Every year, New Zealand invests in training nurses who then leave for better-paying shores — a quiet haemorrhage that Labour is now attempting to stanch with a formal promise of employment. Chris Hipkins and his party have pledged that any eligible New Zealand-trained nursing graduate, from July 2026 onward, will be guaranteed a public sector job at a minimum of 0.8 full-time equivalent, at a projected cost of $525 million. The policy speaks to a tension as old as small nations with generous education systems: how do you keep what you grow? Whether the funding is real or borrowed from future t