selects "suitable" immigrants on a points system but makes no bias toward their ability to create wealth. That will have to change if New Zealand is to become a really wealthy society.

Graeme Hunt
Editor, The Rich List 2001

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