The proximity of two similar societies and economies such as New Zealand and Australia creates an excellent opportunity for the development of labour flows in accordance with conventional economic theory. Over recent years there has been large movements of people in both direction as they have sought to achieve their objectives through activity in the other country. These movements provide an excellent opportunity for a study of the reasons for people moving and the relative importance of those resasons for different labour groups. The study reported in this paper was requested by the New Zealand Planning Council as an imput to the description of the likely effects of different economic situations upon the movement of labour.