OPINION: Australia offered higher wages, cheaper groceries and bigger opportunities. But six months after moving home, Aziz Al Sa'afin reflects on why none of those factors were enough to make him stay.
For two years, I lived my life in Australian dollars.
Every coffee. Every grocery shop. Every rent payment. Every payslip. I was constantly converting.
Back then, it wasn't just habit. It was work.
As Australia correspondent for 1News, comparing New Zealand and Aussie became part of my daily routine. I spent two years interviewing Kiwis who had packed up their lives and crossed the Tasman in search of something better.
Nurses chasing higher wages. Police officers accepting recruitment bonuses. Teachers seeking opportunities. Young families looking for a little more breathing room.
The stories were different, but the maths was often the same.
Australia paid more and, in many cases, life cost less.
I know that won't be a popular thing to say. But it was true when I first moved there in 2023, and in many ways it's still true today.
When I arrived in Sydney, I wrote a piece asking whether Australia was really better than New Zealand.
The answer, at least on paper, seemed obvious. The average Australian worker earned more.
Supermarkets were often cheaper. Petrol was cheaper. Household bills were often lower.
Australia’s economy felt larger, faster and more confident.
Two years later, I revisited the question. The numbers still stacked up.
A trolley of groceries generally stretched further, the wage gap remained significant, and many of the Kiwis I interviewed had no plans to return.
If you looked only at the spreadsheets, Australia was winning.
And yet six months ago, I came home. Which presents a problem for the narrative.
Because if Australia was supposedly the better deal, why leave? The honest answer is that life is measured in more than dollars.
Australia had become a life, not just an assignment. Which makes the question harder to answer: If the numbers still stacked up, why come back?
That sounds obvious and almost clichéd, but it took moving away to understand just how true it was.
The strange thing about living overseas is that you don't miss the big things first. You miss the ordinary things.
The birthday you attended through a phone screen, the family dinner you couldn't make, the friend who had a bad day and needed a coffee, the weekend barbecue that became a photo in a group chat.
Life continues without you. Not dramatically, not cruelly, just steadily.
And with every passing month, you realise the cost of distance isn't something that appears on a bank statement - it's measured in moments.
Somewhere along the way, I started thinking about migration differently. For years we've framed the conversation as an economic equation.
People leave because wages are higher. People stay because they love New Zealand.
One side has numbers, the other has sentiment. But that's far too simplistic. Because both things can be true at the same time.
Australia can be a wonderful place to live and New Zealand can still be home. This week, former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described Australia as a wonderful place to be - she's right.
Australia was good to me. It gave me opportunities I could never have imagined.
The role allowed me to cover federal elections, natural disasters, major court cases, world premieres, sporting events and some of the biggest stories of my career.
I met incredible people, made lifelong friends and built a life.
The country welcomed me in ways I will always be grateful for. But there comes a point where you realise that opportunity and belonging are not always the same thing.
That's the exchange rate nobody talks about. What are you willing to trade for a bigger pay packet?
An extra $20,000 a year sounds fantastic - until you need your family or someone gets sick.
Until life reminds you that proximity itself has value.
Six months after moving home, I still find myself doing the comparisons – what’s that old saying - old habits die hard?
I still notice that groceries often seem cheaper across the ditch. I still occasionally look at Australian salaries and think, "That's a lot more than we're paying here."
The reality is that New Zealand's cost-of-living crisis remains very real.
Nearly half of Kiwis report cutting back on fruit and vegetables because of rising costs.
Thousands of Kiwis continue to leave each year.
Many will build wonderful lives overseas. Many already have and we shouldn't pretend otherwise.
But I also think we've become obsessed with measuring value only through economics.
Everything is a comparison, a ranking, or a league table. Who's richer? Who's growing faster? Who's paying more?
Important questions, certainly. Just not the only questions.
Because six months after returning home, the things I'm most grateful for don't appear on any spreadsheet. They don't show up in GDP figures. They aren't reflected in wage data.
They're the ordinary moments that became precious while I was away. A coffee with friends. Sunday lunch with family.
Being close enough to show up when someone needs you and present for the parts of life that don't make headlines.
The truth is, Australia probably still wins many of the economic arguments.
But I've stopped believing that economics alone determines where a person belongs.
For two years I reported on the great migration across the ditch.
The nurses, the police officers, the teachers. The young families and the dreamers.
And I understand every single one of them. The reality is most will leave and never come back. Some will stay for a few years. Others like me, will eventually return.
There is no right answer. Only different calculations.
But six months after coming home, I've realised there are some things that can't be converted into Australian dollars or New Zealand dollars.
Some things are simply worth what they're worth.
And home is one of them.
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