What is New Zealand like to live and work in?

I'm lead to believe that economically, New Zealand is one of the poorer Western nations and that wages in NZ are lower than, although rapidly catching up, a lot of other Western nations. A lot of British people have told me that one of their main draws to New Zealand is that because it has such a low population density , and low property costs in comparison to the UK, they are able to sell their small, semi-detatched house on an estate in the UK, and with the money buy a big, detatched house with land in New Zealand, and thus increase their standard of living greatly, while living in a generally less poluted, quiter invironement.

However, that only benefits you if you already have real-estate in the UK to sell, if you are moving to New Zealand from scratch, without any significant money, and on an average wage job how is life in New Zealand? How are costs? How are property prices?
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I intened to undertake a 3 year Nursing degree soon, I understand that opportunities for Nurses are quite good in New Zealand. Is any work experience expected? Also, what is the basic pay, and how does that translate in terms of New Zealand living costs? And what sort of salary can be expected after a certain period of time? Also, is a male nurse at any advantage/disadvantage in New Zealand in terms of job offers?

I've always been attracted to New Zealand's beautiful, lush green landscape, and the feeling of isolation that can be found there, because of it's low population density, yet still never far from all the aminities you'd expect anywhere else in developed nations. It's always facinated me how New Zealand is roughly the same size as the UK, yet only has roughly 4,300,000 people, when compared to 60,500,000 in the UK. The thing which puts me off is the economic side of things, people have given me the impression that NZ is comparitively "hard-up" compared to the UK.