I wrote yesterday how New Zealand’s record-breaking immigration-fueled population growth has become a hot political issue following recent concerns raised by the New Zealand Treasury, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ), former RBNZ special adviser, Mike Reddell, as well as two of the major banks (here and here).
Yesterday, Labour’s opposition leader, Andrew Little, called for a review of migration settings for temporary low skilled workers, as well as lower targets for permanent residents (currently 45,000 to 50,000 per year), as well as an inquiry into fraud and migrant abuses associated with the export education industry. From Interest.co.nz:
“I’ve been pretty clear for some time now that issuing work visas for categories of occupations where there are unemployed New Zealanders just doesn’t add up and we want to review the immigration system so there is a better matching of genuine skills and needs, not just taking anybody when we have unemployed New Zealanders in many cateogories,” Little said told reporters in Parliament…
“When you’ve got 15,000 New Zealanders saying that they are unemployed labourers and you’ve issued 6,500 work visas to people to come here to do labouring work, that is a mis-match that we have got to get right,” he said…
“The reality is we have got more than 70,000 young people not in education, employment or training. Actually what they are looking for is longer term, more secure work,” Little said…
“The reality is that many of those [international] students are turning up to pretty shoddy jobs, often being paid less than the minimum hourly rate, often in a climate of fear, and therefore being exploited,” he said…
“The numbers that come here: can we fulfil the promise that we effectively make that if you come here you can get the 20 hours a week and a pathway to residency? If we can’t fulfil that promise, then we shouldn’t be issuing the number of those sort of student visas that we presently are,” he said.
Well done New Zealand. Your key agencies and political parties are rationally and openly debating the whole population (immigration) issue. There are no accusations flying of racism, just a debate over whether the quantity and type of migrants is raising the living standards of the existing population, which is the key issue.
Now compare this to Australia, which is experiencing many of the same concerns (see here). Our agencies – for example the Treasury and the RBA – are completely silent on the whole population/immigration issue, as are our major political parties (perversely, even The Greens!). Our media, too, is afraid to debate the issue for fears of being labeled “racist”.
So instead, Australia is blindly marching towards a “Big Australia” and is on track to nearly double the nation’s population by 2050 to more than 40 million people. And this comes despite there never being any community consultation, any national discussion, nor any mandate to proceed with such growth.
Australia desperately needs to follow New Zealand’s lead and have a frank and honest national conversation about population policy, which focuses on whether or not large-scale immigration is benefiting the living standards of the existing population. Not the current ‘smoke and mirrors’ approach that conflates immigration with refugees, or the divisive “Hansonites vs progressives”.
