Prime Minister anticipates big change for New Zealand-Australia citizenship rules

The Prime Minister expects significant progress will be made this weekend regarding the rights of New Zealanders living in Australia.

Chris Hipkins flies to Brisbane with Trade Minister Damien O'Connor and a business delegation with senior Māori representatives on Saturday, to mark Anzac Day, and celebrate 40 years since the Closer Economic Relations agreement was signed.

That will involve some hobnobbing with trade figures, a gala dinner with senior Australian ministers, and some face-time with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

But the underlying prize of the two-day visit will be finding out whether the Australian government has made tangible changes to its citizenship rules for New Zealanders.

Last year, Albanese indicated he wanted to get something over the line by Anzac Day 2023 - this Tuesday.

"I'm pleased that we appear to be on the eve of making some significant progress," Hipkins said.

The pathway to citizenship for Australians in New Zealand is clear. Currently, Australians can apply for citizenship if they have lived in New Zealand for five years, including eight months of each of those five years, and pass character and basic language tests.

But it is not the same for the 700,000 New Zealanders in Australia.

In 2001, the John Howard government introduced the Special Category Visa. It means New Zealanders can stay indefinitely, but they have no such pathway.

Applying for citizenship is difficult, expensive, and not a guarantee. It also means they miss out on things like jobseeker support, student loans, and disability payments, even the right to vote - despite paying taxes.

"There's a number of New Zealanders who have been living and working in Australia for a long period of time. They've made their lives in Australia. And they are in this kind of state of suspended temporariness," Hipkins said.

"Free movement of people between our two countries is integral to the CER relationship, and has been for the last 40 years. So this has been a challenging couple of decades where the free movement has been limited on one side."

Successive New Zealand governments have appealed to Australia to reciprocate the arrangement.

Joanne Cox from advocacy group Oz Kiwi said she was excited for a potential change in the rules.

"This should be the biggest change to trans-Tasman relations in at least 22 years. A little bit of a reset, bringing back some of the reciprocity that's seen sadly missing."

Cox frequently met with Australian Labor MPs when they were in opposition, and now as ministers. She has nicknamed Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who Hipkins will also meet with, the Member for New Zealanders, in tribute to their working relationship.

Cox said many Australians simply were not aware of how damaging the policy, which she called "detrimental, disadvantageous, and discriminatory," had been.

"We have a lot of people contacting us in desperate situations, horrendous situations, such as a New Zealander with an Australian partner who was terminally ill, she couldn't get a carer's payment to look after him because she was a New Zealander. So she had to work to pay for the hospice care for her dying husband," she explained.

National leader Christopher Luxon said it was appropriate for Chris Hipkins to advance the interests for New Zealanders in Australia, but was concerned it could lead to a brain-drain if people in New Zealand did not think they were able to get ahead at home.

"There's a lot of New Zealanders already leaving New Zealand because they don't think it's a place of sufficient opportunity. We need this to be a country where, yes, go away as part of your rite of passage of going overseas and experiencing another place.

"But we want people to come back here to start a business, to raise their family, to do something cool in the community."

Hipkins said it was possible to support New Zealanders living in New Zealand while also supporting those making a life for themselves abroad.

"We want to make New Zealand a very attractive place to live, work, to raise a family, so that we encourage more New Zealanders to stay here, and so that we encourage New Zealanders who are in Australia to come home to New Zealand.

"That said, it's always been a feature of our relationship that New Zealanders will, for a variety of reasons, relocate to Australia, and we want to make sure that they're treated fairly when they're there."

Closer Relations

In 2020, Jacinda Ardern stood next to Scott Morrison and said stalemates over Australia's 501 deportation law had "tested" the trans-Tasman relationship.

In contrast, when she visited Sydney last year, there were hugs, smiles, and record-swaps with Anthony Albanese. Much was made to highlight a "reset" in the relationship, one based on friendship and "common sense."

Her successor, Hipkins, flew over to Canberra in February to meet with Albanese - his first international engagement upon becoming prime minister - but it was a one-day, in-and-out trip.

This trip is ostensibly to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Closer Economic Relations agreement.

The Free Trade Agreement was first signed in 1983 but has been expanded on since, including 19 years ago, when the countries committed to the Single Economic Market agenda.

The agreement has no formal dispute mechanism, touting the strong relationship between the two countries.

Hipkins said trans-Tasman relations today were in good shape, and good heart.

"It's a strong relationship. We like to give each other a bit of a hard time, particularly when it comes to sporting events. But our economic relationship is an incredibly strong and important one. Our futures are interconnected in that regard, our economies are closely interlinked with one another."

While in Brisbane, Hipkins and Albanese will commemorate Anzac Day with a wreath-laying ceremony. Hipkins said both of his grandfathers had served in World War II, and he would use the occasion to reflect.

"The lifelong impact that that had on both of my grandfathers is something that I've never underestimated," he said.

This is not the only trip in Hipkins' calendar this year. Next month he will travel to London for King Charles' coronation, and then in July will head to Lithuania for the NATO leaders' meeting.

While Hipkins did not want to give much away regarding this weekend, he did let slip an apparent confirmation Albanese would be joining him at NATO in July.

While New Zealand and Australia are not members of NATO, they were invited as members of the so-called "Asia-Pacific 4", along with South Korea and Japan.

Albanese is yet to officially confirm his appearance at NATO, but Australian media reported he would not attend. He later said he would "happily" accept the invitation, subject to logistical arrangements. Albanese said he and Hipkins had texted each other about the invite.

When asked what the texts were about, Hipkins said "the fact that we're both going to go."

Hipkins said he and Albanese would also discuss the war in Ukraine, and security in the Asia-Pacific region. But he did not expect AUKUS, and the potential for New Zealand's participation in its non-nuclear pillars, to be much of a talking point.