A few days ago the Labour party announced a new policy of increasing police numbers by 1000. I groaned at this news but it didn't really surprise me. Then yesterday I heard of the new Greens policy on immigration, with James Shaw calling for a drastic reduction in numbers. Is New Zealand First calling the shots here, aided and encouraged by a compliant and uncritical media happy to jump on the anti-immigrant bandwagon? The Greens and Labour will almost certainly need the support of NZF to form a government next year, and Winston really just hates those hippy-dippy lentil munching do gooders. James Shaw knows this, yet needs to send a very clear signal to Peters that the Greens are willing to compromise. Immigration is a hot topic, and Shaw can easily frame the issue in terms of "sustainablitity" and "infrastructure". No need for racist dog-whistles or Chinese sounding surnames, this is Sensible and Practical Greens policy, easily digested by sensitive liberals turned off by the crude nationalistic appeals of NZF.
"We think that the country needs a more sustainable immigration policy, so what we'd do is set a variable approvals target based on a percentage of the overall population. That would be at about 1 percent of the population, which is historically how fast New Zealand's population has grown."
Mr Shaw says the policy would even out peaks and troughs in annual migration numbers.
"You've also got to cater for changes in infrastructure, and because our population has historically grown at about 1 percent the country is set up to absorb that," he says.
"Suddenly double that number, and you've got a problem like we've got at the moment, where you actually can't meet the demand."
Hmmmm. Sounds sensible enough. It's not that we are racist or anything mean and horrible like that, it is just that we have looked at it very carefully and the numbers just don't add up. One percent is all that the infrastructure can handle - just look at the housing crisis for proof, even if we wanted to we just couldn't build enough new houses that fast. The government isn't switched on like we are, they are letting in huge numbers and now people are sleeping in their cars! Etc, etc.
Curious about this one percent growth claim, I searched for the population data on Statistics New Zealand and came up with this graph:
It is sort of true that the New Zealand population has grown at around 1% per year, as you can see for the period from the 1990s up to 2015, the line fluctuates above and below 1%. If you were a statistician paid by Winston Peters you could cut the time period to 1980 and onwards, and very easily draw a steadily increasing trendline through the periodic peaks and troughs. Look! The line is going up, we don't have enough houses! The line must be flat, we must flatten the line! One percent is an absolute maximum!
The really strange and scary thing is to consider just how New Zealand survived throughout those extreme and rabbit-warren like years after the second world war. Those baby boomers were just popping them out without any consideration for New Zealand's fragile infrastructure, pushing 3% for a couple of years and then a period of about 20 years with that line well in the red zone (and it was so sudden! How did they cope?). Then there was that period in the late 60s and early 70s when the line went into the 2% Danger Zone for about 3 years. Those damn hippies, what were they thinking?
Maybe James Shaw has a more sophisticated version of this justificatory bullshit for his policy. The really depressing thing is I doubt he needs to worry, the media just laps this sort of thing up without any question and the 'immigration problem' is a firmly embedded rock in the ideology of Kiwi Common Sense.
Vomit. And Green vomit too.
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