Erica Stanford quizzed on whether National would return net migration to Sir John Key era levels
National Immigration spokesperson Erica Stanford says her party would bring in as many migrants as needed to fire up the economy – but can’t put a number on exactly what that would be.
Auckland in infrastructure gridlock and renters are the collateral damage of National and Erica Stanford’s mass immigration.
National is nothing more than a front for Chinese business interests and their voting base are the farmers and hospo/mass tourism industry that requires migrant worker exploitation so National’s immigration solutions are more morally akin to a drug dealer wanting more drugs.
The solution to nursing shortages is to offer NZers free education and allowances in return for bonding theme here. What makes me choke in laughter at the rights framing of the nursing crisis is that they NEVER look at the huge loans we saddle Kiwis with when they become nurses. Of course they – like all students hit with debt – run offshore to find the wages to pay that debt off.
Instead of admitting the neoliberal version of user-pays education is fucked, what do National want to do? Import cheap nurses from the Philippines while our local nurses flee the debt we saddle them with and National have the intellectual dishonesty of calling that a solution!
You think life is tough now, wait until National throw open the immigration flood gates once again to prop up their industry mates who require exploited labour.
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They are not suddenly a suprise, they never were.
But past N, can you give us a run down what L did to retain Nurses and doctors? Other then fob them off, have a minister who does little to nothing other then ‘reform’ health to run it with the same resources of yesterday and yesteryears but in new and improved corporate stationary?
We need migrants because we can’t fill jobs. We can’t fill jobs in areas due to lack of housing and lack of people. Who will move for a job without housing? WE can’t fill jobs because jobs don’t pay enough to pay rent/bills and eat all in the same week. WE can’t fill jobs because quite a few are also not taking the jobs that are available cause they lose a benefit. So many reasons in this country why certain jobs don’t get filled with kiwis and either get done by people or will get done in the future by machines.
And while this crisis is not the fault for L alone, one can confidentially speak when saying that it is a bipartisan crisis, and L looks as bad as N when it comes to it.
So how many tourists/migrants will L allow in when re-elected, or is that something we deal with if they get elected and then open the floodgates? Or would that be unpolite?
Tax cuts for the wealthy. Tick
No money left to build public infrastructure. Tick.
Mass immigration. Tick
No infrastructure built to cope with mass immigration. Tick
National 2008? Nope. National 2023, cryogenically frozen and now thawed out as if the past 15 years never happened.
But don’t think Labour won’t open the gates up if it’s focus grouping well! They’ve done just that with migration last week after resisting the temptation.
Labour are talentless. National appear the same. These party’s appear ever more indistinguishable.
Perhaps, just perhaps, NZ is such a s**thole that talented young New Zealanders want to flee to any country that offers them better opportunities, higher salaries, and more affordable housing, rather than staying in a country that prioritises the wishes and concerns of the elderly, and protecting at all costs housing prices?
Take, for example, the absurd decisions by city councillors about some very wealthy urban areas being ‘heritage’ or ‘special character’, or not serviced by public transport despite the train track running through it…
People are not the problem in NZ, many are against the stupidity of lowering NZ wages and having bums on seats immigration that has led NZ to have health, housing, transport, justice and education crisises, due to extreme demand on services from NZ’s lazy immigration policy, where criteria was thrown out the window.
Now we have lost the NZ brand of being a clean, green, nice country to live in, too as well as kids being found dead in suitcases, terrorists choosing NZ to come live in, murders daily, meth and guns being promoted and crime escalating.
It is astonishing how many ‘dual nationals’ seem to work overseas but when they get cancer or some other event, come back to NZ to get free treatment. Sadly this means those living and working in NZ get pushed further and further down any health care lists.
Likewise as someone commits a crime in other countries, NZ has now become the place criminals get deported to (often on the basis of a short stay where some family member got NZ citizenship or residency) as it’s so easy to come here with no skills, no money (or a lot of stolen money) and fake documentation and get NZ residency.
While Natz will be just as bad as Labour for lazy immigration (maybe worse), Labour seem to be more interested in siding with exploiter low wage super rich employers in NZ, than supporting NZ workers who they are failing in NZ, again and again.
Exploitation and more social poverty and demand led problems have just been green lighted by Labeen this month! https://indiannewslink.co.nz/appeal-to-reduce-median-wage-for-unskilled-migrant-workers/
great… more filipino builders that don’t know one end of a hammer from the other, just what i need.
Is it ethical to take skilled immigrants from countries who trained their needed citizens and not raining the skilled citizens we need?
That’s an easy answer. NO IT FUCKING ISN’T. But then that’s exactly what we’ve done. As a result, we are where we are here and now.
And worse. We’ve given false hope to people simply wanting to better themselves and provide for their families, changed the rules on them midway through the game, and then got all haughty and judgemental when they point out our various arsehole dysfunctions (in this space, going forward).
Immigration policy and WORSE – its implementation is a fucking shambles. (Apparently, it’s “Best Practice” – labelled as such by always unimaginative; sometimes racist; and usually embarrassingly incompetent “officials” whose only claim to competence is the ability to capture their Munster).
We see ‘THEM” simply as economic units to be harvested for our needs whilst being quite comfortable with the team of “US” fucking off for better pastures. Hypocrisy much?
I imagine there are going to be quite a few of these masters of the universe folks playing the victim card in the next several months
when the govt stopped training schemes and industry decided it wanted a ‘ready to hit the ground’ workforce but not to train it…hence the skill shortages that need to be filled by imported indentured servants….once again save a quid just provides bullets for later foot amputation.
and frankly it’s not like it’s a surprise it’s the ‘desired outcome’
Let’s talk specifically about The Philippines.
Medical staff get paid shit wages there (as well as the country being shit overall), so why wouldn’t you come to NZ if you could.
A large percentage of the money they earn here is sent back to The Philippines, so that’s a win for their country.
I have no figures, and would be willing to bet there are no medical staff shortages there (or if there are, no where like here) as the medical training system will be pumping out (for example) three times the number of graduates as is required to staff The Philippines/fill churn, as they know 2/3 will head off overseas.
Good money to be made by the universities over there in training all those “surplus” medical folks.
but from the filipino point of view where would you rather nurse shithole nz, not as much of a shithole oz or not too bad canada?
Natz are bad but is Labeen just as bad?
There has been assessment that a family of 4 needs an income of around $160k to live in Auckland comfortably and similar level of wages in other cities in NZ.
So we have to ask why import in foreign migrants to work NZ jobs at a fraction of that, when we are in a welfare state and workers on those on those wages will be in poverty in NZ and eventually be subsidised by other tax payers in a range of top up benefits and accomodation supplements.
https://indiannewslink.co.nz/appeal-to-reduce-median-wage-for-unskilled-migrant-workers/
Note often the industries paying the low wages are highly profitable and led by multimillionaires if not billionaires. “construction, meat processing seafood, aged care, snow and adventure tourism industries”.
Wonder why NZ construction is dysfunctional and youth don’t want to train to do it anymore in NZ. Wages of $24 and $26 to attract migrant workers mean that it is not worth training in that field. Likewise aged care and all the other industries that used to pay better like meat works and fishing – many paying these artificially low wages are hard physical jobs that end up on ACC pushing up everyone elses premiums.
As for relying on NZ importing in doctors and nurses and our student loan led/cheating tertiary, there seems to be a lack of ethics now in this industry as NZ continues to be a ‘soft’ touch – doctors and nurses being registered and trained in NZ, going on to murder others or just plain pretend to be a doctor and practise here.
Tinder killer met, married and began abusing his partner in New Zealand
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/97994011/tinder-killer-met-married-and-began-abusing-his-partner-in-new-zealand?rm=a
Murderer doctor Venod Skantha dies in prison day after losing appeal
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/murderer-doctor-venod-skantha-dies-in-prison-day-after-losing-appeal/F2UFYZHYJVQZP5VZYX6MF7JTZI/
Alleged imposter doctor used fake documents to get off driving charge
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300660195/alleged-imposter-doctor-used-fake-documents-to-get-off-driving-charge
Often these people have had some trouble with law or their profession or studies in NZ prior, but this is just ignored as too hard to do checks on anything in NZ – NZ courts seem to have given a discharge without conviction for driving charges on the basis of a fake medical and fake documents presented to the court, that nobody bothers to check.
Why are NZers so stupid? Unfortunately the Nats’ attitude to immigration is just one dimension of oue multifaceted stupidity. Great point about one of the downsides of student loans, but where is Ardern on this issue? I’d like to see leftwing bloggers putting the heat on the present government to restore fees-free tertiary education.
Because fees cannot be free like transport cannot be free.
Someone else pays.
As someone famous once said: “Socialism is fine until it runs out of other people’s money “
Yes I know it’s tempting to fall back on slogans and ideology – it saves thinking.
Andrew how much do you know about NZ universities? How they’re funded? How they spend their money? How teaching is managed?
I have no problem with tuition fees – at private universities. At a private uni, the shareholders are in charge, and can set their own priorities. At a public university, the government needs to be in charge, to able to set strict requirements for entry and retention, and focus on the QUALITY of education. But NZ unis have the virtues of neither private nor genuine public tertiary institutions. As they are partially funded by tuition fees, the focus is very much on QUANTITY – academic standards have to be compromised to keep up the numbers of bums on seats. NZ universities also spend big sums on marketing their courses, which differ only slightly more meaningfully than the products sold by BP, Caltex, Mobil etc. They also occasionally try to poach each others’ “catchments” by opening campuses in other cities, sinking vast sums of money into needless new buildings. Waikato Uni opened a new campus in Tauranga as a strictly defensive measure against poaching – to head off other unis that might have moved in there and siphoned off Bay of Plenty students that would have otherwise usually oped for Waikato. The investment in the Tauranga campus has still not been paid off, and some wonder if it ever will be fully recovered.
Your precious “someone else” is paying for *part* of this wasteful spending on marketing and needless new campuses.
But even more important is the way our funding model leaves universities vulnerable to activist pressure. A NZ university administrator’s worst nightmare is some student denouncing their uni as “racist” or “transphobic” on social media, because they have a precious “brand” to protect. In a genuine public university (as in Denmark or Germany), student activists have much less power to manipulate university policies and procedures.
I know it’s an article of faith for contemporary rightists that user-pays is always best. But effectively putting the students in charge (as OUR user-pays model does) is a disaster for academic standards and for the intellectual integrity of universities.
Usually I agree with your opinions but on this issue I differ .If it has a good result free education is an investment in the recipient that should return a good dividend. An educated person is likely to be a better person less likely to commit crime or be a bad paren’t . An educated person will be a better employee with higher productivity .It is worth a trial as the present education system is not working that we’ll.
While on the subject free public transport would take people out of their cars so less road maintainany less pollution less accidents fitter people less stressed and wealthier. all wins.
I’m not sure whether it’s stupidity as much as the yea/nah apathy – right up until the time things start to seriously impact them. Probably amounts to the same thing, but tell me how concerned you think comfy little Kiwis are over things like OT oversight, or the complete ineptitude of MoBIE agencies, or MSD cruelty. Politicians appear to be relying on it. Let’s hope they’re in for a rude shock
I would be a bit selective in the subjects offered for fee-free education but overall I think the idea is good.
Fee-free education is just middle-class welfare. Why should someone on the minimum wage be paying for some middle-class precious to spend 3 years getting blotto at Otago?
However, I suspect pre-election next year, while labour are floundering, Jacinda will throw a hail Mary and go into the election with the free fees policy. If worked for her once (one free year) and Clark did the same, with the zero interest. Labour love nothing more than more middle-class bribes and screw the working class. Then again let’s face it, how many in Labour come from working class backgrounds?
Read my comments above. Ardern’s 1st-year-free policy was as brainless as most of the other things she does.
Your Kiwi battler on the minimum wage is a strawman (hope I haven’t misgendered him/her), because in a progressive taxation system (which I approve of), someone on the minimum wage isn’t contributing much to the national tax take.
This is what National said about Labour if they (Labour) won the election, immigrates as far as the eye can see.
The fees free debate has largely been won. Business confidence speech after round table talks broadly speak to a fitugued attitude that see no use in squabbling about privatising government services or getting into arguments about Labour and National then going down the list of issues as if that’s insightful.
Business confidence is very concerned with the housing crises and the skills shortages and the gridlock. Very very concerned. That doesn’t bring confidence at all.
Business confidence is also looking at people like Anne Tolly being parachuted in to try and save towel runga for nation with the same old boring policy from the past.
To grow New Zealand out of an 8% inflationary recession the average wage has to be at least 8 times what people pay on rent. No way the private sector can provide that no way. Only the state can provide affordable housing.
At an average hospitality salary of $40k. The more hyper tourism New Zealand does, the poorer New Zealand gets. So we just have to retain skilled labour and we won’t be doing that by importing Philippinos.
It’s just the same old boring silver service policy from National trying to hold on to the past, no new ideas. Just trying to hold onto old values and hanging trauma amulets around young people.
It’s not about waging your finger and saying get a job even though it is. It’s about entertaining adults and giving them something to do for 8hrs.
sam what exactly is ‘business confidence’ and how can it even be measured, ask 10 random cafe owners what they ‘feel’ or get an uncredited spokesman from an anonymous rightwing ‘think tank’ to chip in with the usual rhetoric….business confidence isn’t even a metric and barely a rhetorical device…useless
“Why are NZers so stupid?”
If you watch Russell Brand it’s not just AO/NZ’ers. Having said that, I don’t think for a minute New Zealanders are stupid. Far from it and that is why the cons we’re subjected to have to be so crafty and well disguised. We must remember that when a con is being played, the con artist always has the advantage because they’re the ones initiating the play. Until they’re found out of course. But by then, our con artists have literally made billions and are so powerful and influential they’re virtually above and beyond the law. ron brierly, for example, got pinged because he’s a sociopathic pervert. Not, because he’s a crook well versed in taking advantage of another’s naivety. That’s why we have politicians. To keep an eye out for the likes of brierly. But brierly would have had our politicians in his pocket. Just like today’s crop of over paid rich persons plaything politicians.
An example of that might be this report in today’s RNZ.
‘Minister rebukes health leader over alcohol bill support’
“South Auckland’s top public health expert “crossed the line of political neutrality” by supporting a Green MP’s alcohol harm reduction bill, Health Minister Andrew Little says”
Andrew Little? Do you know where Parliament Building’s lobby is? Do you know what a political lobbyist does?
Do you know how to spell ‘hypocrisy’ ? Just asking.
Unfortunately fees free education is an anathema to neoliberal economic policy. Doubly unfortunate is that all the current political parties polling over 5% prescribe to those very same neolib policies.
Don’t count on Labour to save us. They have long ceased to be a workers party.
Reminder that Labour signed us up to the UN migration pact and future governments, be they National or Labour, will use this as an excuse to flood the country with immigrants for cheap labour and boosting economic numbers. Some will point out that the migration pact is non binding but then so is the indigenous peoples declaration but that hasn’t stopped the current government using it as an excuse to implement co-governance based on race
Emotional junior staffer?
the practical question is where will they live and where will their shit go….sorry to be basic but we do have infrastructure issues in NZ
Well we know that’s a load of bs! Why? Because Labour already have! And with provisions for low wage immigrant slave labour where they are exempt from legislation for employment.
So again calling out bs on TDB because there is no difference between LINO & National.
Its 1984-1990 all over again.
I think make it really, really attractive to train to be a nurse (and Dr). Good living wage with a bond. Get the trainees back in the hospital a bit more.
Lift nurses and Drs wages more, cut spending on health bureaucracy and adds for things like the health reforms (ffs). Then (and this won’t be popular increase student fees for non vocational training ie most arts degrees. They are not value for money. Or severely limit places on them. It use to be only the very bright that went to university. A lot of what is being taught seems to be ideological rubbish anyway
National might as well just close down every nursing school in the country and simply just bring in nurses from overseas, because I feel like that is where they ultimately want to head.
They simply do not want to train and employe NZers, and just want to leave them on the scrap heap, if National get back in, large swathes of the economy will simply be shut to New Zealanders.
You do talk shit Millsy. Nurses training is a three year course at the polytechnics and they do the practical in the hospitals. National aren’t going to close anything down and wouldn’t want to.
Well, National seem to only want immigrant nurses to work in our hospitals, and stuff New Zealander training in nursing.
You’re an idiot Millsy. You spread misinformation to suit your twisted view of the issue. My young niece is in her last year of training in Napier. She attends the Eastern Institute of Technology there to learn theory and has completed the practical in Hastings hospital. The government has nothing to do with it. Yes we need more encouragement from this and other governments for NZrs to train. It’s the same with doctors. The pay is not enough. That’s the issue, especially when trying to pay back loans. Covid and flu have put pressure on our broken system and it seems we should have let more doctors and nurses into NZ until the issue is resolved. The tap can be turned off later. Martyn says National won’t turn the tap off. He might be right and they would be wrong not to. This government is slow to do anything. They are happy to see the hospitals at breaking point and make token changes to the immigration settings all because Of their Stone Age theory that there shouldn’t be immigrant labour. Then they wonder why we have a struggling economy that requires large borrowing to get anything done. That’s ok though, Aussies will take our good people, they will pay them as well as their own and with all the immigration there they don’t seem to have many out of work because they’re growing.
Immigrant labour holds down wages and keeps New Zealanders out of jobs. Prior to 2017, there were heaps of articles about nursing and teaching graduates struggling to find work, because the government just imported them all from overseas.
National cares more about foreigners than they do about New Zealanders. That is why they cannot be bothered with then being employed and would bring in immigrants.
Yet aren’t “our nurses” immigrants to Australia.
Why do they need our nurses New View?
The hospitals are at breaking point because of the massive neglect and underspend by National in hospital infrastructure. This is backed up by Jonathon Colemans edict to the WDHB… “you need to do more with less”. I agree Labour need to spend massive amounts on upgrades, however the moment they remotely think about doing this the opposition and tribal supporters go into feral “Labour spending other peoples money” mode.
Bert. I believe Covid has created a nurse shortage world wide. Our nurses won’t be cheap labour. I agree National let health infrastructure to run down. They also were asleep while the housing crisis happened. Having said that all modern governments haven’t done enough with general infrastructure. This government said they would make our roads safer and look at them. I also agree that labour is trying to spend to fix things however like the rest of NZ the opposition can see unwise badly planned spending with money we are borrowing. National are just taking advantage of that and if the rolls were reversed labour would be barking at National.
Gosh have you got anything new to say Bert?
You’ll be blaming my great grandmother next and she lived in France.
No Millsy is telling the truth my daughter worked in the public health area and was studying herself when she told me National under John key brought in thousands of Philipino Nurses locking out hundreds of newly NZ trained Nurses waiting to graduate. National prefer to take the easy way out and to save money its easier and cheaper to bring in foreign trained professionals than invest time and money into NZ trained.
CIP I find that hard to believe. Maybe your daughter can come up with some articles to support her claim. I’ve not heard of locally trained nurses not being placed in NZ hospitals. Rest home and other facilities may be different. What did your daughter do in the health area? John Key didn’t bring anyone in, his government immigration policies may have allowed it. The DHBs weren’t blameless either. Another issue is the reluctance of doctors and nurses to work in busy rural practices. Newly trained nurses will always find work there but many then go back to the hospitals and city practices. Now is where it’s happening, not ten years ago. NZ trained nurses are not having trouble finding work and we need more of them.
She was studying Physio
Yes agree with ya new view National will not close everything down but they have a track record of running it down and then privatizing it.
I can’t disagree CIP. Would only hope a Luxon government might be different. Not holding my breath though.
Getting Immigration numbers right is all about balance. Governments can see the need but are inept when it comes to planning. Martyn would argue that National would throw the flood gates open because they rely on immigration to promote false growth. The reality is there aren’t enough people in NZ to pay for the infrastructure in our spread out country . We’ve got the population of Sydney spread over a large area. We expect a lot of stuff that’s duplicated all over the place and we can’t pay for it without a lot of debt. With the nurse immigrant situation, I doubt you’ll find registered nurses working side by side in our hospitals on different pay rates and if they are the hospitals should be held to account. Care facilities are where that problem might exist. Anker made the point we should be making it easier for nurses to train. Of course we used to. My wife was trained at Napier hospital and lived in at the built for purpose hostel there. The nurses were trained and housed on site and paid less while training, to cover training costs. Successive governments dismantled all that to save a dollar and what we are faced with now is a result of that along with wages that don’t keep up.
Immigration can be good or bad for an economy it depends on how it’s managed.
Labour are incapable of managing anything well.
National and Labour were both wrong about immigration. Where intelligent, rather than ‘silly manifestos’ comes in.
New Zealand will always have a problem of outflow of skilled workers. People want to see the big wide world.
We are the most widely travelled people in the world, and normally around 20% of New Zealanders are living overseas, perhaps the biggest percentage of any population in the world.
Engineering grads are working 6 months here and then shooting off overseas. Its not about student debt, its about travel, adventure and enjoying the lifestyles of big European and Asian metropolises that NZ can never offer.
As for Phillipino nurses, they are flipping great, the ones I have come across.
I think it’s more about earning half the salary of most other developed countries in NZ, and our slave labour that is the biggest problem, as seen by migrants voting NZ 2nd worst place to work in, in the world.
Also immigration numbers are rubbish because they are childlike aka one person in and one person out. They are sooooo stupid not to measure the skills drain, aka if we lose a NZ doctor and nurse with 10 years experience and get a aged support worker on minimum wage with an unemployed spouse, 2 dependant children and keeps having kids while in NZ, there is a massive drain on our health, benefit and education services from this approach.
And this is NZ’s immigration policy from the last 20 years.
They can’t even be bothered getting migrants nurses and doctors fast residency and prioritising them, such as the neoliberal (ACT, Natz, Labour, Greens) interest in getting minimum waged, unskilled meat, fish, construction, aged care, tourist, cafe workers into NZ as fast as they can, on benefits, and give them residency first.
Pretty easy to stop all immigration apart from doctors and nurses for example and migrant workers over $120k which tend to be more highly skilled, but nope, they all political parties seem addicted to the cash donations and lobbying from minimum waged migrant interest groups and unions, where the workers ‘pay’ big money to third parties to come into NZ, these migrants have few skills and turn to crime and poverty pretty quickly. https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2022/08/nurses-plan-to-leave-new-zealand-over-residency-rules.html
In addition other countries generally have far higher standards for immigration than NZ so they are not overloaded with scammers like NZ immigration encourages by allowing student visa turned terrorist types, non income dependants and minimum waged workers, into NZ as a priority.
Well said Mark.
National won’t close anything down new view but they will run it down nek minute it is privatised
Maybe I’ll vote for Winnie instead of ACT…
Both better choices than the current worst Government in our history.
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