They're just not beating us in the Bledisloe Cup - New Zealand's most populous city, Auckland, is beating Sydney when it comes to favourability amongst the expat community.
A survey of nearly 13,000 workers living abroad found that Auckland outranked Sydney in friendliness, feeling at home, job opportunities, working hours and social life.
The InterNations Expat City Rankings for 2017 put Auckland 14th overall, whereas Sydney was placed 44th. Just over four out of five of the Auckland respondents said they felt at home there, as opposed to 62 per cent in Sydney.
And just 51 per cent of expats in Sydney found it easy to make friends, with 55 per cent satisfied with the social life - compared to around three quarters of Auckland's. A whopping 92 per cent of respondents in Auckland considered the locals friendly, far above Sydney's rather reserved 65 per cent.
In terms of employment, 68 per cent of Auckland expats ranked their local job opportunities as good, and 80 per cent were happy with their working hours, much better than Sydney's 55 per cent and 59 per cent respectively.
Both cities, however, struggle when it came to money and housing - Auckland came in at number 38 for cost of living, whereas Sydney ranked third last, at 49th. Only 8 per cent of expats in Auckland were happy with the cost of their housing, whereas Sydney managed a slightly better one in 10.
The cities that performed best in the survey were Manama in Bahrain, Prague, Madrid, Kuala Lumpur and Amsterdam, with Dublin, Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, Paris, Jeddah and Lagos rounding out the bottom five.
It's quite the fall from grace for Sydney, which was ranked in the top 10 in the 2016 - at number eight. Still, it was behind Melbourne, which was had ranked first.
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Melbourne was not ranked in the list in 2017 due to an "insufficient number of respondents", according to an InterNations spokesperson.
Overall, Australia had ranked behind of New Zealand in the 2017 Expats report, released earlier in the year, coming in at seventh, well above Australia's 34th place.
The expat rankings for 2017. Photo: InterNations
The top 10 cities for expats, according to the 2017 InterNations Expat City Rankings
- Manama
- Prague
- Madrid
- Kuala Lumpur
- Amsterdam
- Barcelona
- Johannesburg
- Bangkok
- Basel
- Frankfurt
