Record immigration is becoming a hot political issue in New Zealand with the Labour opposition leader, Andrew Little, vowing to place a cap on immigration levels. From News Hub:
“We need to moderate our intake at times when we are struggling to find jobs and houses for newly arrived folks as well as locals,” Mr Little said on Wednesday.
However, Prime Minister John Key has labelled the record high immigration as a “badge of honour” and cheered on high immigration “for as long as they add value to New Zealand”:
“People don’t want to go to some other far-flung because they don’t think they can have a good life there,” he says.
“So we should see it as a badge of honour that people want to come to New Zealand”…
“Realistically, obviously, we need to be able to accommodate them and while on the one hand they put some pressure on the system… they’re also a source of growth and actually they add to the richness of New Zealand”.
Finance Minister, Bill English, is a bit more circumspect:
“These surging migration figures, for instance, are putting quite a lot of pressure on early childhood education for growth; on our schools for growth; growth in numbers at our hospitals; prison numbers are going up. So we’ve just got to balance these things up — the need to accommodate that growth but to stay on track”…
There’s no getting around the fact that New Zealand has become the new population ponzi king, taking the mantle from Australia. In the year to December 2015, New Zealand added a record 95,100 people, 68% of whom were via net migration:
The rate of population growth in New Zealand – 2.1% in the 2015 calendar year – is also the highest since at least the 1970s:
In addition to causing great strain on infrastructure and housing, national income is now also falling in per capita terms. As revealed in the December quarter national accounts released last week, real gross national disposable income in NZ grew by only 1.5% in 2015, below the 2.1% growth in the population:
With housing affordability atrocious, especially in Auckland:
And Auckland traffic congestion getting worse:
Auckland commuters travelling in along the Northern and Western motorways may need to allow more time as traffic slows to a crawl.
The New Zealand Transport agency said there was no specific incident causing the build-up, but said it had noticed morning congestion seemed to be getting earlier…
Expect the push-back over high immigration to get stronger.
The Government would do well to note the research of former RBNZ special adviser, Mike Reddell, who released a research paper claiming that New Zealand’s high immigration program had crowded-out (through higher interest rates and a high average real exchange rate) other productive investment, lowering living standards in the process.
Or research from the New Zealand Treasury, which questioned the merits of high immigration and recommended a reduced immigration intake in the event that the economy is unable to adequately cope with population pressures.
Or the 2011 report by New Zealand’s Savings Working Group, which argued that high levels of immigration in New Zealand had put upward pressure on inflation and interest rates, crowding-out productive sectors of the economy.
