Shadowing Practice: Why New Zealand Is the Only Safe Haven Left - Learn English Speaking with Video
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About a year ago we covered one of the strangest issues taking place in a high income country.
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While everybody else is concerned about unsustainable immigration, everybody was leaving New Zealand.
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The simple reason was its cultural, legal, economic
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and geographic proximity to us here in Australia has just made
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it really easy for a lot of kiwis to jump over the pond
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and take advantage of the higher incomes and opportunities that are available in a relatively much larger economy.
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But there is one exception to this trend, rich people
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or rather the richest people in the world unlike average new
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zealanders who can't seem to get out fast enough wealthy people from across the world
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and in particular from a few select destinations can't seem to get in fast enough
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this hasn't happened by accident the new zealand government has intentionally been accommodating these people for a long time
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now to the point where moving to new zealand has become
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almost a status symbol amongst wealthy people from certain areas
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but it's worth understanding why and how new zealand is achieving this and also asking what the consequences will be.
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So, why has
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New Zealand become such a magnet for the world's richest people?
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How and why is the country encouraging this?
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And finally, what are the potential consequences of rolling out this red carpet?
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Everyone wants to be better with their money, but these days that can mean checking 10 or more apps,
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making keeping an eye on all of them nearly impossible.
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I personally have over 15 accounts, which makes sticking to a budget genuinely difficult.
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That's why I use today's sponsor, Monarch.
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Monarch is a personal finance platform
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that brings all of your accounts into one clean dashboard
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it connects to over 13 000 institutions including every major bank
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and credit card company entering your financial information online can be nerve -wracking especially on a platform
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you haven't used before but monarch is solely funded by its subscribers making it ad free
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and eliminating the need to sell your data
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that makes it a far safer home for your financial information than pasting it into claud
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or chat gpt monarch does use ai to give you deeper insight into your accounts
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but only inside a closed environment that keeps your data private
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but none of this works unless your whole household is on board
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which is why monarch offers partner linking you can invite your partner
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and link their accounts
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so everything is out in the open get your personal finances in check at monarch .com economics
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and for a limited time ee viewers get 50 off with the code economics 50 at checkout
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so the first thing worth recognizing is
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that new zealand is a strange place for the richest people
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on earth to be queuing up for it's a small isolated agricultural country with roughly the population of sydney
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and it's hours of flying from anywhere bigger also it has basically none of the infrastructure
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that wealthy people usually seek out and in a lot of the cities
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that have become particularly popular but really isn't much of anything
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which is for a very specific kind of person exactly the appeal
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if you make your income whether you leave the house
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or not and you can afford to charter a flight
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when you actually need to be somewhere
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that isolation is kind of nice in return you get clean air empty landscapes low crime a stable government
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and a very large ocean between you and everybody else's problems
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which is actually something apparently a lot of billionaires are taking
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quite seriously ever since bloomberg reported on silicon valley figures buying
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up south island bolt holes back in 2018 new zealand has
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had a reputation as the place wealthy americans plan to wait out the end of the world something
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that the country has been happy to accommodate peter teal was
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infamously granted new zealand citizenship in 2011 after spending a grand total of 12 days in the country
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that fact only became public in 2017 and caused a fair bit of a scandal when it did.
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But once a few high profile billionaires own houses in the country, the whole thing kind of compounds on itself.
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New Zealand becomes known as a destination for the ultra wealthy
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which only makes it more attractive to the next billionaire looking for a place to settle.
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And getting into the country legally is actually a lot easier than getting into the country physically.
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New Zealand runs what is commonly called a golden visa or officially the active investor plus visa and in In April 2025,
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the government made it significantly more accessible.
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The old requirements asked for a domestic investment of 15 million
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New Zealand dollars.
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The new ones offer two options, a growth category that only needs 5 million dollars invested into local businesses and funds for 3 years,
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and a balanced category that wants 10 million dollars in safer assets for 5 years.
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The English language requirement was scrapped entirely, and under the growth category
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you only need to physically be in New Zealand for 21 days across the whole 3 year investment period.
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And then this visa grants permanent residency, which can quite easily turn into citizenship down the track.
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The response has been unsurprisingly dramatic.
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In more than two years under the old settings, the investor visa attracted 116 applications and about 70 million actual dollars.
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But since the relaunch, Immigration New Zealand has received 837 applications and booked $2 .3 billion in committed capital,
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with the average application waived through in 36 working days.
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Now, when an immigration department starts quoting its own turnaround times like a courier company,
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it's a pretty clear sign of who they are trying to win over.
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Americans are the biggest group of applicants by a wide margin, followed by China and Hong Kong with roughly three dozen nationalities on the list overall.
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And those customers are getting a very good deal on the tax side too.
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New residents now qualify for what is called the Transitional Residency Exemption
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which means that for their first 48 months in the country they pay no
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New Zealand tax on most of their foreign income.
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So any dividends, interest, rents or other offshore investment income they earn all sit outside the net for four years.
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Now that exemption has technically been part of New Zealand law since 2006 so calling it new would be a stretch,
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but the government has recently been sweetening everything around it.
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Just last year the rules were adjusted specifically to carve out an exemption for people taxed on citizenship rather than residency, which in practice means
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Americans who pay US taxes wherever they live.
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New Zealand also has no general capital gains tax, no inheritance tax, and no wealth tax.
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So for someone whose wealth grows through capital gains rather than a paycheck, that combination is about as good as it gets in the developed world.
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So that is one side of the wealthy immigration equation,
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and the other right now is that a lot of these same people are getting out of the Persian Gulf.
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Dubai spent the last decade becoming the default base for the world's mobile rich, with its millionaire population more than doubling over that time.
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Close to 10 ,000 millionaires moved to the UAE last year alone, bringing an estimated 63 billion US dollars with them.
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But the war with Iran has been chipping away at the safe part of their safe haven pitch.
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Avoiding the taxman obviously has its appeal, but most of these people aren't willing to risk drone strikes for it.
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Henley & Partners, a firm that tracks and services wealthy migration, reported inquiries from UAE residents about alternative residences jumping 41 %
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in the space of a single quarter around the turn of this year.
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Now to be fair Henley
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and partners have received some criticism for their reporting in the past
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and obviously not all of these people are moving out of Dubai and straight into Queenstown.
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But even still regardless of the exact figures there are a lot of digital
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and tax nomads out there right now looking for a new home
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and it's hard to find a country further from all that geopolitical drama than New Zealand.
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In addition right next door australians are making the same move
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and they don't even need a visa to do it we mentioned it extensively in our last video
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so i don't want to repeat too much here
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but under the trans -tasman agreement an australian can move to new zealand roughly the way
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they could move to brisbane we can fly out on a tuesday
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and be a new zealand tax residence by wednesday for decades
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that mostly worked in one direction
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and it's a big part of why regular new zealanders have found it
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so easy to jump ship for higher wages over here
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but the same frictionless border works in reverse australian Australian retirees have always drifted across for the scenery
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and familiar culture and right now the exchange rate is helping too.
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One Australian dollar buys about $1 .20 in New Zealand
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so retirement savings built up over here stretch roughly 20 % further than they do across the Tasman.
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And more recently Australia's own tax changes have started doing
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New Zealand's recruiting for them.
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In its most recent budget, Canberra announced it was scrapping the 50 % capital gains tax discount from the middle of next year.
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For a wealthy Australian sitting on decades of unrealized gains, a short flight to a country with no capital gains tax
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at all plus a four -year tax holiday on their foreign income
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while they reorganize their affairs it's a really attractive offer especially
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when they aren't
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that far from home new zealand is closer to a lot
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of australian cities than those cities are to places like perth
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so the kiwis are getting very good at sucking up tech billionaires
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and wealthy australian retirees by setting themselves up as a temporary tax haven the tax campsite
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if you will this begs the question what is in it for them now i know we're all very happy
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that the world's wealthiest people are getting a nice little safe tax advantage bolt hole
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but it's worth asking what new zealand actually gets out of
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the deal where it brings in a whole lot of people
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that it won't tax the short answer is money at least publicly these people offer jobs growth
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and investments that they have to provide as part of their visa conditions the growth category requires
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that five million dollars go into new zealand businesses and manage funds
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which means the price of entry is an injection of capital into a small economy
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that never has enough of it also once these wealthy migrants arrive they spend money on houses
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and cars and boats and services at the very top of the market.
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Those purchases generate income for New Zealand and tradespeople plus a 15 % GST on most of what they buy.
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These wealthy migrants are also relatively cheap for the government to host.
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They're unlikely to rely on benefits or public housing and
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when they get sick they mostly pay their own way through the private system.
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All that is especially appealing at a time when New Zealand is losing many of its own workers overseas.
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Last year New Zealand lost 28 ,500 people to Australia alone
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which for such a small country is a big deal just in terms of manpower.
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But on top of this, everybody that does jump ship takes their capital and their spending with them.
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In other words, New Zealand may not be able to stop all of its workers from leaving,
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but attracting wealthy migrants gives it another way to bring money into the economy.
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Still, none of this is without consequence, which almost inevitably shows up in housing.
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Queenstown, a resort town with very few career industries beyond tourism, now has an average house price of just over 1 .9 million
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New Zealand dollars, more than double the already unaffordable national average of about 900 ,000.
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Given its popularity with these wealthy migrants, it's also not seen the price reductions that most of the rest of the country has post -COVID.
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Houses there sell for around 13 times what local earners earn in a year, and the standard definition of affordable is three times annual income.
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which produces a strange side of a town that cannot house the people who run it.
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Stories came out this year of nurses, teachers, and police officers living in garages or sharing beds between day
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and night shifts and commuting in from cheaper towns well outside the district,
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all while close to 14 % of local homes sit empty for most of the year as holiday homes or bunkers.
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It has gotten so bad
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that the mayor has taken to warning about zombie neighbourhood streets of multi -million dollar houses with nobody actually living in them.
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Now, to be fair, the government did think about this.
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When it reopened the housing market to foreign money at the end of last year,
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it kept the ban that stops most non -residents from buying property at all, but it carved out one narrow exception.
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Golden Visa investors can buy or build a single home worth at least $5 million.
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That original ban existed for a reason, because at the peak,
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foreign buyers were picking up as much as 20 % of the homes sold in some of the most expensive Auckland suburbs.
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Now, the new exception impacts fewer than half a percent of the national housing stock, somewhere between 5 ,000 and 6 ,000 properties,
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and the Prime Minister called the package a happy compromise.
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But in a place like Queenstown, if the only homes wealthy foreigners are allowed to buy are worth $5 million or more,
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developers have every incentive to build homes that cost at least $5 million, which clearly is not doing much for affordability.
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But then there's the biggest problem of all, stickiness.
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The exemption ends after four years.
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By then, these residents fall into the ordinary tax system of their worldwide income.
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The government's bet is that by then, they will have houses, kids and schools, and money sunk into local funds.
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The reasoning is that the people who are settled there tend to stay, and people who stay eventually become taxpayers like everybody else.
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But is that so?
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A wealthy person who's moved countries to protect their money from one tax system has already shown
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that they are happy to move countries to protect their money from tax which means when the four -year exemption runs out,
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some share of these residents will simply run the same calculation again
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and somewhere like Singapore or Monaco or the calmer future of Dubai will happily host round two, which creates a fairly big problem.
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Countries bidding for the same pool of mobile millionaires are playing a pretty classic prisoner's dilemma,
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where each country is individually better off offering a slightly sweeter deal than its neighbours, but if everybody keeps sweetening,
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it eventually just becomes a race to the bottom.
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Some countries have already decided that the deal isn't worth it.
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Spain shut down its golden visa program last year, partly over what it was doing to local housing.
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The European Court of Justice struck down the Maltese citizenship by investment scheme over security and money laundering concerns,
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and Portugal pulled property out of its program entirely while extending the citizenship weight from five years to ten.
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Australia is also moving in this direction.
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Canberra is raising capital gains tax on its own wealthy residents, which puts Australia
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and New Zealand's tax systems into direct competition for the same
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people across a border where by the country's citizens can simply show up and stay.
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If New Zealand keeps going down this path, it could also very quickly get a bit of a bad reputation.
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The morning after Australia unveiled those capital gains tax changes in its latest budget, one of Australia's biggest newspapers put
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New Zealand on its front page as a tax haven.
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New Zealand also has an election later this year, and the main opposition party is campaigning on a capital gains tax on property,
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which means the settings attracting these people could shift within a couple years of them arriving.
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So, while they might be enjoying the capital inflows for now, it could just as easily start flowing the other way,
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ripping off the band -aid that didn't really fix the core problem to begin with.
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Now, we have already made an entire video on that issue, which is why everybody else has been leaving New Zealand.
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You should be able to click to that on your screen now.
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Thanks for watching, mate.
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Bye.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Why New Zealand Is the Only Safe Haven Left”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: zealand, tax, wealthy, capital. This video has 197 sentences and 2774 words to shadow. The speech runs for 13:17. The speaker talks fast, about 209 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| wealthy adjective | /ˈwɛl.θi/ | Possessing financial wealth; rich. |
| visa noun | /ˈviːzə/ | A permit to enter and leave a country, normally issued by the authorities of the country to be visited. |
| monarch noun | /ˈmɑnɚk/ | The ruler of an absolute monarchy or the head of state of a constitutional monarchy. |
| citizenship noun | /ˈsɪtɪzənʃɪp/ | The state of being a citizen; the status of a citizen. |
| exemption noun | /ɪɡˈzɛm(p).ʃən/ | An act of exempting. |
| immigration noun | /ˌɪmɪˈɡɹeɪʃən/ | The act of immigrating; the passing or coming into a country of which one is not native born for the purpose of permanent residence. |
| roughly adverb | /ˈɹʌf.li/ | In a rough manner; without kindness, softness, or gentleness. |
| billionaire noun | /ˌbɪl.jəˈnɛɚ/ | Somebody whose wealth is at least one billion (10⁹) currency units (usually understood to exclude holders of hyperinflated currencies). |
| migrant noun | /ˈmaɪɡɹənt/ | A migratory animal, in particular a migratory bird. |
| exception noun | /əkˈsɛpʃən/ | The act of excepting or excluding; exclusion; restriction by taking out something which would otherwise be included, as in a class, statement, rule. |
| attract verb | /əˈtɹækt/ | To pull toward without touching. |
| consequence noun | /ˈkɑn.sɪ.kwəns/ | An effect; something that follows a cause as a result. |
| investor noun | /ɪnˈvɛs.tə(ɹ)/ | A person who invests money in order to make a profit. |
| millionaire noun | /ˌmɪl.i.əˈnɛə(ɹ)/ | Somebody whose wealth is at least one million (10⁶) currency units (usually understood to exclude holders of hyperinflated currencies). |
| residency noun | /ˈɹɛzɪdənsi/ | The condition of being a resident of a particular place. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| double over verb | To bend over deeply at the waist. | |
| get out verb | To leave or escape. | |
| go down verb | To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one. | |
| have over verb | To host (a visiting guest) at one's house. | |
| pick up verb | To lift; to grasp and raise. | |
| rip off verb | To pull off by ripping. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | has intentionally been accommodating · has recently been sweetening · has been chipping |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has just made · hasn't happened · has become |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is solely funded · is commonly called · was scrapped |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | accounts, which makes · residency, which can · people who run |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 14 contractions and reduced forms, such as aren't, can't, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: citizenship /ˈsɪtɪzənʃɪp/, exemption /ɪɡˈzɛm(p).ʃən/, immigration /ˌɪmɪˈɡɹeɪʃən/, exception /əkˈsɛpʃən/, reputation /ˌɹɛpjʊˈteɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: citizenship /ˈsɪtɪzənʃɪp/, immigration /ˌɪmɪˈɡɹeɪʃən/, millionaire /ˌmɪl.i.əˈnɛə(ɹ)/, residency /ˈɹɛzɪdənsi/, reputation /ˌɹɛpjʊˈteɪʃən/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like wealthy, visa, monarch.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.