By Gareth Vaughan
New Zealand ought to move from an "ad hoc" immigration policy disconnected from other public policy settings to a long-term government policy statement to assist with infrastructure and other planning, Productivity Commission Chairman Ganesh Nana says.
Speaking in the latest episode of interest.co.nz's Of Interest Podcast, Nana says the government's formal response to the Productivity Commission's inquiry into NZ's long-term immigration settings is expected before Christmas. Among other things the inquiry, completed earlier this year, recommends a government policy statement requiring governments to set a clear strategic direction for immigration policy.
Nana notes the level of immigration influences the overall population, the requirement for infrastructure including transport networks, hospitals, schools, energy requirements, early childhood needs, and regional development. At the moment there's a "disconnect" between immigration settings and these other areas, and a disconnect between workforce training and skills development and labour market policy, Nana argues.
He also wants to see a longer-term focus for immigration rather than the "ad hoc adjustments" currently made every few months or years. This ought to have a timeframe of at least 10-years.
In the podcast he talks about these issues in detail, plus how often the government policy statement could be revised, the idea of holding a referendum on the population size we want, the recent slowdown in population growth and decline in areas such as Auckland and Wellington, the impact on natural resources and land use, why the population size isn't the answer to productivity or wellbeing, what he'd like to hear during election year, what the Treaty of Waitangi means to immigration, and more.
"Migration is always going to be part of our population story," Nana says.
"The world is going to be a lot different and if we continue to plan on the past we will be disappointed. I think we've got an opportunity to set our own path, and our own trajectory in terms of population, in terms of migration and population growth. Let's do that openly and explicitly rather than stumble into the rather large population growth we had pre-Covid."
55 Comments
If the plan is to grow, then let's plan for it. But we also need to be realistic about how much of our current lifestyles (what's left of them anyway) is going to slip as a result. Two hour commutes, not being able to get to a beach in summer and a lack of investment in public-facing services (not just hospitals, but GPs, teachers and ECE as well). It's no good just using price as a demand response mechanism because you just end up with a country that no one can afford to live in, but then they can't afford to work or stay well enough to work so they don't do that either.
We should simply not commit to something unless we have the full picture. We've tried that, it doesn't work. We owe it as much to the people who come here as we do to the people who are born here. The status quo works for no one.
The issue is lack of accountability from successive governments on staying on top of population growth. The Crown banked billions of dollars from mass migration for years until 2019 in additional tax revenue (more GST, income taxes, corporate taxes, etc. from more workers/consumers) with nothing to show for in terms of growing economic capacity and social services.
Treasury has always low-balled its population growth estimates and underfunded expansion initiatives. INZ's only role is rubber-stamping visa application without reasonable planning and control over quality and skill-mix.
'He also wants to see a longer-term focus for immigration rather than the "ad hoc adjustments" currently made every few months or years. This ought to have a timeframe of at least 10-years'
Good luck finding a Government who can design and execute a 10 year strategy. Immigration has been used for decades as a lazy way to drive economic growth whilst ignoring the fundamental need to support a growing population - namely investing in roads, housing, schools, hospitals etc etc.
We are currently very good however at destroying agricultural productivity and spending up large on Covid-inspired pet projects which will hinder and burden the population and economy for decades to come. Sigh.
"Population" is the key word. "Immigration" is just one part of that.
There can be no sensible immigration policy until after the desired population level is established and clear. And aimless drift does not work.
My vote would be an upper limit of 5 million, as a compromise, but I would prefer it to be 2 million.
Well where would one start? 5 million, 2 million, these are all arbitrary figures. If it were up to me, it'd be no more than 150 on the basis humans can't relate to more than about that number of people.
What's our natural birth rate going to do?
What income is required to cover current and future state liabilities?
What role will technology play in future work requirements?
How do you manage depopulation?
Some of these at best we would be taking a guess at.
But 'we' didn't do it, in the sense you mean.
We did it by overpopulating - which turned up as not enough nesting-space to raise young. Hardly syrprising.
It's also why the young are creating their own - not to do with reproduction - narratives; there is obviously no imperative to reproduce when overshot as a species. Ironically, most won't be aware that's why they 'identify' as whatever...
Educated women who have control of their own lives, finances and fertility, have fewer children, start having them later and some choose to bypass the entire process altogether.
Having children is not the only option open to women anymore, the advent of birth control set it all off, pretty much.
Only a few women are now willing to hand over what amounts to just about their entire lives to child rearing.
Now, you should never need to wonder why some cultures deny women their rightful choices in life
Educated women who have control of their own lives, finances and fertility, have fewer children, start having them later and some choose to bypass the entire process altogether.
Except the reality is we passed the point where education would be the significant driver for that a long time ago. The reality is, we have made it too expensive for people to have children, even if they really really want to.
Reverting to this 'education' talking point (while once relevant) ignores the huge issues we have for working parents, like childcare costs, working hours, commuting hours, affordable housing big enough for families and all the other problems that we're insisting isn't factoring into this decision - because it's apparently just education. And if you don't acknowledge the demographic drivers with our urban planning, then you have even less reason to do anything about them.
Agreed, where it used to be perfectly possible to buy a house at 3x DTI of a single income, raise a family and end up comfortable enough, now you have two incomes sitting t 8-10x DTI so cannot afford a house, have the daunting thought of having to uproot kids from schools etc multiple times due to landlords selling etc, Uncertainty of the state of the world when your kids grow up given the current trajectory, high cost of living, and the current slow bleed of populations form the rural sectors of NZ as less young kiwis wish to keep the family farms, coupled with the ability for women to achieve far beyond what their parents could at at earlier age. Many of my peers in their early to mid 30's are trying to pay down the mortgage as hard as they can so that if they ever do have children they will have the cashflow to struggle less, or they opt out for the above reasons.
Not only immigration policy but now is the time to reset many things in NZ, for that mindset of politicians have to change, first, which is doubtful.
NZ need a leader not politician but not possible in current democratic set up which is based on vote bank politics.
Exactly - both main parties will continue to to tell us they will do what the majority of voting public want (pre election) and (once elected) they will simply forget all that nonsense and do what their biggest donors want them to do.
Because those donors are big business (and they want big, easy profits, and a buzzing economy) they will continue to let in whoever those businesses need to hire cheaply.
The owners of those big businesses dont care about the issues the voting public care about - the rich that live in nz have private healthcare, they dont sit in the traffic and they pay for private education - and the ones that really reap the profits (big bank owners etc) from NZ dont even live here so why do they care.
The simple way to drive change is to vote for a lot of smaller parties who want what we want - and tie government up in knots so it really cant get much done unless they are forced to listen.
I see there is now a population decline in Wellington. And we have known the internal net migration has been out of Auckland for 30 years. Perhaps longer.
It means our local residents are expressing a clear reference of how they want things to be. So we need to satisfy that desire for non growth, and not accept the idea of filling the place up with overseas imports, with the resultant growth nightmares. Housing, infrastructure etc.
Wellington is a given now that working from home is a possibility for many. Better weather elsewhere, those looking at buying homes can see the rates skyrocketing already to support the neglected infrastructure, shops closing down by the week. Now we can command Wellington and Auckland salaries and work wherever we choose, win win.
Migrants go into the 3D's jobs- Difficult, Dirty, Dangerous. Easier path to residency as there is a critical shortage in these sectors. Fine. But, once granted residency they promptly leave these jobs for something else. And so the shortage of workers there persists as a a perennial problem.
Very true. That jackpot (either already wealthy or have the skills to become wealthy in NZ) is getting harder to hit with more advanced economies opening up to more talent influx post-Covid.
The problem with the lack of skill planning is the 1000 doctors you manage to bring in are only enough to replace doctors leaving the sector (for greener pastures or retiring) and you bring in 100k people with non-medical skills adding more demand pressure.
And more doctors and nurses are starting to choose to migrate elsewhere instead of to New Zealand because our entitlement-driven housing and tax policy has made New Zealand a less attractive proposition. NZ's lower wages used to be okay when the lifestyle was good and housing costs low, but our obsession with free money from land speculation has put paid to that.
He’s right insofar as the world is going to be scrambling to attract working age migrants quite soon, so we need to get our value proposition sorted. I suspect he’s a degrowther though. He’s trashed the PC with mushy statist crap. Hopefully the nats throw him out along with Adrian.
Silly comment (and name - try being yourself).
The world is going to be scrambling to heat its homes and to cook its food - that tends to lead to fences, not welcome-mats.
And de-growth is happening, whether you want it or not - don't blame 'others'; blame a finite planet being extracted-from too fast.
The removal of both identities will change the physics not one jot.
Time you did some homework.
You guys have been saying this since the 70’s, but the world has become several times richer in that time.
And now developed countries are decoupling economic growth from GHG emissions; developing countries will follow. In 100 years we probably won’t have enough carbon in the atmosphere, because of the power of neoliberalism and technological progress.
I know you want to believe all the collapse-porn, but it’s not happening. Sorry.
There’s political resistance, sure. But it’s happening. You just don’t hear about it.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita?tim…
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