The businessman runs a 1300-seat call centre in East Bentleigh, where some of the nation's leading brands outsource their customer service work.

But three weeks ago, his firm, CallActive, also opened a 200-seat call centre in Wellington, which could expand to eventually employ up to 1000 staff.

Tippett, the company's chief commercial officer, hopes to tempt Australian businesses to outsource work to the new centre. Why? It's a matter of simple economics: labour costs are 30 per cent lower.

But Tippett argues he's actually saving jobs, taking them back from places like India and the Philippines, where many Australian customers now find their queries on things like banking and mobile phones being answered - to varying degrees of satisfaction.

Sending jobs to these countries can save firms up to 80 per cent on labour.

Now, though, instead of offshoring - which customers hate, Tippett says - it's about ''near-shoring''. And there are plenty of jobs heading to our near-neighbour New Zealand.

''New Zealanders are like our cousins - a little bit different but you still love them. Culturally, language, all of that stuff is still the same, but you are saving around 30 per cent,'' says Tippett. ''That's our reason for driving into New Zealand.''

Between 2008 and 2012, more than 50,000 New Zealanders each year hopped on planes to Australia to become residents. But this year, according to figures from Statistics New Zealand, something different is happening. The flood of Kiwis across the Tasman has reduced, as Australia's economy slows and the rebuilding of Christchurch after the 2011 earthquake kicks in. In the year to April, New Zealand had a net migration gain of almost 5000 workers.

The changes coincide with Australia ramping up the export of food manufacturing jobs and now, increasingly, lower-tier white-collar work. About a dozen well-known Australian firms, including Woolworths, ANZ and Fairfax Media (owner of The Sunday Age), have in the past two years moved more than 1000 white-collar jobs to New Zealand to save costs on work that does not have to be done here.

While the exact number of jobs going to New Zealand is not clear, labour experts on both sides of the Tasman are watching the changes closely.

''We've got this weird scenario where workers here [in New Zealand] are attracted to Australian jobs, and employers in Australia are attracted to New Zealand wages,'' says Peter Conway, secretary of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions.

As well as cheaper labour costs in New Zealand, their dollar is 86¢ to Australia's dollar. And the deregulated industrial relations system allows employers to do pretty much what they like.

The country's minimum wage for a 38-hour week is $522, against $622 in Australia. Compulsory superannuation payments are at 3 per cent compared with Australia's 9 per cent.

And New Zealand's economy is on the rise, with unemployment at 6.2 per cent and falling. Australia's is 5.7 per cent and climbing.

Food giants Heinz and McCains and cigarette maker Imperial Tobacco have recently moved hundreds of manufacturing jobs to New Zealand from Victoria and Tasmania, in search of wages the International Labour Organisation estimated in 2010 were up to $US12 an hour cheaper than the average Australian wage in manufacturing.

Last year, New Zealand's opposition finance spokesman, David Parker, was so alarmed to see Australian companies exporting their low-paying manufacturing jobs, he warned that his country must not ''become Australia's Mexico''.

Professor Paul Spoonley, research director at New Zealand's Massey University, has studied the mobility of jobs across the Tasman.

He says the alarming aspect of the jobs going to New Zealand is that positions in Australia that were well-paid and permanent often become casual or part-time, and with lower pay.

Since the dramatic liberalisation of the New Zealand labour market - awards were abolished in 1991 - work there has become far more precarious.

Spoonley says about two-thirds of the workforce is now casual, on a contract, or in a non-permanent job.

''Some of the core productive sectors of the New Zealand economy now rely extensively on casualised work,'' he says, such as hospitality, tourism and food production.

For more than two decades, the flow of jobs to Australia was one way, with blue and white-collar workers exiting New Zealand in significant numbers. So are we in any position to complain now?

''It's hard to say that all of a sudden Kiwis are taking Aussie jobs when you have been taking them for so many years,'' says Phil O'Reilly, chief executive of employer group Business NZ.

O'Reilly says it's difficult to get figures on how many Australian firms are moving jobs to New Zealand. ''Australian companies don't want to talk about it,'' he says. ''But it's clear that there's a trend, and what is driving them is not just cost.''

He says New Zealand is seen as more business friendly, and with less militant unions (the unionisation rate in both countries hovers around 20 per cent).

Former Howard government industrial relations minister Peter Reith agrees, saying New Zealand is succeeding in taking Australian jobs because it has ''a far more flexible labour market''.

Clancy Brodrick started off on the phones at CallActive's East Bentleigh centre, and is now in Wellington helping establish the company's new contact centre. He says the company is targeting ''well-known brands to move their operations to New Zealand'', particularly those with operations already offshore.

But CallActive's Justin Tippett says some firms will continue outsourcing call centre work locally in Australia.

''I don't think you will see a huge swath of Australian contact centres moving to New Zealand.'' But for many New Zealand is a viable alternative to the Philippines, where he says what comes through ''loud and clear in all of the customer satisfaction research [is that] customers just don't like it''.