Hmm I always hoped/imagined that Wellington would score higher than that... I've heard it does compare quite well with Melbourne.

I think its all down to personal preferences, expectations and experiences (which we do personalise to some extent). Wellington and Auckland tend to do quite well in lifestyle surveys of best cities to live. So too, Sydney and Melbourne. London consistently does worse.

Buzzy is right that holidaying is different to actually living in a place. But his take on things is HIS take, same as my take is MINE, Same for all of us.
I found Christchurch a really nice place to live but winter smog is crap and it does have a nasty underbelly and mindset I find numbing at times. That said, Melbourne (and many other cities) are not without these negative factors.

Put it this way would you move for a job paying 25% of what you currently earn. Doing work your assistants have just come from?

Nice for a visit but I'll take the financial rewards at this time.

Auckland got a point?

Interesting how many people feel the same way about Australia.......

Actually the income level is about 50% in the professional sector, we arrived in March and my hubby now earns about 50% more than he did, I am an early child hood teacher and I am earning about the same so this statement is not true at all. The housing prices over here are substantially more here as well so things kind of even out. When we buy a house here for the same sort of thing we had in Chch we are going to add around 250k to our mortgage.

Touche! I've noticed a lot of neg comments on NZ in an anti-NZ forum that could equally apply to OZ

I think Australia should just absorb NZ as our next state. We'd get a great new holiday destination, and NZ would get... well, an economy, for starters.

The idea has been touted before and while it may have benefits it's not popular in NZ. I doubt it ever will be. We are as proud of our nationality as any Australian is of theirs.

NZ does have an economy btw. You do have to bear in mind though that the entire population is similar to Victoria's, so comparisons aren't made on an even playing field and comments like this are just typically weak Australian humour.

That would be absolutely horrible for NZ as a nation, in so many ways NZ has got the better politics/attitudes over Australia, I think including having much more cultural influence from Britain. There is definitely an uglier side of the Australian personality that I wouldn't like to see appear over there.

Economically I'm not even sure it would make any difference either, it's pretty free between the countries already. If anything NZ might suffer as it would probably just be treated as a '2nd tier state' and lose it's identity.

And while Aussies joke about NZ, NZ is a much 'smarter' economy than Australia. There was actually a couple of very good articles on this last year, pretty much stating Australia was just a dumb country that dug stuff out of the ground, compared to NZ having more technology/service/tech startups etc as a %.

So again, I still think that apart from the 35% difference in salaries (which they are trying to address) and the lower population, it's actually better than Australia.

I have no doubt that it's unpopular in NZ, for the very reasons you've mentioned. However...





I'm sure you can handle it.



Ah yes, that "extra cultural influence from Britain"... I'm sure the Māori people really appreciate it. Must be great fun to have British imperialism rubbed in their faces every day.

Well, that's completely facile and extraordinarily ignorant, but no less than I'd expect from the source.

Tell you what, mate: you try to ignore our ugly side and we'll try to ignore yours.



Deal?

Talking of NZ I think Flight of the Concordes are hilarious

More fun than Neighbours or Home and Away

I can definitely agree with that!

Australia is one of the few countries that really can't be in a position to point out treatment of the indigenous people.

As for the other bit about 'smarter' economy, it's completely true and backed up by numerous reports.

Pretty much everything is set up for business to conduct business easier, for entrepreneurs to set up companies etc. In Victoria for instance you need a license to fart. Australia is draconic in comparison.

Organisations are smaller and much more agile - Air NZ's IT system for bookings and check-in is 2-3 years ahead of Qantas for example. Everywhere you go you can pay by EFT-POS, from an sole-trader right through to pretty much every company. Weta Studios is a world leader in film effects/animatronics etc, Navman, IBM's only PacRim Cloud Computing datacentre etc etc. Just loads of innovative examples.

Heres's a supporting article:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/busine...125998469.html

I work at the executive level in IT and Aus/NZ and usually behind the UK/US, but from my experience Aus is even further behind NZ.

For your personal circumstances perhaps but for mine its very true. The income currently being offered is what I left NZ some 20 years ago on. That was about $150k