And those New Zealanders applying for Australian passports – as many as 400,000 by some estimates – are being invited to thank his party at the ballot box as Labour asks Kiwis for a third term this month.

As of Wednesday, overseas New Zealanders are able to vote in the October 14 election.

Labour is in the fight of its life to retain power, with polls pointing to a likely National-led government.

Mr Hipkins told AAP he was hopeful of picking up votes in Australia.

“For New Zealanders living in Australia, our track record is pretty good,” he said.

“I’m very optimistic they’ll recognise that this is a government that’s delivering for them.”

There is a rare centre-left alignment across the Tasman, with Australian Labor and New Zealand Labour both in office.

It is just the second year in 33 years this has occurred, after 2008 when the first year of Kevin Rudd’s government intercepted the last year of Helen Clark’s three terms.

Mr Hipkins says shared values allowed the parties to seal two major victories for Kiwis: Australia’s citizenship changes and a major change to Australia’s deportation practice.

On Anzac Day this year, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced Australia would offer citizenship to any Kiwi migrants who had lived in the country for at least four years.

This will allow Kiwis to avoid costly international fees to go to university, to take up public service jobs, to serve in the defence force, to vote and more.

“We worked really closely with the Albanese government to deliver the commitments that they’ve made around a pathway to citizenship and better treatment for New Zealanders over there,” Mr Hipkins said.

“With a re-elected Labour government we will be able to continue to advance their work in other areas, including making the trans-Tasman border much more seamless, which both Prime Minister Albanese and I are very keen to progress.”

The deportation changes came earlier in Mr Albanese’s tenure, finally won by then-prime minister Jacinda Ardern following pressure from successive governments.

They have produced a noticeable downtick in Australian criminals being sent to New Zealand.

“The deportation of people with no connection to New Zealand other than the fact they may have been born here some long, long time ago and haven’t really lived here, that hasn’t been good for trans-Tasman relations,” Mr Hipkins said.

“It hasn’t been good for those people and it hasn’t been good for New Zealand because some of the escalation in gang-related activity we’ve seen can be attributed to that.

“I want to acknowledge that good faith and the goodwill of Albanese government and actually taking New Zealand’s concerns very seriously.”

With just 63,000 overseas votes among the total 2.9 million ballots cast at the last election, Mr Hipkins is realistic as to how much the Australian vote can sway Kiwi politics.

“It has the potential to have an influence on the election, but it’s not going to be a deciding factor in the election,” he said.