KiwiBuild. A name once loaded with hype and promise - that became a synonym for failure and derision.
I believed that the failure of this policy was the biggest failure in New Zealand’s history of a ‘signature’ government policy. Light rail pushed it, but wasn’t for me in the same league.
But, ultimately I think the recently demised Labour Government should be remembered for the migration timebomb they set ticking (ticking very quickly and loudly) and which may be about to blow up in the new Government’s face.
Do you know what is so bad about what that Labour Government did?
It is the very fact that they told us as a country we SHOULD NOT do what they were about to do again.
I’ve mentioned it before, but it is worth mentioning ad nauseum that in May 2021 in a speech on behalf of the then Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi delivered by the then Economic and Regional Development Minister Stuart Nash, Labour outlined a reset of this country’s immigration policies.
Nash said:
“When our borders fully open again, we can’t afford to simply turn on the tap to the previous immigration settings. That path is a continuation of pressures on our infrastructure, like transport, accommodation, and downward pressure on wages."
It was all sensible, rational stuff.
And Labour ended up doing exactly the opposite of what it said.
Worse than KiwiBuild. Words I never thought I would say.
New Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is spot on with his description of the situation his administration has been bequeathed as a “complete hash”.
He is, though obviously more polite than I am, because I can think of some good old Anglo Saxon descriptions as well.
But Luxon and his coalition administration have got a real poser here.
And I'll explain why.
First, a question:
Who said this, earlier this year?
“Since New Zealand re-opened its borders, our immigration settings have failed to quickly bring in enough of the skilled workers we need, meaning we are not equipped for the task ahead. Currently, it takes an employer the better part of half a year to get through the red tape just to hire a migrant.
“The Government has been too slow in responding to crippling workforce shortages, and we cannot afford to wait months before desperately needed changes are made – we need urgent action now.”
Yes, that’s right that was the now Immigration Minister Erica Stanford. And, yes, she did use the word “skilled” there and I note that Luxon used that a lot as well - but there is a clear problem here.
The previous National-led Government happily allowed our GDP figures (but not our GDP per capita figures, they lagged) to be pumped by an influx of overseas workers.
What is the new administration to do now that Labour has pre-flooded the country prior to said new Government even getting its feet under the table?
It would be incredibly ‘un-National’ to look to start seriously cracking down on immigration now. And that’s before we’ve even thought about coalition partner ACT.
What do we do? Carry on and ‘hope it will stop’?
Look it doesn’t. Since I first started getting involved with migration figures for interest.co.nz more than 10 years ago, always the talk was, oh, yes the figures are high now but they will come down.
They don’t. And they won’t.
Even if we don’t think things are going too well in our country at times regarding the economy, etc, this is a place that’s always going to look damn fine to the populations of other countries - and that's without embarrassing any countries by mentioning them by name. We’ve got clean air and (for now) open countryside and a whole range of good things that we take for granted.
Of course people will keep coming. If there’s an open door people will go through it. And I don’t blame them at all. Good on them.
But if we are not preparing ourselves for the influx, it will not go well. It's not going to go well already with the number that have already arrived.
So where’s the control?
We don’t seem to know how many people are coming until they’ve already arrived.
And yet, it seems like such a staggeringly easy thing to control. Indeed when we closed the borders we did show that.
Regardless of what happens from here, the numbers of people that have arrived in the past year will give us serious indigestion.
This won’t just ‘stop’. The Government needs to get a grip on the situation.
Personally, I would go the drastic route and order a temporary block on all visa applications, just to give the Government a chance to take stock and prepare a proper response. Close the doors temporarily, if you will.
But, I’m not holding my breath for that one, because it would just be, well, so, ‘un-National’.
I’m no believer in conspiracy theories. Given the option between judging something to be a ‘cock-up’ or a conspiracy, I always reckon the first option is the correct one.
But you have to say, if the outgoing Labour Government had wanted to do something to trip up the incoming Government big time, then this migration debacle would have been some way to go.
Over to you, coalition, you’ve got a bit of management to do here.
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Flashback: 2017 August 22
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/policy-series-where-do-the-parties-stand-…
2017: ""This election presents the clearest divide on immigration policy between the two major parties in recent history. Labour is sticking with its promise to slash net immigration numbers by about 20 to 30,000, partly by reducing the number of international students studying low-level courses. Winston Peters wants an even bigger drop, to a net number of 10,000.""
Bernard Hickey: Just as fresh figures arrive to confirm record-high inflows and outflows of temporary workers and citizens respectively in the year to the end of October, the new Government has decided to reverse its pre-election preference for looser migration settings. Hard on the heels of an Australian decision on Monday to halve its migrant intake, PM Christopher Luxon told his post-Cabinet news conference that annual net migration of over 118,000 for the year to September was “unsustainable”.
https://thekaka.substack.com/p/record-high-net-migration-now-deemed
So 118,000 is the magic number, huh?
And he learnt that in just a few days - from when he said he didn't have a magic number.
Golly. I'm impressed.
So just 10k to 20k under the current number, huh? But hang on ... What if the current number is actually just a blip caused by covid catch-up? Isn't the NACTF saying immigration is going stay this high?
Like always - I'll place little value on such utterances and await the actual numbers.
We've had an interesting period where the concensus politically has been that more Immigration is more Good.
Hopefully this overshoot is cause for the concensus to move to something more sustainable.... Definitely some votes to be gained by having an articulate immigration policy, that starts with lower numbers.
2023 was election year. 40% of Aucklanders and 25% of all New Zealand residents are immigrants. They have voting power. No party dared speak against the huge immigration. Now that the election is over, we can hope that sanity will return, and both Government and Opposition will ask 'Where are the houses for these immigrants, and the infrastructure for those houses? Where are the schools? Where are the hospitals?'
"Where are the houses for these immigrants, and the infrastructure for those houses? Where are the schools? Where are the hospitals?"
National and Act don't give a shit about that. The immigrants are here to work for their rich donors who can afford to bypass the public system and send their kids to private schools, have private medical cover and plenty of houses to make sure their kids don't need to worry about buying a house. This is landed gentry stuff.
Chill agnostium, remember Labour built 100,000 affordable house so they can accommodate the 129,000 immigrants THEY let into NZ, (not National) 😉
Re the lack of schools and hospitals, National haven't yet had time to build them in their first 3 weeks in office, Labour on the other hand, had the last 6 years to do it !
Some. A couple were absolutely savaged by other educators and people in the field, including directly to their faces at certain conferences. I know because I was one of the people there who told them exactly what challenges they'd face by doing things this way, based on our experience of working with disadvantaged young people. It was an idea that only works for certain (privileged) kids and didn't take into account trauma, human nature or the needs of some kids.
Adding a little sugar to petrol isn’t like the Mary Poppins spoonful for the medicine to go down. Unregulated population additive is more like the Trojan horse story if the incoming are not advantageous for the real community and economy. More like a spoonful of poison.
Let’s be honest Jimbo, Winnie can collect his pension and salary and he knows full well we need a greater population if we are to somehow ‘sustain’ the universal pension. The only way really, and they are his demographic and peers. He can’t afford to upset the pensioners while they still hold the larger share of the voting power. It’s classic WP slight of hand.
They clearly DON'T actually care or the world would be a better place right now, not some target on the wall where its going to be all good by 2050. Fact is people don't even think about the planet when they have kids, if you did you wouldn't have kids in the first place.
All western countries would have declining populations if it wasn't for immigration.That means us having children isn't the problem.It is non-western countries having an excess of chidren. So should we stop having any children so they can export their excess here?
Children don't necessarily cause a excess of greenhouse gas. If you take the average childless person who could take 2-3 overseas trips a year + internal flights. These flights alone could emit the same amount of green house gas than a 1000+ Children in 3rd world countries would generate for an entire year.
This is the coalition policy. Not much about this would reduce immigration:
National's coalition deal with ACT promises to "introduce a five-year, renewable parent category visa, conditional on covering healthcare costs, with consideration of a public healthcare levy".
This is in line with promises made by National and ACT during the election campaign, with New Zealand First now joining the party.
A similar policy was in place when New Zealand First was a coalition partner with the Labour Party between 2017 and 2020.
At the time, the income threshold for a parent visa was considered "far too high" by former Labour Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway.
The community will be hoping for better news on that front as more details of this policy emerge over the next few weeks.
What's more, the new government has promised to remove median wage requirements from holders of skilled migrant category visas, as well as making it easier for family members of visa holders to work in New Zealand.
While no specifics have been mentioned, the coalition partners have committed "to enforcement and action to ensure those found responsible for the abuse of migrant workers face appropriate consequences".
Notably, the much-criticised accredited employer work visa that is currently under review has yet to be earmarked for review by the incoming government, despite calls to abolish it.
Instead, National's coalition deal with New Zealand First seeks to "improve the accredited employer work visa to focus the immigration system on attracting the workers and skills New Zealand needs."
Other immigration policies agreed upon in the coalition deal include the establishment of an essential worker workforce mechanism to plan and manage long-term labour shortages, better recognition of overseas medical qualifications and a pledge to ensure Immigration New Zealand does "proper risk management and verification to ensure migrants are filling genuine workforce needs".
They can make them pay for private insurance all they wish but they’ll still be eligible for ACC and the number of surgeons, specialists, surgery rooms etc isnt growing proportional to the population and will be a struggle to check foreign qualifications for authenticity and calibre.
Cue Winston Peters to assert NZ First policies from previous years...there are plenty of votes to be had there:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/honeymoon-over-christopher-luxon…
NZ First has overtaken Act to be the second most popular party in the coalition, polling 8.1 per cent, up two points from 6 per cent in the November poll. Act has fallen 2 points to 6.2 per cent.
ACT policy excerpt:
New Zealand’s labour market is far too small to build world-beating companies without easy access to offshore skills, so immigration must make it easy for business to access skilled people.
The current set of rules and regulations are overly complex, perhaps due to being made without proper policy oversight, so immigration rules must be streamlined to enable employers to get the people and skills they need.
The devil is in the detail..."enable employers to get the people they need & skills they need"
What if the employer wants low skilled workers (low paid) ?? Do they give them what they want.
The problem is the definition of skilled. INZ tries to measure it and they can't. Just as the Soviet Union couldn't plan a modern economy. So INZ 20 years ago they demanded knowledge of HTML, web design and SQL as proof of a needed IT skillset. It was a joke. The only way of measuring needed skill is willingness of an employer to pay.
This will be a train wreck.
Importing people does not fix structural issues in labour distribution.
With 120,000 new and skilled people I am assuming Labour will have made sure that they have given visas to exactly the right people. Teacher, nurse, doctor shortages are all a thing of the past? Bravo.
Don't be silly. They are all unqualified building site labourers working for Chinese developers, liquor and convenience store workers working for Indian owners, and kitchen hands and waitresses working in Asian restaurants and takeaways. These Accredited Employers (accredited by Labour without any checks whatsoever) simply call the labourers "builders", the shop workers "retail managers", the hospitality workers "chefs and restaurant managers" and bingo they get their visa rubber stamped. Thank you, that will be $10,000 paid into their offshore bank account for the visa sponsorship.
As for skilled workers like doctors and nurses. We cant keep the ones we have, we have such a dysfunctional and outdated healthcare system where people cannot access modern medicines. Every other western country is also crying out for these people, and I'm sure those countries will be immigrants first choice. At this point, we might as well put NZ on the Doctors Without Borders nation list, and aim to attract those that want to work in a third world country making a difference.
High housing costs, low wages, rolling back environmental protections, focusing on a car centric transport system, rolling back legislation that enabled intensification, rolling back anti-tobacco laws - hardly a set of policies that is going to encourage highly skilled healthcare workers to come and live here, doesn't really align with healthcare professionals values.
There is a crazy lack of incentivisation with the education system:
To become a midwife costs about 12k a year.
A BA 7k a year.
Midwifery should have a year of fees removed for every year worked or similar ( or just cost nothing)
A BA in most cases should be mostly unsubsidised.
""Importing people does not fix structural issues in labour distribution."". Doesn't it make it worse. With the majority of care home staff being immigrants how wil a career path ever open for suitabble Kiwis? Other countries actively prevent immigrants taking more than a fixed percentage of jobs in a given industry. Of course this means paying more to attract and retain Kiwis.
An interior plasterer can make $30k+ a month, and the trade has less and less people entering it. How much more than that already handsome figure do you think it'd need to be to get more kiwis picking up a trowel?
Ditto a multitude of other dirty jobs, most people don't appear to want to do for any money.
Replacing a non physical job with technology is easier than replacing many physical jobs.
The amount of dexterity and visual co-ordination required to do something as simple as plastering will require a terminator level of robotic sophistication. At which point, most everyone is redundant.
David, just a question on the Stats.
Have any people been coming into the country that would have come in the past under a different category (tourism work visa), that are now coming in under an immigration work visa and thus same numbers but are now counted differently?
It's just that these seem to be such big numbers not to see a greater effect in the housing market.
Unless they are all going 20 to a house?
Do you have a better breakdown of immigration type etc.
You are about to see their impact on the housing market. The reason why its not been apparent up to now is because of two things.
(1) The first lot of arrivals last year were those locked out of NZ by Labour's border closure and mismanaged MIQ system. Most of these people were not new immigrants, they were simply Kiwi's and permanent residents returning to the homes they already had before Covid hit.
(2) The middle of the year saw a net outflow of people, so those coming in simply absorbed the housing and jobs vacated by those leaving.
However, since July the tap has been turned on full bore, and all those people coming in are new immigrants, requiring additional houses and jobs. So now we are finally seeing rents go up, vacancy rates fall, rental listings halve, and unemployment rise. And its going to get worse, because October saw a record net inflow of 80,000 people, followed by November with another 40,000.
What do you mean " It's not been apparent on our housing market" ? The NZ housing market was going down due to higher interest rate at the beginning of 2023. For several months now, it has stopped its downturn with more sales every month and even slightly higher prices, despite more people having to pay higher mortgage rates. Also rents are rising at ever steeper rates. That's a result more migration into NZ !
What you'd want to see is price rises by region relative to the regions rise in migrants. I know for a fact that several regions that don't have large migrant influxes have had price increases commensurate with areas like Auckland.
It'll be "a" factor, but not necessarily "the" factor - many migrants can't afford a house here, or want to buy a house immediately on arrival.
Migrants cant buy a house here because of the Foreign Buyer Ban. Even those who arrive with Permanent Residency already granted need to satisfy the "ordinarily resident" test of having lived here 12 months before being eligible to buy. Note that a "Resident Visa" is not Permanent Residency. This is why the pressure will be seen in the rental market not the for sale market.
Alot of regions ate getting an influx of cashed up Aucklanders who are ditching the higher value houses and shifting to the regions to be either mortgage free and or small mortgage. Due to the high influx of immigrants going to Auckland so it's a buy product of high immigration.
Visitor Visa
Visa details
People travelling on a passport from some countries must apply for a Visitor Visa to visit New Zealand. You can stay for up to either 6 months (multiple entry) or 9 months (single entry). You cannot work, but you can study for up to 3 months.
European countries who powerlessly get flooded by refugees from the African continent and the USA who struggle to control influx from South America via Mexico must be scratching their heads when they see how many immigrants NZ lets in. We are in a very privileged geographical position where we can easily control the arrival of foreigners yet……...
I believe a bigger population is to our disadvantage.
If population was set, and we had a one-in one-out hardline border system. We would then prioritise to the most needed. eg: skill exchange in health services.
Then: Get practical about skill building of New Zealanders. eg: triple numbers in Nurse training. eg: eg: eg:
And if the cost of your coffee goes up because good wages have to be paid to attract workers, it's because all NZers deserve a wage to match their costs. Deal with it.
we don't pay good wages, Aussie does plus 12% super.... and cheaper housing ...... deal with it.
1 - Let land owners subdivide easily (immediate 30% reduction in land price)
2 - Take GST off new builds!!! builder / owner gets full refund.
3 - keep interest non-deductable for landlords
there i fixed it for you !!!! you only need more money to chase housing ... not coffee or smashed avo on toast
So true and totally agree with you. But can you see what the liberals will say. This poor hard done by family over there needs our help. Or this person here in NZ their sisters fathers brothers dog is left all alone over there and needs to be with their whanau here so must let him in. As it is we can't even deport convicted criminals back to their country of birth so sadly I can't see what you suggest ever being implemented
The New Zealand government has been capable of mass-level of affordable home building in the 20th century.
It's just that the last lot weren't very competent at practical application.
Not saying the current lot will be much better. But probably not worse, relative to their claims.
You have a point. I comment but I am an immigrant and I have a pacifica family. BTW their Pacific country is very fussy about foreigners working or buying land. Seems common sense to me but if I was born in NZ as a Pakeha or Maori Kiwi I'd be nervous of being called racist/xenophobic.
What mechanism is there in place to reduce immigration? If someone meets all the criteria to enter our country, and has a job + place to live when they come here, then on what basis would we decline these applicants?
Do you think Immigration NZ want to cut visas down by half? Who's going to be the first to put their hand up for redundancy? Maybe they'll keep steam rolling with the approvals, what are you going to do? Sack them?
We can't forget the decision to grant residency to anyone and everyone who got stuck here over 2020 onwards and decided to stay after the countless extensions to their visas. Add in the immigration boom and we have a big challenge ahead. Local councils are going to be up to their eyeballs in long-term infrastructure planning and consultation of their constituents given our propensity to turn the tap on for immigration every time we are in a downswing of the economic cycle.
I live in Auckland, but I was in Christchurch the other week. Had a morning coffee at a cafe, the gentleman serving me said the JAFA joke, we both laughed. My laugh was a little bit, should I say deep and meaningful. As little did he know, likewise most southern folk. JAFA’s don’t exist anymore - as to their interpretation (Caucasian nz born) of a FAFA is.
in Auckland 40% of their customers are immigrants. More are NZ children living with their immigrant parents. If none had arrived then your surgery would be doing 50% less work and therefore not short-staffed. Did they have this problem when immigration was low (was that the 1930s?).
Once again I think people are overblowing the latest Y-on-Y immigration numbers. While NZ's borders were shut, work on processing vise applications continued and many were granted but the immigrants couldn't come. Once the borders were opened, these new immigrants had to get themselves ready and then get over here.
Thus is you smooth the numbers based on immigration NZ continuing to process application but with people unable to enter, the headline numbers don't look anything like as bad.
Or put another way - unless the NACTF secretly keep issuing visas while blaming the past government - we'll see these headline Y-on-Y numbers fall to trend, or below.
The infrastructure deficit is primarily about Councils not investing in sufficient maintenance and replacement for 30+ plus years.
And you want to lay the blame at immigration rather than the people who already live here and vote in the Councilors that make such short sighted decisions? Doesn't that argument sound just a tad self-serving?
If infrastructure lasts 50 years on average then 2% needs replacing annually. However if like Auckland you have 2% population increase then you need double the investment in infrastructure. In my North Shore suburb in the 20 years I've been living here the main road has ben widened and the sewers dug up and replaced with something bigger and the local schools have more classrooms and the hospital new buildings - if the population had been frozen in 2003 most would not have been needed. They doubled the main road from 2 to 4 lanes but the traffic delays are now worse than they were when we complained in 2003.
Kiwibuild wasn't a complete disaster.
It very clearly showed central government that it has little or no direct control over the various Councils and territorial authorities that are the main blocker to quick and efficient house building.
You'll note that when Kiwibuild was struggling to get traction - and the blocking role Councils and territorial authorities played was becoming crystal clear to those in central government - central government, with cross party support, went nuclear with the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2021 (RMA-EHS) which introduced Medium Density Residential Standard (MDRS). Council's were forced to change their zoning rules and drop forcing everyone to get all the material required for a Resource Consent together just because a neighbor might complain.
Councils and territorial authorities were pissed at that. Why? Because they could no longer control their fiefdoms by demanding a Resource Consent, or just the almost as expensive material for a RC, when they were seldom needed.
Hundreds of Council jobs were a stake. And the lucrative gravy train associated with it. (Nobody seemed to twig that their rates would have come down with mass layoffs at Council and huge numbers of planning consultants and planning engineers out of work. If you've never sat through a planning hearing you'll have no idea just how poor the standard of engineering is or how massively subjective, nonsensical and waffley planners can be.)
What would they do with all the town planners and ancillary staff if they couldn't process Resource Consents?
(As an aside, many town planners have been leaving Councils to set up their own "consultancies" and Council "buys in" their services. A very lucrative process that drives up house prices and slows down development. But it adds to GDP so who cares, right?)
It was very easy for local Council boards to whip up the pearl clutching NIMBYs and, hey presto, NACTF is elected and everything goes back to expensive, slow motion-building with Council jobs, together with the Resource Consent gravy train, fully "employed" again.
So overall people should have learnt a valuable lesson ...
Local Governments have far more control over the housing supply than central government.
... Its seems most people don't know this.
Methinks the tone of this article would be quite different if this was widely known.
I can't figure out why Te Pati Maori aren't raising hell about this. These numbers are greater in total and per capita than at any time during the history of Aotearoa/New Zealand. This is demographic marginalisation on a scale never seen before. This is causing the Maori population to shrink as a proportion of the entire population which will likely result in less political influence. The colonisation of the past pales into insignificance compared to this.
The treaty is still being debated but surely whether the English or Te Reo version is used the only immigrants should be from subjects of the sovereign. So being as generous as possible with the interpretation to include all commonwealth countries that would permit Canadians, Indians, Malays, Bengalis, etc but not Chinese, Koreans, Mexicans, Iranians, etc.
Personally, I would go the drastic route and order a temporary block on all visa applications, just to give the Government a chance to take stock and prepare a proper response.
I would be even more drastic. I would block all immigration until all our citizens are housed in good and affordable houses. The only exception would be desperately needed healthcare workers.
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