By David Hargreaves
Well, let's wait and see what the Government announces, but the news it is planning some sort of backdown on planned changes to the skilled migrant settings announced only in April, is I think, hugely disappointing.
I see that ahead of the Government's re-announcement of the policy, the Labour Party is saying National "never understood the problem".
The Government will presumably valiantly claim it is not u-turning and it will probably also try to gain some sort of moral high ground for listening to the views of Kiwis and particularly employers.
Of course, no sort of u-turn, call it what you will, would have been necessary if the Government had canvassed opinions in the first place.
What's so wrong with going out to some key employers and asking for views on your proposals?
There's two ways of viewing this climb-down; the policy wasn't right and after hearing views it should have heard before announcing it in the first place, the Government's now changing the proposals, or, maybe the policy was okay, but it just didn't suit some fairly influential voters in an election year - so, the Government caved.
The proposals as announced looked unnecessarily complicated to me. And the use of pay scales to put restrictions on immigration seems a move that's too cute by half. It's effectively a bar without being a bar.
The fact is the Government would not have done anything at all if it didn't perceive the immigration issue as one that could damage it in the September 23 election.
Answering polling results is the ultimate kneejerk and lazy way to formulate policy.
And if you are jumping in response to what your pollsters tell you are hot buttons, you will come out with diabolical short-termist solutions, solutions that might cause more problems.
Whether there was another way of pacifying employers after this policy had been introduced, we now won't know.
In general, I still don't like the idea of filling jobs with people from offshore when there are people in New Zealand unemployed.
Now, yes, the obvious reaction to that is that many of them don't have skills and are simply not motivated.
The problem is though, as I've said before - we are stuck with anybody who was born in this country. We can't send them off somewhere and say: "Oh, they are not skilled and they are useless - you take them."
The reality is this country has got to properly tackle the whole issue of just why reasonably significant numbers of young people are not being given the right skills and motivation to get them into the workforce and to fill jobs that need filling.
And I do wonder whether certainly some employers have just got rather used to the idea and more comfortable with the idea of simply reaching into the overseas market for employees because that's just easier.
But in terms of the long-term health of the country, it is not good.
So, what we've had here effectively is a Government issuing an original proposal that is a kneejerk response to polling, followed by a kneejerk reaction from employers and then a kneejerk reaction to that reaction from the Government.
This is not the way good sustainable policies are made.
Behind the headline record high latest migration figures is the very telling statistic that in the 12 months to June, an all-time high 45,000 people arrived here on work visas. That's an increase of 15.2% in the past year. And the Christchurch rebuild is no longer an excuse. The numbers of people coming in on work visas have more than doubled since 2011.
If we are serious about keeping checks on migration, then this is the place we need to start.
But what we don't need is hastily scrambled together quick fixes done by a cynical government that's only got its eye on opinion polls and the next election.
The social penalties for an ill-thought-out policy on migration are considerable.
103 Comments
I've come to realise that this government is totally uninterested in giving young Kiwis a fair chance at working themselves up the economic ladder. It's all about propping up existing investors and business owners, with basically no regard for young and upcoming generations of Kiwis.
Mike King on susicide rates of youing people provides some interesting thoughts.
He lays much of the blame on the parents pre-oocupied with consumerism, project managing their kids, not listening to them and making them feel not good enough.
geee... sounds like the PM and our business leaders .....move aside kids, make room for some more cheap imports!
"Whats so wrong with going out to some key employers...."
Well off the cuff I would suggest that a lot of key employers will recommend things that will be for the good of their company and not for the good of NZ. An example will be the orchardists advice to Bill English re Kiwi youth being unable to pass drug tests en masse so they have to bring in people from overseas and unfortunately have to pay rock bottom wages and provide prison camp lodgings....
I don't think Bill understands the unease over immigration policy. Low skill workers can come here, get their kids educated for free and then bring over their parents who'll get a pension. And they take a job that could be done by a resident. It all stretches our already stretched health, education and transport systems. Bring in skilled workers in short supply by all means, though. Long term, let's set a population target, and build the infrastructure to house migrants, get them to work, educate the kids, and treat them when they're sick. And set realistic conditions for super, such as having to work for so many years, or come from a country with a reciprocal arrangement.
They stopped parents reunion middle of last year. No consultation that I noticed. My parents and my wife's parents are long dead and when alive they had other children so I have no self-interest but if I was a successful Kiwi of Chinese origin born during the one child policy then I ought to be able to bring my parent(s) to NZ so long as there is no cost to the taxpayer - that could be done by insurance. However this is just further proof that the government is more concerned about economic units than human beings and families.
Good question - for the last year:
Stream Decided Approvals
Parent Sibling Adult Child Stream 2016-07 852
Parent Sibling Adult Child Stream 2016-08 444
Parent Sibling Adult Child Stream 2016-09 331
Parent Sibling Adult Child Stream 2016-10 99
Parent Sibling Adult Child Stream 2016-11 78
Parent Sibling Adult Child Stream 2016-12 87
Parent Sibling Adult Child Stream 2017-01 41
Parent Sibling Adult Child Stream 2017-02 63
Parent Sibling Adult Child Stream 2017-03 62
Parent Sibling Adult Child Stream 2017-04 57
Parent Sibling Adult Child Stream 2017-05 20
Parent Sibling Adult Child Stream 2017-06 10
Thanks, that's great news to me. Do you have the link for this data?
Frankly the elderly are not my biggest worry from a cultural sense. Lately I've been seeing a lot of men in sandals and women in head scarfs followed by 3-4 kids. I do not want us to become the UK.
The other day in Glenfield mall I saw a row of women in headscarves and my initial reaction was embarrassingly and sadly negative and then I realised they were nuns.
Google "R1 - Residence Decisions by FY" for dept of immigration stats. The 2017 figures were only released last week. Note their FY means July - June. Rather messy to handle so I import them into an MS Access database and being an ex-programmer they are easy to deal with. Note this years figures show a small reduction for permanent immigrants from UK, China & India and totals down from 52,052 to 47,684 a gentle move in the right direction but for once Andrew little is right - cut to 25,000 would be fine but even then still double most other countries. Immigration: we lead the world and by a big margin too.
There are a lot of fake skilled workers being brought in. The skilled immigrants should actually be skilled. National doesn't give a damn about young kiwis or anyone who is working age. The only group that matters are multinationals, John Key's 1% mates using NZ as a tax haven and pensioners. None of the groups listed pay any significant amount of tax, or pay no tax at all.
If only National gave a damn about capitalism instead of providing social welfare for the rich.
The sad thing is, this sort of carry on also hits older workers pretty hard too. Heard from a fellow the other day whose 60-year old father has been looking for work for a year now, but he's finding it incredibly tough to get interest in the market. It's not helping him at all that the government is dead set on importing as many young people as possible to provide businesses with ready fodder. Why will they hire an older Kiwi when they can hire someone that's younger, less knowledgeable about NZ labour conditions, and on the whole easier to exploit?
Older Kiwis are only a relationship breakup, accident or sickness away from facing hardship that this government's approach will make it incredibly hard to dig themselves out of.
Student - almost anyone so long as they have no criminal record, and can afford the fees and living expenses. No right to work except for holidays. Break this rule an instant deportation.
Work - job advertised in NZ and not filled, employer pays $10,000 annual fee to government. Five years max.
Resident Visa - work visa for 2 years and then apply if double average NZ salary for at least 2 years. Immediate if salary by a reputable employer is over 4 times average - still has to pay annual $10,000 to government.
And you missed out partnership and they are 13,000 per year - leave roughly as is but kill the arranged marriages to someone the Kiwi end has never met.
Fine tune by adjusting the $10,000 annual flat fee.
Love my indian food and willing to pay more for it. BTW my local Indian restaurant used to employ some non-Indians but was taken over, renamed Marsala, gave food-poisoning to customers and employed potential Indian immigrants at $2 per hour and then was prosecuted and the owner left the country in a hurry.
Yep, we do not have a democracy and neither does any other so called democracy, none of the western governments are listening to their population, especially in relation to immigration as their number one agenda is replace the existing natives at all cost with the excuse of an aging population. How about reduce house prices then we can all afford to reproduce
So this approach from government says - once a policy is enacted it can never be modified or reversed? i.e. once we have xx thousand immigrants we can never have less because business will complain? Talk about an *absence* of governance.
Democracy is weakening worldwide because it is no longer "one man one vote" - instead it is "one dollar one vote". Let's just end this charade and call it what it is - corporate oligarchy.
Mike Hosking: TVNZ salaries may well 'horrify' viewers - but that's not a reason to reveal them!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&o…
Radio NZ as he says is partly funded by the tax payer, I think that we should not have to pay for a person who clearly has an agenda and more than likely conflicts of interest. I do not believe we should be funding brain washing. Maybe Radio New Zealand should be asked to explain
Radio NZ is just great. Interestingly they have massive audience interest. Which demonstrates the so called commercial experts and the advertising industry have no idea when they claim to know what people want - which is intelligent and informative radio. Rather dumbed down radio on which to hang adverts.
Radio NZ is slaughtering Hoskins in the ratings so no wonder he is grumpy. Ever seen him try to present an opinion on the telly. Oh dear. Give me Katherine Ryan any day.
IMO the "skilled migrants" are the single biggest reason for wage not rising
I know in the Telco industry contact centre staff were being hired for $30k in 2001 and that same job is $38k in 2017. Less than30% iincrease in 16 years.
House prices have tripled in that time
Think about it - did you think it through?
How many additional houses can any new arrivals (starting from today) build?
If those 6000 new arrivals were all builders, they have to find an employer and they have to build more than 1600 new houses every month to get in front of their own needs plus next months arrivals
You can do the maths. As the number of builders arriving shrinks the situation deteriorates
If only 3000 of the new arrivals are builders they have to build 3200 new houses to keep in front and make a dent in the backlog of houses
Builders have to either fulfil the LBP requirements or find a registered LBP who will employ them
Conditions in the housing environment are such that spec builders are pulling their horns in
Looking for custom builds now
Labour policy is written by unions and National policy by Employers and Federated Farmers.
Employers and Fed Farmers are worried their members will have to start paying workers a decent wage. I mean why increase a truck drivers and farm hands wage when a cheap immigrant will do the job for the same or less?
Woodhouse and Guy will be the downfall of National and good job I say.
You're not wrong. Check this out:
https://translator.microsoft.com/
The target is for real time conversations.
A very pointed speech to Local Government New Zealand can be read here;
http://www.nzfirst.org.nz/speech_bro_cal_government_what_future_with_se…
Only politician so far that has suggested NZ needs a Plan B with respect to the looming economic crisis;
We are living at a time when economies here and internationally are seriously fragile and with our major trading partner, Australia, in particular. There is going to be a correction any day soon and yet no steps are being made to prepare ratepayers or taxpayers for the looming crisis when issues of productive versus consumptive debt will be critical
The rest are in the mode of crisis what crisis.
Well Fritz, I'm in the anything but National camp this round, but as yet undecided who the anything but is.
My problem is I like lots of the personalities and the policies from a number of other players... but Winston sure impressed with a number of points made in that speech.
I'm quite familiar with LG issues and he was too (or his speech writer was!) - which impresses. Perhaps a wee bit OTT on ToW settlement issues, but he's certainly not wrong on the concerns with the red tape and potential graft associated with the RMA amendments agreed to by National to get the Maori Party support.
And none of the other RMA amendments the Nats were so keen to push through are to my mind of any great consequence anyway!!!!! So, why they did that deal I'll never know - but we (NZers) will pay for it. I suspect they did it so as not to look like a lame duck in the lead up to the election.
It will be a very cumbersome and potentially fraught bit of new regulatory requirements under the RMA. A bit like climate change - at this stage, we really cannot predict the effects of Mana Whakahono a Rohe on our system of environmental management. And the point is, it's not as if getting anything achieved under the RMA isn't fraught with enough difficulty already!
He's also spot on about the transfer of debt to LG and other Crown entity balance sheets. National is a laugh - they talk about PPPs, for us only to find the 'private' investors in these partnerships are ACC and the Super Fund :-).
How intelligent people can't see through their smoke and mirrors is beyond me.
Yes. I suppose you could say we are well prepared to the extent govt debt is low and therefore is good capacity to expand that debt if needed. Then again, depends on the scale of the downturn. Having a solid set of govt accounts didn't help Ireland much, did it. National esp. is extremely complacent about how we unwind this debt bubble, it gets not a mention
A plan for all out worldwide depression is more than just money/credit (as I assume there will be no credit, at least not at the levels we see today). So for me, it's also about self-sufficiency and resilience. In other words, with no access to foreign credit - what's our plan regards antibiotic production - do we have the capacity here? That sort of thing. We are so very reliant on the importation of stuff/essentials other folks manufacture, I suspect. Do we even make toilet paper locally? I don't know! I have an asthmatic son - do we make those ventolin inhalers?
I just wonder if anyone in government has done an inventory of what basic essentials we can't/don't produce locally. We need to think Cuba. But perhaps I'm a prepper/doom merchant - and this world of endless supply of both money and supplies from offshore will last forever.
Further from that, yes I believe there is some toilet paper manufacturing in NZ, check the backs of packages. Go for the double length rolls where you can, more paper so comparatively less plastic packaging per roll. I am staggered by the amount of plastic used to wrap huge holes (toilet paper rolls). Everything we import now seems to be hermetically sealed in plastic, I guess to protect it on its trip over salty oceans, more localized production could be a means to cut down on plastic packaging because, boy oh boy, do we need to do that
Good info from a great speech. I did my apprenticeship with the Ministry of Works back in the 70's which was when so many other young NZ'ers were trained by the railways, telecom and the MOW.
They were famously cumbersome inefficient institutions that employed a lot of otherwise unemployable people and yet they got the jobs done so much cheaper and more efficiently than our modern system.
The modern system of contracting all the infrastructure projects out pays low wages to the NZ workers with huge profits going to the few and probably overseas.
The Kaimai tunnel comparison is the tip of the iceburg. One of the last big projects built by the Ministry of Works was the Clutha dam. It would bankrupt NZ to pay the current contractors to build a hydro dam of this scale now.
As we continue enlarging our population it becomes inevitable that NZ will need more large infrastructure like another harbor bridge or hydro dam,
Ten years ago govt dept was at $10 billion which means the infrastructure was mostly paid for. Our population growth has been giving away this infrastructure as if it has no value whilst building up a deficit of needed infrastructure to support the enlarged population.
We are allowing employers the easy option of importing cheap labor while our young generation kick back and are accused of being unemployable due to drug abuse.
WINZ clarified the drug problem at 1 in 200 tested failed the drug tests. Our youth aren't unemployable. Our leadership is committing treason.
My above comment where I mention the Ministry of Works etc employing people who would now be considered unemployable refers to a percentage of their workforce who suffered from disabilities. These govt departments weren't just about productivity. They also provided a workforce that had a sense of community and social responsibility. A lot of these people are on the scrap heap in our modern workforce. The government departments also employed a multi racial workforce with a strong emphasis on Maori and Pacifica.
Yes, I was astounded by that tunnel cost comparison - so astounded I thought it needed a fact check in making the conversion to today's dollars for the Kaimai tunnel. But I suspect he is likely right. It really, really brings home a point about the madness/unresolvability of our infrastructure deficit. It's happening the world over and I can only imagine the root cause was the fundamental socio-economic changes brought in in the 1980/90s..
I like the elegant way you express it
Here is a different attempt from 2 years ago entitled "Auckland is Eating Itself" which really got David Chaston going - but the principle remains the same today - it hasn't improved
http://www.interest.co.nz/business/75829/nziers-shamubeel-eaqub-calls-c…
"NZ employers fund training and development for their staff at about half the OECD average." Is that because the Govt pays a higher % in NZ toward training, or are you implying employers are tight? In the last 10 years, minimum wage almost doubled, extra week holiday, mondayisation of pub holidays, kiwisaver, ACC cash grab, health & safety etc etc all these expenses created in last 10 years & people scratch their heads.... "Why arnt wages increasing?" The people making all the money don't make it off labour based industries.
Immigrants, training and assimilating immigrants is far more expensive, hit and miss, and just plain hard work compared to hiring Kiwi's. But when no Kiwi's answer an employment ad for weeks or months what can you do? Also after going through the visa hoops, training / assimilation etc etc, if your not paying the immigrant the local industry standard he's off to greener pastures. So no financial benefit at all, just more work for the employer, locals staff are far easier if you can get them.
And I'm sure the minimum wage will be there in 2-3 years. What should the level of skill be for this "decent wage"? Trainee, Intermediate, Tradesmen, Graduate, if its a trainee what should a skilled or trade qualified person be paid? Whats an acceptable gap from trainee to fully qualified. A suitable enough gap to encourage a person to take on the training and investment in time?
Yes, polling combined with salivating politicians only concerned about the next election is a problem for democracy (or what we call democracy). It has been said that in a democracy we get the government we deserve. Unfortunately most of us are idiots and clearly don't deserve much. Our preferred leaders have chosen to abandon an entire segment of society - the segment that would normally make an honest living doing those low skilled but essential jobs that all societies need done.
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