Kate Hawkesby: Getting out of NZ shows how introspective we've become

As school goes back today, for how long who knows given the looming strikes, but as we head back to the office and to school, it’s been interesting to reflect on the past two weeks.

We headed away for the first time in three years – we hadn’t left the country since Covid and closed borders, but we’d heard from everybody who had, how refreshing it is to get out of NZ. How inspiring it is to see how much the rest of the world has moved on. How blinkered and parochial we have become in our own little hermit kingdom.

Our first stop was San Francisco, a lost city full of drugs and homeless people and not much to enthuse a tourist to be honest. It felt edgy and unsafe and made me worried about our next stop – New York – and how much more dangerous and unsafe that may feel.

But how wrong I was. New York is incredible. It feels super safe due to the fact the place is flooded with cops – Police on every corner, and lots of them.

Jarrett Stepman: How Big-Government Housing Policies Made San Francisco Unaffordable for All but the Rich

The San Francisco Bay Area is a booming locale, and certainly one of the most naturally beautiful. It should be a fantastically desirable place to live.

Yet, according to a recent poll, nearly half of San Francisco residents say they want to leave the Bay Area entirely.

A study from the Bay Area Council, a public policy organization, found that 46 percent of San Francisco residents have plans to move out of the area, a jump of 12 percent since 2016. Of those who participated in the survey, 61 percent said they planned to leave the state, with Texas being a primary destination.