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Govt expands 'green list' for work-to-residency visas to include nurses, construction workers and teachers; expands straight-to-residency visa list to midwives and auditors

Public Policy / news
Govt expands 'green list' for work-to-residency visas to include nurses, construction workers and teachers; expands straight-to-residency visa list to midwives and auditors
Immigration counter

The Labour Government has loosened migration settings for the third time in five months in an attempt to juice population and economic growth at the same time as taking wage pressure off employers, inflation and interest rates more generally.

The changes include expanding the 'Green List' for work-to-residency visas to include nurses, construction workers, gasfitters, drainlayers, crane operators, halal slaughterers, mechanics, telecommunications technicians and teachers, while the juicier straight-to-residency visa Green List was expanded to include midwives, a wider variety of doctors and auditors.

Facing a potentially election-losing deficit in opinion polls, the Government has also moved to cauterise complaints from business, health and education employers that a migration 'reset' or 'rebalance' announced just seven months ago to improve local skill levels and wages was instead knee-capping economic growth and causing inflation.

PM Jacinda Ardern used her last post-cabinet news conference of the year to announce the changes alongside Immigration Minister Michael Wood and faced repeated questioning about why the Government had delayed the inclusion of nurses on the Green lLst after almost a year of calls for a relaxation. 

"We need to attract skilled workers to our shores without pay, without conditions and with certainty," Ardern told the news conference.

"So in discussions with business in sector groups, we're expanding on our plan to make New Zealand the most attractive place in the world to live," she said.

"That's why today we're announcing the expansion of the Green List, which provides two fast tracks to residency to help attract people to New Zealand and fill labor shortages."

Elsewhere, the Government would also:

  • offer bus and truck drivers a "time-limited residence pathway" through a sector agreement;
  • automatically extend employer accreditation by 12 months if their first accreditation is applied for by 4 July 202;
  • introduce a streamlined Specific Purpose work visa to help keep the approximate 2,500 long-term critical workers already in the country to continue to work in their current role for up to three years; and,
  • providing a 12-month Open Work Visa for approximately 1,800 previous holders of Post Study Work Visas who missed out because of the border closure in 2020-21 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ardern and Wood said they did not have advice on the potential number of new migrants the changes would create, or the likely economic impacts on inflation, unemployment, rents or house prices. 

They pointed to recently low-to-negative net migration to justify the loosening of the settings, although overall inward net migration has picked up in recent months, particularly of non-New Zealand citizens offsetting the number of New Zealanders leaving to live permanently in Australia because of wages 30% to 40% higher there. The gap is even larger after housing costs, where rents and housing costs are a lower share of disposable income in Australia than New Zealand.

The latest changes are the third set of loosenings in five months, including a reopening of the skilled migrant category for residency visas in October (see story here) and a loosening in August (see story here) to cut the wage rules for years for the aged care, construction, meat processing, seafood and adventure tourism sectors, and to double the cap for working holidaymakers, who can work for anything above the minimum wage.

Wood said the whole world was experiencing labour shortages right now and the Government had listened to business requests for more opportunities to recruit internationally.

“We have approved over 94,000 job positions for international recruitment, granted over 40,000 working holiday visas, reopened the Pacific Access Category and Samoa Quota, delivered the largest increase in a decade to the RSE scheme, and resumed the Skilled Migrant Category and Parent Category so as to strengthen our international offering – but there is more we can do to support businesses to attract the workers they need," Wood said.

“New Zealand’s strong economic position during a time of global downturn presents a unique opportunity to attract more high skilled migrant workers to our shores, as we prepare for a challenging year ahead. We understand that labour shortages are the biggest issue facing New Zealand businesses, and are contributing to cost of living pressures too," he said.

"These measures are about addressing those shortages and providing greater certainty to businesses as they recover from the pandemic."

Wood said the Green List would be reviewed again in mid-2023.

The 134,000 migrants approved to come in over the next year adds to the 200,000 migrant workers granted residency because they stayed here during Covid 19. In September, Wood also increased the annual quota for temporary Registered Seasonal Employee scheme workers from Vanuatu, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu by 3,000 to 19,000, which was the largest increase in over a decade.

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95 Comments

Immediately following the by-election loss. Labours biggest loss ever in the seat.

I wonder if this sudden about turn is connected. Sarc... of course it is.

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And suddenly all policies are on the table for debate: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/130741202/ardern-asks-cabinet…

Of course you'd have to be a few sandwiches short not to figure out that they'll pull some of the contentious policies (and dishonestly claim they won't be coming back, knowing full well they will be) with a view to pull a switcheroo if a victory can be secured in 2023.

 

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The income insurance one I thought they would want to ram through as the RBNZ sets about creating a recession.  

"We are protecting you from our mess"... doesn't quite roll off the tongue like "team of 5 million" tho.

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It's not popular with me, I don't believe there's a line of appropriately qualified, English speaking medical professionals waiting to come to NZ.

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to be expected, we need replacements for all the citizens and residents heading offshore for better wages and conditions and advancement 

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Well so long as NZ gets those important nurses, teachers and... Halal slaughterers? 

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Many of the halal ones will come from Fiji. And then the families. They earn much much more than in the islands

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I believe most beef slaughtered commercially in NZ is Halal regardless. 

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My mate is a cattle buyer for one of the plants, I'll ask him

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Yes, this is correct. I have a family member who has worked in various management roles in the meat industry and all the major players are Halal (presumably because the average punter doesn't care, and so you can have one process that allows sales to the export Halal markets and domestic market).

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The animal must bleed to death to qualify as halal and therefore muslim markets. There are other requisites such as a prayer and the positioning of the slaughter itself with concern to the location of Mecca. zTo satisify our own “humane” slaughter protocols the animal must be senseless, painless, stunned (take your pick) before meeting said fate. That’s all well and good but in the confines, speed and monotony of a chain it is an extreme license to claim that every carcass is processed exactly to that procedure. 

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As an engineering grad I had to do a number of hours of accredited work before graduation (not sure they still do this). I worked a summer holiday at the Takapau freezing works.     It was then a three chain sheep plant, all chains where halal killed.  (it was about 1986/87).      Every animal was stunned as it came into plant and rolled down onto the slaughter table. there a Halal slaughter person (though back then  they where all men) would slit its throat and it would bleed out.  It would be hung on the chain as this occured.

There was a rare time a sheep would escape before they could be cut, it was temporary as the chain members liked a bit of sport.

It was an interesting job, fitters mate. I was the lowest paid person on the plant by hour, but due to the number of hours we had to work I still took home around $1,000 a week after tax, in 1986.   An average NZ house was $71,222

 

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Well, in search of better prospects,  you could have wandered across to Tomoana, the beef house, and taken up being the bucket boy, collecting the blood gush post sticking. An old acquaintance started his career in that role at Hellaby Westfield and ended up in head office marketing, and was about the best of that lot too.

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Your making me hungry 

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Don't forget the Auditors.

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And auditors? For the tax office maybe?

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Pretty sure unvaccinated doctors and nurses are still barred from work, they can't be that desperate

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Vets aren't barred now. I know one who is going back next week. 

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Surely by now it is starkly obvious that this government is incapable of reacting to any one situation until after it has happened. The stable doors are swinging and suddenly someone wakes up and shouts, anybody seen the horse. This,  proven by record, poor response mechanism confirms that this government’s crowning achievement, a pandemic response of closing the border and enforcing a lockdown was not their decision but instead at the behest of intense intervention by medical professionals and relative government officials. In fact it took the same level of intervention by legal experts to prevent this government subverting recognised and accepted democratic protocols in order to legislate three waters entrenchment. A government that doesn’t know what to do, anymore than know what it does do, will do.

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Surely by now it is starkly obvious that this government is incapable of reacting to any one situation until after it has happened.

Some parts of this are decades in the making, from a lack of a decent apprenticeship system, to tertiary education that doesn't align with our actual labour requirements.

Education for sectors like nursing and teaching should be free with additional perks for sticking around.

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But but but all education was free for us boomers, even Engineering and Medical degrees......

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It is generally accepted though that this government inherited public health services that had been neglected by preceding governments. The arrival of covid thrust this into stark relief. Surely the priority of streamlining recruiting of clinically qualified returnees and immigrants should have been enacted,  in a meaningful and effective manner, right then, rather than waiting until now?

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Something something border closures something.

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the world is short of certain job skills, but out of that technology is being made to replace those workers, we have seen it already from ATM's replacing bank tellers to self checkouts and self order machines replacing counter staff, 

a lot of NZ business have been very slow to embrace tech to replace some low paid jobs 

Are Driverless Trucks The Future Of Shipping? Inside Waymo’s New Test Program - YouTube

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I would like to see that tested in the Dome Valley.

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Why would businesses embrace technology, automation, mechanisation etc. when they can import low wage labour instead? The productivity commission already told is not to do this but no government can resist stacking the deck using immigration.

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Construction workers, lol…

Trust the government to only be about 18 months behind the eight ball!!!!

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construction workers, gasfitters, drainlayers, crane operators

Lower wages and falling construction costs. People have been saying that inflation is here to stay. Might have to rethink that idea 

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Lower wages will help support higher rents thus higher house prices....    wait a minute!

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Its logical as higher demand creates the setting. Rents have not been going up in Auckland the last 12 moths so I think there is a lot of scope. That comes across as insensitive however it is what it is  

 

Some.of the usual affiliates here have disappeared. Probably hunting for cheap homes to buy. First they say dont buy a falling knife, then announce they bought a home. Happens often 

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It's almost like there was a global phenomenon restricting labour movement.

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Yeah, but not 12 months ago.

Regardless, there’s no need to be importing construction workers NOW - the house building sector is on the edge of a cliff.

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Ultimately how many migrants will see as net positive number and how soon do you reckon, are you saying it will take 12 mths to pick up

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I have no idea. But I know that plenty of kiwis are going to Aus right now, so net positive numbers may not be that huge the next 6-12 months.

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✈️✅

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If you're the sample case study, it'll be a fair few years before there's a net loss to Aussie.

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Thanks for the attempt at humour. Don't quit your day job just yet, champ.

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It's a true story, you're looking at what, 18-24 months from commission to move in?

Unless Australia is emptying out also, they've got similar housing supply and rental market issues, so I'm not sure where this tsunami of escaping kiwis are going to be living, and living cheaply.

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15 for us.

Rental market is pretty rough in SE Queensland at the moment by the sounds of it. But houses are much cheaper than here.

Melbourne probably.

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We only opened our borders 5-6 months ago. Some parts of the world weren't even open then.

House building is only one part of construction and regardless of the market cycle there is a shortage of skilled workers in the sector.

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I think only China and North Korea where behind us.....

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Japan until very recently, a few other countries in Asia. Regardless global open borders are mostly a 2022 thing.

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Oh well, let’s see in 6 months shall we….

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Many will be out of work in 6 month if RBNZ strategy goes to plan

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Exactly!

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While I don't know if National and Act have the answers - they probably don't - all I can say is this government is doing an incredible job at delivering new ways of disappointing me (and who says Labour can't deliver?)

 

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Why would you not have figured immigration would resume once borders re-opened?

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Well obviously it would resume. 

But what is the end game in building a society where we pay to educate Kiwis only to send them off overseas to chase a better life, and instead import people willing to work for less just to keep wages down? Is that sustainable forever?

Do we need to be importing construction workers as the building sector seems to be facing headwinds?

Maybe a protracted period of a tight labour market might encourage better investment in automation technologies, upskilling staff, and other methods of improving productivity?

And the elephant in the room - if this is so necessary, why is it only just being done in response to poor polling? 

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We aren't even educating and training enough people in various sectors despite people's ability to move overseas as they are free to do so.

We are also a decade or two at least from a humanoid construction robot. There are few technologies we can slot in the short term to make up for the shortfalls.

And finally, we have a lack of working age people in our population.

It's either migration or a very constrained economy.

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It is disappointing, I feel like there was this opportunity to do something different post the covid debacle. There's a startling lack of any ideas or will to change anything. Bottom of the cliff thinking is where its at. 

Luxon seems equally as beige and uninspiring.

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You feel like there's an opportunity, but there's actually no solution in the timeframes needed. 

Takes generations to make more people naturally.

Technology can't supplant our shortages.

Training and experience requires many years. 

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‘We need to attract skilled workers to our shores without pay’

lol

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This government are outdoing themselves in looking clueless. I think Rex Pat might be right.

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I'm not sure what you think the alternative is.

Globally, there are labour shortages due a couple of years of frozen migration. Exacerbated by aging demographics and a lack of indigenous workers in key fields (usually yuck ones no one wants to do anymore).

This all seems fairly logical.

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Starters for 10: 

- opened the doors for key healthcare workers at least 6-9 months ago

- not moronically opening the door for construction workers on the edge of a construction sector slump. 

Geniuses.

 

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You have a very high expectation regarding the speed at which governments make and enact decisions. 

And again even in a slump, the construction sector lacks labour in many key areas. Even when people aren't building new houses we still need a lot of other functions performed that aren't 100% transferable from chucking up cheap 3 beddies in Greenfield subdivisons. Steel fabricators and fixers, tiltslab pourers and installers, industrial electricians, fire protection services, data installers, etc etc etc.

But yes government bad do boo-boo.

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This government have made some very quick and urgent changes when they wanted to.

Sorry I don’t buy what you are saying at all, especially when we are talking about a profound shortfall of healthcare workers. 

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Migration rules aren't usually an emergency situation.

These changes will be years in bearing fruit, because people usually don't just up and move country at a moment's notice.

You don't have to buy what I'm saying, but if you want to avoid being a generic crank like Rex Pat it'd pay to jerk the knee a bit less.

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You've had way too much kool aid there young fella.

 

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Sounds like it's better just to moan about the government and complain why things are getting so expensive and take too long to get done, whilst almost totally forgetting we had a global pandemic in recent times.

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GFC for comparison?

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GFC was a North American banking crisis.  

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The propaganda is about doctors and nurses, the reality is liquor shop slaves and cheap labourers.

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I'm starting to think we are in '2011' as far as the bottom of the cycle goes. 

Still a few more hurdles to cross, but getting there.

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I think it’s 09. 
Also, there are lots of differences this time so hard to make many comparisons.

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ITG made a comparison, so am picking up the theme

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Finally!

Finally they come to their senses because of the pressure from nurses, doctors, teachers, businesses, National and Act.

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Great, so we get more cheap labour for the ultra wealthy? More competition for the shortage of rentals? More pressure in favour housing unaffordability? More infrastructure deficit? More ethnic division as our country becomes an ungovernable mess of ethnic conflict?

The original labour movement attempted to control the supply of labour to improve the conditions of workers, by forcing employers to compete for the price of Labour. It rose the living standard immensely and ultimately led to vastly improving productivity investment.

Close the damn door. Fuck off, we're full.

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The original labour movement attempted to control the supply of labour to improve the conditions of workers, by forcing employers to compete for the price of Labour.

That's not what or how the original labour movement conducted itself. It set about forcing employment standards through unions.

Sounds like we definitely need more history teachers.

More ethnic division as our country becomes an ungovernable mess of ethnic conflict?

National Front alert.

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They most definitely did attempt to control the labour supply. It is why they used unions as organising bodies to control the available supply of labour. Literally read any of the histories of the labour movement circa 1880 to 1925.

As for the National Front, it is pretty obvious the ethnic diversity == ungovernable mess. Wholefoods explicitly uses diversity metrics for employment quotas explicitly to limit worker union formation. Amazon Warehouses use the same practice. Also historically unions tended to form along ethnic + religious lines. It benefits the capitalists as the cost of everyone. Any study of the AustroHungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Islamic gunpowder empires in India or the British governance of Singapore teaches you that.

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by forcing employers to compete for the price of Labour.

No, through collective bargaining. It was about overall conditions, not purely wages.

As for the National Front, it is pretty obvious the ethnic diversity == ungovernable mess. 

Only if you're tunnel visioned. While it's easier to control and manage a homogenous culture, the planet is also full of highly functional multicultural societies. You even mentioned Singapore in your comment.

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Singapore is also an authoritarian police state which uses a state directed capitalism to manage their society with a strong hand. It is a lovely place, but it has a number of really huge problems, not dissimilar from here.

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So it's not an ungovernable mess then.

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Doesn't Singapore have many workers who will never attain permanent residency or citizenship?  The Covid-19 epidemic revealed their cramped housing.

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Enjoying inflation are you.

Labour was enjoying the wage rises very much, until they connect the dots that meant they were going to lose the election.

Failed experiment, due to zero economics understanding, that their polices would lead to:

1. Rent rises

2. Interest rate rises

3. Massive Cost of Living Rises

4. No bus drives

5. Not enough nurses

6. Crops being left to rot on the ground.

7. Lost election

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So auditors before nurses… that makes we can make sure we count the people that didn’t get timely medical treatment properly 

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So let's see how wise the average immigran is nowadays.  Why does NZ have a shortage in these areas, because everyone has left due tothe fact that life as a teacher or nurse in NZ is debt slavery by another name.

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No, it's because we're educating less than half as many nurses as we need.

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Yes, lets all sign up to Nursing, the conditions are great, hours are awesome, and pay is wonderful.

hmmmm, I wonder why we can't educate them?

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Yes, and the problem the nursing employers had is that they all leave once they have residency, probably to Australia.

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Is it not worrying that every major political party in New Zealand is pro-immigration? If everyone is thinking the same thing someone isn't thinking.

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They basically aren't allowed to be anything else since the March 15 Shooting.

The Media won't ever give them breathing room to be and they are just importing their voting base either way.

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They're thinking the same thing because there's no other way to resolve the labour and taxpayer shortfall in the timeframes required.

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A labour shortage is good because it encourages increases in productivity through a labour to capital switch.

We should be moving away from those industries that require lots of cheap labour as they are sucking up labour that could be used in more productive areas of the economy.

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This is an often stated good theory.

Too bad it largely isn't conducive to NZ's situation.

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All of them scared to address the issue of the necessity of abandoning constant 'growth' and the need for us to wind our effect on the planet that we rely on.

 

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Economic strategy  - nah its tactics time  it’s about what we have to do not what we should do. Having a strategy with clear  objectives and a plan to achieve them - nah. No plan, no buy in from the team of 5m! Planning horizon for this regime is 2023. Then goodbye leaving a mess to sort out.

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What did you expect?

Our election cycles are shorter than the time it takes to complete a degree and get a year of work experience. So the pain felt from the policy changes was always going to be felt through an election cycle. Of course it was going to be wound back. 

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No mention of the real cause of climate change - too many people!

Even very few of the commenters make any comment that could be interpreted towards this. Thought i might see a comment from PDK, but just silence.

How about building a resilient economy needing less people?

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Sounds nice. Maybe a bit wishful, because you'd need to tax businesses more to cover the shortfall in PAYE, and NZs positioning limits it from the sort of productivity increasing methods used elsewhere.

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When a govt micro manages things it knows nothing about, this is what happens.

Its only the fact they realise they are going to lose next years election that they start to connect the dots.

Letting in people that NZ is short of, should be handled by market forces, not micro cheery picked by baffoons who have no idea what they are doing.

Its too late for the election as they havent thought through the lag time for these things to come into affect.

But what they are wanting to do, is proivide firms with the staff they need to produce goods and services to meet demand, so prices stop rising.

Then inflation comes under control and interest rates go back to a more normal setting.

Its basic Economics 101 that many people were telling them about 12 to 24 months ago.

All the unpicked crops and limited hours firms worked due to not having the right staffing mix, being a perfect example.

I am inagreement with a 73 year old talk back caller the other day who said he and his freinds are "bewildered" about everything this govt does.

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Yeah, great idea, let business control immigration.

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Yep, if they cant find staff to do it here.

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So we target other nations' pools of essential and skilled workers?! Geez we're good eh : we gain a doctor, India loses a doctor and nobody bats an eyelid.

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