Demographer Bob Birrell, of Monash University's Centre for...

Demographer Bob Birrell, of Monash University's Centre for Population and Urban Research, yesterday called for more controls on open-ended Kiwi migration.

"To allow this uncontrolled flow of New Zealanders when we've got far too many young people looking for entry level jobs is irresponsible,'' he said.

"The wage levels here are 10 to 20 per cent higher here.''

Immigration data reveals that 648,200 New Zealand citizens are living in Australia - up from 470,000 in 2007, before the start of the global financial crisis.

Nearly 85,000 Kiwi citizens were born outside New Zealand - meaning one in every eight of the migrants gained New Zealand citizenship before switching to Australia.

The statistics show that 10,592 New Zealanders were born in Samoa, 5269 in the Cook Islands and 2754 in Fiji.

Another 14,744 Kiwi citizens were born in Asia, 5842 in Africa and 2116 in the Middle East.

rj49 - you can see from the current report above that 'the backdoor' is alive and well. Your mate has been here for 30 years. If he wanted to become an Australian citizen, I'm sure he could have sorted it by now. But if he's still so attached to his NZ citizenship, its only a 2 hour flight back.

I wouldn't get too emotional about the ANZACS and all that. I've just come back from an extended stay in NZ and I can tell you that Australians are not that well liked over there. NZers stereotype Australians as brash, greedy, pushy (Aussies do own many of the big businesses over there). Despite this latent animosity, Kiwis seem to think they have a RIGHT to live and work over here. The only Aussie they seem to admire is Paul Gallen because his punches on in cage fighting bouts.

But I've really got nothing against Kiwis. My original post was about our alarmingly high overall annual net immigration intake of 250,000. The Kiwi issue is only a small part of this.