If there's one thing New Zealanders enjoy as much as buying and selling on Trade Me, or paying by EFTPOS, it's travelling. The Overseas Experience, or the “Big OE” as it's popularly known, more often than not involves Kiwis packing their bags and moving their lives across the Tasman to the Lucky Country, Australia. 'Straya mate, that's where the bloody hell all the Kiwis are.

According to the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Australia is home to nearly half a million Kiwis – a massive 10 percent of New Zealand's total population of 4.26 million. Since the 1920s, various arrangements in legislation have made it easy for New Zealanders and Australians to live and work in each other's countries, a deal that Kiwis have taken the ball and run with. On average, 600 Kiwis leave the country every week with the intention of finding work elsewhere, most commonly, Australia.

Just recently the New Zealand government announced a 2 percent increase in the minimum wage to $12.75 per hour, which compares with a minimum wage in Australia of $14.31 per hour. Cindy Jones, 24 is the Assistant Manager of a café in Perth, after leaving Christchurch two years ago.

“I moved to Australia to get some money behind me. It's a lot easier to save when you're earning double what you are in New Zealand,” Cindy said.

Announcing the wage increase in the NZ Parliament at the end of January, Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson said that the Government was working hard to provide the right environment for economic growth and to ensure workers maintaining the buying power of their wages was part of that. The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions hit back, saying the 2 percent increase barely compensated for inflation.

“If this is the rate at which we intend to catch up with Australian wages then we will never get there,” Union President Helen Kelly said in a statement.

While Cindy Jones said: “I don't think 2 percent is enough. It would not entice me back, $10 a week is barely enough for milk and bread these days.

The wage gap between the two neighbouring countries is almost 30 percent. Despite this, speaking to media last year, Prime Minister John Key urged New Zealanders to return home. Key says he fears that his country will end up turning into “a giant educational facility for Australia, which is not my ambition for the future of New Zealand.” One in four New Zealand university graduates now lives in Australia. Ironically, Key and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd are planning to create a common border between the two countries, make trans-Tasman travel even easier and cheaper.

The New Zealand Department of Labour says that in the year to November 2009, 29,800 New Zealanders departed for Australia, which was a 31.5 percent drop from the previous year, due a perceived weakness in the labour market in Australia. The department expects migration to Australia to pick up again in the first half of this year.

There's a long engrained history of Kiwis heading west in search of experience they find hard to get in New Zealand. The big brother across the ditch has been described by Prime Minister Key as a “giant sucking machine” contributing immensely to New Zealand's Brain Drain.

Ashley Lum, 27 and her partner migrated to Melbourne two months ago. She has taken up an opportunity as a Junior Project Manager at a financial institution. “We decided to move over to Australia to open up our opportunities and get overseas experience that would assist us in our future careers.”

Rebecca Cole, 28 is a medical student at the University of Notre Dame. She moved to Sydney from Wellington to undertake a PhD in science six years ago and gain international experience.

“A lot of jobs require you, or look favourably on people with more world experience as there's the perception that you can adapt to different situation and learn from a different point of view,” Rebecca says.

For more than a century until the 1970s, New Zealand and Australia shared similar standards of living. Research from Monash University says that the reasons as to why such an economic gap exists today are in dispute, but offers suggestions such as New Zealand's distance from foreign markets, rapid deregulation in the 1980s, a lack of natural resources and the robust Australian economy that began with the minerals boom in the 1960s.

More recently, Australia has had a stronger political consensus around policies for growth, which has contributed to investor confidence. In comparison, New Zealand froze most major reform in 1993, and under the Labour government increased tax and regulation since 2000. Last year, the newly-elected National government froze employer contributions at 2 percent for Kiwisaver, the national pension scheme. In Australia, the figure is a far more generous 9 percent. Prime Minister Key campaigned on bringing down tax, but delayed tax cuts last year due to the recession. In January, the Tax Working Group suggested raising GST from 12.5 percent to 15 percent to fund personal tax cuts in this May's budget. Australia's current unemployment rate is 5.5 percent and decreasing, New Zealand's is 7.3 percent and increasing.

The New Zealand government established a task force last year, headed by former National Party leader, Don Brash. The aim of the taskforce is to find ways of closing the wage gap with Australia by 2025. Speaking on ABC Radio last July, Mr. Brash pointed to other smaller countries like Singapore, Switzerland, Denmark and Ireland that, while also small, are more prosperous than New Zealand. He said that New Zealand should not give up purely because it doesn't have the mineral wealth buoying the Australian economy.

“There's not much correlation between mineral wealth and overall national wealth [either]. You think of [again] countries like Japan, which have got virtually no mineral resources but have income well above New Zealand. Singapore again is another good example,” Don Brash said.

Amanda Dobson, 31, a business analyst from Wellington, is considering a move to Australia within the next year. She points out that the New Zealand government has made some in-roads towards enticing New Zealanders to stay, but they might not be enough.

“There is zero interest on student loans while the debtor stays in New Zealand, which does help,” Amanda Dobson said. “But if Kiwis can earn more and cover the interest cost of their loan as well as working overseas, it's a fairly logical move.”

As to the reasons why Australia is favoured by so many New Zealanders, Dobson suggests proximity and similarities are both considerations.

“Australia is close, it's just a four-hour plane ride, so you can still connect with family. It's warmer and it's perceived that they have similar values to Kiwis.”

New Zealanders view Australia as a bigger version of home. New Zealand comedy duo 'Flight of the Conchords' have parodied the close yet competitive relationship the two countries share and observe that Australians speak in “an evil version of our accent”. Luckily we share a similar sense of humour as well.

While Australians may earn 30 percent more than Kiwis, it's worth noting it's more expensive to live in Australia. The 2009 Mercer Cost of Living survey shows Sydney remains the most expensive city for expatriates in the region, but has dropped from 15th to 66th place. Melbourne came in 92nd, down from 36th while Auckland ranked 138th and Wellington 139th.

The migration story however, is not a one-way street. In the past decade, the number of Australians crossing the Ditch to live has increased steadily.

Latest figures from the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship show 14,352 Australians moved to New Zealand in the 2008-2009 financial year. The previous year, the number stood at 14,160, whereas in 1998-1999, just 7,468 migrated to New Zealand. New Zealand remains one of the main countries Australians choose to move to.

Australian Greg Lucas, 31, went against the grain and migrated to Auckland from Sydney last year. He made the move to take up a job opportunity in IT, which he “would have struggled to find in Australia, at least in the short term”. He intends to stay in New Zealand for a couple of years before returning home: “I'm pretty sure the winter months will convince me that I prefer Sydney weather.”

Lucas believes that there is a “grass is greener” perception by New Zealanders about Australia but he admits the growing number of Kiwis calling Australia home is not viewed as positive by all.

“I'm sure there's a feeling amongst some Australians that Kiwis are taking 'our jobs' or taking advantage of government benefits,” he said.

New Zealanders are highly employable in Australia and the image perpetuated of the lazy dole-bludging Kiwi soaking up rays on Bondi Beach is inaccurate and unfounded.

Census statistics from the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship in June 2008 showed New Zealand-born workers in Australia had a high 78.5 percent participation rate in the workforce compared with Australia-born at 68.9 percent.

It seems that even though New Zealanders suffer a constant barrage of harassment for the way they pronounce their vowels, they make a valuable contribution to the Australian economy.

Cindy Jones is adamant she will never return to New Zealand.

“I would not consider moving back. It's too cold and earning what I was in New Zealand isn't going to support my future family,” she says.

Ashley Lum and her partner who are both now in Melbourne, regard their move to be only semi-permanent.

“We are here to get experience, which may be several years, then go back home to settle down,” Ashley says.

Rebecca Cole would consider the move back if the opportunities were available.

“New Zealand is my home. It's a very beautiful country and the lifestyle is very relaxed,” she said. “But if the speciality area I want to go into doesn't have jobs open in New Zealand or the same availability of access to the latest procedures, I probably wouldn't go back.”

While campaigning for election in 2007, Prime Minister Key said: “I want our children and our grandchildren to be able to chase their dreams here in New Zealand, not for their dream to be leaving New Zealand.”

In order to realise his dream, it's now up to Mr. Key to help turn New Zealand into a place Kiwis aspire to come back to.