YOU were probably as shocked as I was. But just in case you’re not sure if you heard right a few days ago, let me at least assure you that I too heard the same bit of stunning news: New Zealand is turning mongrel on itself.
Just to recap the context: every year now about 76,000 Kiwis choose to permanently leave New Zealand. With those sorts of numbers, you’re talking about everyone from brain surgeons to one-legged tightrope-walkers. If the same number of people were flooding out of a dinner party, you’d instantly ask ‘Why?’ or ‘Did someone fart?’  However, being Godzone, and each of us mainly focused on our own lives, there is minimal reporting of the 76,000-litre blood loss, and none of our public figures are suitably qualified to explain just what is going on.
Some of the exodus is disguised by the high level of immigration. Just as 76,000 departing Kiwis represent a loss of Kiwi-ness, the arrival every year of far more than 76,000 people from other countries means that the very nature of our society is in a constant state of flux.  Yeah, yeah, I realise the logic of exporting unemployed and welfare-dependants to Australia: it lightens the load on our economy. But the bigger reality is we lose people with skills, “human resources”, or even “precious resources” if you like. New Zealand (if there is such a thing) did not value the ones who left.
But wait, there’s more... If what I’m saying has any foundation, then surely it must also affect the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed recent arrivals. It does. Due to losing so many medics to Australia, we have a chronic shortage in our own hospitals. We need more. Well, given our constant ‘blood transfusion’ of emigration-immigration, the logical answer is to just bring in more doctors from overseas. The sad thing is that just as we didn’t value the ones who left, we are not valuing the ones who have arrived. Des Gorman of the Health Workforce says that in Auckland alone there are at least 200 immigrant doctors NOT working in the health sector.
There’s a lesson for Wellington in all this. Just focusing on the health sector, if we need more doctors and nurses in the Capital, rather than instantly holding out carrots to staff in other countries, why not canvas our own local population to find out how many unutilised medics we have already?  I’m not saying every taxi driver has got a plastic hip for you in the boot of their car, but I’m sure some of them are perfectly competent GPs, perhaps the odd brain surgeon thrown in.
Since Wellington is above all else a city of communicators, all equipped with a beautiful bedside manner, I’d love to see an ingenious mechanism put together to best employ our unemployed medics.  The ultimate reward for such innovation will be a priceless model for finding and retaining people in other, emerging areas of enterprise.