The fix that worked is being undone
In early 2023, Auckland was 578 bus drivers short. Services were being cancelled across the city. Wellington was struggling. The solution was aggressive international recruitment, and by August 2023 Auckland Transport declared the shortage officially over.
Now the policy architecture that enabled that recovery is being quietly dismantled. Roughly 20% of New Zealand’s urban bus drivers hold temporary visas, and of those, 72% have visas expiring in 2026. The Bus and Coach Association puts the national figure at around 1,000 drivers who face an uncertain future. The Transport Work to Residence visa, the pathway designed to retain them, was closed to new applicants in April 2024. Those who applied before the cutoff still face a language hurdle that most cannot clear.
A 300-word essay to keep driving a bus
To qualify for residency, drivers must achieve IELTS 6.5, a benchmark Immigration NZ and industry sources describe as postgraduate-level English. The test includes a 300-word essay component. This is the standard required to enter a master’s programme at a New Zealand university, not to tell a passenger which stop is next.
The human cost is already visible. Gitanchand Lall, a South African truck driver, has sat the IELTS test six times and spent over $2,400 in fees, still unable to reach 6.5. English is his only language. Auckland bus driver Ryan Jay Carumba failed on the essay component and is now on a two-year extension with no residency path. Seven of his Filipino colleagues at Ritchies have already left.
Bus and Coach Association CEO Delaney Myers summarised the mismatch: “They can get through day to day, but they’re not at that really high academic level that is required to pass the residency test.”
Wellington is already feeling the pressure
Wellington provides the starkest early warning. Of 139 drivers on accredited employer work visas, only 10 have secured residency. Nine are leaving. Most of the remaining visa extensions expire in the first half of 2025.
Greater Wellington Regional Council has written formally to the Ministers of Immigration and Transport demanding a review. Council chair Daran Ponter warned: “If experienced drivers are forced to leave because of immigration settings, we risk service disruptions that will affect access to work, school, and university, and ultimately undermine the regional economy.”
Deputy public transport committee chair Tom James noted that even six unavailable drivers would cause “a decent amount of disruption”. Wellington is not talking about losing six. It is talking about losing dozens.
The jobseeker argument does not survive contact with reality
Immigration Minister Erica Stanford has declined to relax the settings. Her position: “There are currently over 20,000 more people on the Jobseeker Work Ready benefit than there were in 2023. In the first instance, transport providers should be engaging with MSD to recruit and train suitable New Zealanders into these roles.”
That figure is a national aggregate. It says nothing about how many of those 20,000 hold heavy traffic licences, live near bus depots, want shift work starting at 4am, or are physically able to drive. The last shortage was not solved by domestic recruitment. It was solved by flying in drivers from the Philippines, Fiji, and South Africa. Pointing at the jobseeker register and calling it a plan is not workforce strategy.
Operators are now setting up English language schools inside bus depots, a direct compliance cost imposed by a policy that demands academic writing ability from people whose job is driving.
Sydney is already recruiting from the wreckage
While New Zealand debates whether to keep its migrant drivers, Australia is actively poaching them. Transport for NSW has flown in 17 New Zealand drivers to work on Sydney’s northern beaches, with up to 20 more planned. Drivers get paid airfares and six weeks of rent-free accommodation.
The irony is sharp. New Zealand is simultaneously a source country for Australian bus driver recruitment and a country threatening to expel the migrant drivers it recruited to fix its own shortage.
More than 500 drivers presented a petition to Parliament in January 2025 urging the rules to be changed. The industry has been in talks with NZTA for nearly a year. NZTA says it is “working closely with the sector” to monitor the situation. Monitoring is not a plan. The 2026 visa expiry wave is not a forecast. It is a date on a calendar, and every week of inaction makes the disruption harder to avoid.
Sources
- Auckland Transport: Auckland’s bus driver shortage is officially over (2023-08-01)
- RNZ: Warning of bus driver shortage if immigration settings not changed (2025-01-01)
- Greater Wellington Regional Council: Greater Wellington urges immigration settings review (2025-01-01)
- RNZ: Migrant bus drivers want strict language rules for residency eased (2025-01-01)
- RNZ: Alarm sounded over looming shortages in driving sector (2024-01-01)
- RNZ: Migrant bus drivers need to attain post-graduate level English for residency (2024-01-01)
- RNZ: Ongoing concerns immigration requirements for bus drivers too tough (2025-01-01)
- RNZ: Wellington bus drivers still waiting for visa extensions (2025-01-01)
- Immigration New Zealand: Transport Work to Residence visa (2024-04-07)
- RNZ: Alarm sounded over looming shortages in driving sector (featured) (2024-01-01)
- Oberon Review: Imported bus drivers risk modern slavery, union warns (2025-01-01)