New Zealanders living in Australia are getting a raw deal, and the proposed changes to Australian citizenship will only make it worse.

That is the warning from a lobby group for New Zealanders living in Australia, Oz Kiwi, that spent the past week in urgent meetings with politicians on both sides of the Tasman.

Oz Kiwi spokesperson Joanne Cox said there had been a steady erosion of rights since 2001, when New Zealanders were no longer considered permanent residents on arrival.

The changes will see citizenship applicants reside as permanent residents for four years rather than one.

New Zealand students will be treated as international students and pay more than triple their current fees, and New Zealanders who sell a home in Australia will be charged capital gains tax.

“These things are happening on the sly,” Ms Cox said.

“What was happening 10 yeas ago is no longer the case and people don’t realise the changes until it’s too late.”

Crossing ‘the ditch’

More than 600,000 New Zealanders live in Australia, mainly in New South Wales and Queensland, and until recently the flow between countries was one-sided.

Over the past three years, the number of New Zealanders heading to Australian shores had dropped from an average of 27,600 a year to 20,500 last year, according to Statistics New Zealand.

More people are also moving from Australia to New Zealand, with numbers over the past three years almost doubling to 15,800 a year compared with an average of 8,900 each year for the previous 35 years.

There are now more than 62,000 Australians living there.

When Australians arrive in New Zealand, they are granted permanent residency, can access welfare after two years, access student loans after three years and, after five years, pay just $480 to become citizens.

New Zealanders who arrived in Australia before February 2001 were granted permanent residency and a direct pathway to citizenship, but those who arrived after that date do not.

Kiwis arriving after this date do so under a temporary Special Category Visa that allows a person to live in Australia indefinitely, but with no access to social security, student loans or disaster relief — and Oz Kiwi is critical of the lack of balance.

Rights whittled away says advocate

Oz Kiwi said New Zealanders were now in a situation where they could be brought to Australia as infants, live their lives until 90 years old and never be able to gain citizenship.

New Zealanders will be the only group paying a levy, starting next month, but will have no access to its services if they are not permanent residents.

Oz Kiwi met with the federal opposition and cross benches last week, asking them to block the Turnbull Government’s citizenship and higher education reforms.

“If the bill gets completely blocked, that four-year wait as a permanent resident will be gone, so that should resolve a lot of issues for students caught in limbo,” she said.

The situation has not gone unnoticed in New Zealand, and its Minister for Foreign Affairs Gerry Brownlee warned New Zealanders in Australia to consider taking out dual citizenship or face fewer rights.

“There’s a large cohort of New Zealanders who’ve arrived in Australia since February 2001 and [in] recent times who are really disenfranchised and they don’t have many options to gain citizenship,” Ms Cox said.

“The longer they live here, the more disenfranchised they become.”

Ms Cox suggested New Zealanders find other avenues, such as via a spousal visa.

She said the only other avenue was to apply for a skills visa based on the skills shortage list, however New Zealanders were not sponsored for these roles.

New Zealander Lisa Kibblewhite moved to Queensland three years ago with her Australian husband.

She said she was horrified at the thought of having to be a permanent resident for four years and then having to pay $7,000 for her application as a spouse.

New visa will be welcome change

Last year the Turnbull Government brought in a new category of visa — a skilled independent New Zealand visa — where applicants needed to average $54,000 annually for five years to qualify.

This comes into effect on July 1, and Ms Cox said it was a welcome change, providing a new pathway to permanent residency followed by citizenship for up to 100,000 New Zealanders.

Through a media statement, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection did not address whether any historic reforms would be addressed, but said the new pathway to citizenship was an acknowledgement of the special bilateral relationship between Australia and New Zealand.

The spokesperson said eligible applicants could then apply for citizenship after a year as a permanent resident.

– ABC