NZ moves to slow population ponzi

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By Leith van Onselen

I written previously 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).

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Last month, 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.

Yesterday, the National Government announced changes to New Zealand’s immigration settings that will require higher skills to gain residency and reduce the number of older migrants following their children. The integrity measures are expected to reduce the overall number of migrants gaining New Zealand residency by around 5% over the next two years. From Interest.co.nz:

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[National] has reduced the planning range for residency approvals over the next two years from the current 90,000-100,000, down to 85,000-90,000, which could reduce the number of migrants gaining residency by up to 7500 a year.

It is also increasing the number of points required for a migrant to gain residency under the Skilled Migrant Category to 160 points from the current 140 points, which should also reduce the total number of migrants gaining residence and improve the skill levels of those that do.

“Increasing the points required to gain residence from 140 to 160 will moderate the growth in applications in the Skilled Migrant Category (SMC) and enable us to lower the overall number of migrants gaining residence,” Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse said…

The Government is also temporarily halting granting residency to the parents of existing residents wanting to migrate to this country under the family category.

The number of places for residency under the family category will also be reduced from 5,500 a year to 2000 a year…

Well done New Zealand. Your key agencies and political parties have rationally and openly debated the whole population (immigration) issue, culminating in some modest but worthwhile (albeit belated) policy amendments, with more potentially in the pipeline.

There have been no phony accusations of “racism” or “xenophobia”, just a rigorous debate over whether the quantity and type of migrants is raising the living standards of the existing population, which is the key issue.

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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, mostly refuses to debate the issue for fear 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 large 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, particularly in the most affected cities of Sydney and Melbourne. Not the current ‘smoke and mirrors’ approach that wrongly conflates immigration with refugees, or the divisive “Hansonites vs progressives”.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.