Dangerously Informed with Evie

Australia has a long history of stealing things from New Zealand. Crowded House. Pavlova. The Rugby World Cup semi-final in 2003…
But now they’ve taken it too far. They’re stealing our nurses.

In just one year, almost 12,000 nurses registered in New Zealand also registered to practise in Australia.
And look, if someone offered you dramatically more money, paid for your flight, helped with your housing and told you that you could be relaxing on the Gold Coast by summer – wouldn’t you leave too?
But there’s a much bigger problem here.
New Zealand is already short of nurses. Our hospitals have struggled with understaffing, strikes and burnout.
And somehow, we’ve ended up with a system where we spend years training nurses, struggle to actually give them jobs – and then make it incredibly easy for Australia to take them.
So why is Australia spending so much money recruiting New Zealand nurses? Why can’t New Zealand stop them leaving?
And are Australia and New Zealand actually solving their shortages – or are we just stealing nurses from each other?

I Found Out Why Australia Is Stealing New Zealanders