John Key's poster girl

This article gives a good look at how it is for people to live in contemporary NZ.

Aroha of McGehan Close flees NZ

Once she was the poster girl of John Key's rise to power. Now, the girl from McGehan Close says she would never vote for National and has no plans to return home from Australia.

Stuff,

7 September, 2014

As a young woman in Auckland, she says, there were no houses, no jobs, no hope: "There was nothing left in New Zealand."

In 2007 Aroha Ireland, then aged 12, had become the face of what John Key, leader of the Opposition at the time, called New Zealand's underclass.

Key had labelled her community in Mt Albert's McGehan Close a "dead end" and "the nation's street of hopelessness" created by the Labour government.

He has now had six years to turn things around, but Aroha is not convinced. She has no plans to come back to New Zealand, where she could find only part-time work on the minimum wage in a fast-food restaurant.

In Australia, she has a full-time job working in warehousing for Coles supermarket. She married her new husband Stuart on Melbourne's St Kilda beach, and has taken his name, Spashett. They are buying a house.

Back in 2007, her mother Joan Nathan famously castigated Key for insulting their community.

As an olive branch, Key took the young girl to celebrations at Waitangi that year and got Nathan a job at MP Jackie Blue's office. Things briefly looked up for the family. But after the first term of Key's government, Aroha moved to Australia and her mother was back on the benefit after being made redundant from her job with Blue.

Three years later Aroha, now 20, feels she was used by Key - and the Prime Minister won't be getting her vote.

"The last time I spoke to him was when he took me to Waitangi Day. After that I have never heard from him again. I absolutely believe that I was used as a publicity stunt," she says. "I wouldn't vote for National."

In the past year, New Zealand had a net loss of 15,000 migrants to Australia, well down from 36,700 a year earlier, as job prospects worsened in Australia and improved in New Zealand.

In the One News leaders' debate, Key said only 80 New Zealanders left for Australia, 50 the month before.

"I know their names," he quipped.

Well, he certainly knows Aroha's name - since he last saw her in 2008, she has haunted him from afar.

Now, she says, the opportunities she has in Australia just aren't available here.

"I have a full time job that pays good, $38 an hour," she says. "I have a house, rent is cheap, about $265 a week for 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, double garage, me and my husband are close to buying our own house. Life couldn't be any better. There was nothing left in New Zealand.

"All this from someone who came from a ‘dead end' street, right?"

She recently returned home to visit her mother. She couldn't believe how expensive the price of living in New Zealand was compared to Australia.

"Petrol has shot up - $2 for petrol, really? I also brought about seven or eight items from one of the supermarkets and it came to a total of $78. No wonder people can't fill their fridges. I'm glad I got out of New Zealand when I did."

Over the past four years she has seen her mother's financial situation worsen. "My mum works full time and she is still struggling really bad," she says. "It is like she is worse off."

"I have everything that I would never ever have in New Zealand. I would probably still be on the benefit if I lived in NZ right now."

- Sunday Star Times