Between 60,000 – 70,000 of the 140,000 New Zealanders holding the Special Category Visa will find it easier to gain Australian citizenship from 1 July 2017, the Australian Prime Minister announced on Friday.

Early details indicate that applicants will have to provide evidence that they have lived and worked in Australia for at least five years or more and during that time earned income in excess of the temporary skills migration income threshold, which now is about $54,000 a year.

Prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, announced the “new pathways to citizenship” after hosting a meeting with his counterpart, John Key, in Sydney on Friday.

Speaking at a media conference, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said the deal was in response to advocacy “for the plight of New Zealanders living in Australia who have been in a particular category that hasn’t allowed them to become Australian citizens”.

Joanne Cox, of New Zealand advocacy group Oz Kiwi, said the group was "cautious" about the announcement until further detail was available but said it looked like a "tool to screen out the poor," because many New Zealanders would fail to meet requirements.

"It will be a pathway for a number of people who have arrived since 2001 to access to permanent residency and citizenship, so that’s a win," she said. "But for every win there’s a loss."

"[For] those people who will not have earned sufficient income over the last five years, it’s going to be similar to a skilled visa by the sounds of things and many New Zealanders aren’t eligible for a skilled visa because they don’t work in the right fields."

"The people who will be excluded are the low-income earners, the stay-at-home mums and the disabled."

On the Department of Immigration's website, it states that the new pathway "will be made available within the Skilled Independent category of the General Skilled Migration (GSM) stream of Australia's annual Migration Programme."

"This additional visa pathway will be available from 1 July 2017, for New Zealand citizens who arrived post 26 February 2001, but on or before, the date of the announcement, 19 February 2016."

More information available here: http://www.border.gov.au/Visasupport/Pages/an-additional-pathway.aspx