IMMIGRATION THE WINNERS AND THE LOSERS
Anyone looking to understand why immigration is not discussed more openly and more often in our mainstream media would find a ready answer in a segment aired on TVNZ’s Breakfast last July. It was a vivid reminder of why the topic is so often avoided in public and why calm and dispassionate discussion is so often impossible.
Matthew Tukaki, head of the Māori Council, was being interviewed in response to a statement about the land protest at Ihumātao, near Auckland’s international airport, which called for a review of heritage, planning and migration policies. On air, he suggested Fletcher Building’s plans to construct dwellings at Ihumātao had been caused, in part, by an “insatiable demand for housing”, driven largely by high immigration that requires more and more land for building – even on heritage sites.
He then broadened the discussion by asking why New Zealand was continuing to import so many people when we are unable to adequately provide for the welfare of all our existing population.
An articulate and reasonable man, Tukaki asked simply for a dialogue: “I’m not saying turn off the entire immigration tap... What we’re talking about is, let’s have an honest conversation about what the population make-up looks like, and to reasonably ask the question, ‘If we can’t afford to house current New Zealanders, if we can’t afford the current health system, if we can’t afford food for our children, and all these other things, why are we increasingly bringing even more people in?’”
He acknowledged the need to import skilled people such as doctors, nurses and teachers but questioned bringing in so many unskilled people – and suggested “scaling back work-visa categories”.
When the camera moved to focus on Breakfast co-host Jehan Casinader, he appeared to be incandescent with rage. He accused Tukaki of a deliberate “xenophobic dog whistle” and of blaming migrants for the failures of colonisation. He also said a housing shortage could not be blamed on immigrants, who “prop up this economy”. Rather, we had failed to build “in the right places”.
Blaming an infrastructure shortage entirely on inadequate planning is a common tack taken by the pro-immigration lobby but it relies on mostly ignoring the fact that New Zealand will reach a population of five million this year – almost 30 years earlier than official predictions made as recently as 2004 (when the nation’s headcount was just 4.06 million). Planning in the path
