There's not much that New Zealand and Australia don't compete with each other over, but new figures suggest that Australia is winning where it counts. A record number of New Zealanders are moving to Australia, according to Statistics New Zealand.

53,900 people left New Zealand for Down Under between August 2011 and 2012. How many went the other way? 13,900, resulting in the highest loss of migrants to Oz from New Zealand in history.

Back in 2001, the figures went in the opposite direction, with a record 4,300 migrants lost by Australia to New Zealand.

Despite this, though, visitors are still heading to New Zealand, adds Expat Forum. In fact, numbers are up: 178,300 people visited the country in August 2012, 1 per cent higher than the previous year.

"More arrivals from Australia and China in August 2012 pushed visitor numbers even higher than in August 2011, when they were boosted by 4,400 arrivals for the Rugby World Cup," commented population statistics manager Andrew Blackburn.

Indeed, over the same 12 month period, visitors totalled 2.6 million - 5 per cent above the previous year.