Govt lures migrants with millions to invest – but its “rebalanced” policy is still weighted in favour of English speakers

Buzz from the Beehive

The  government’s  immigration  policies  have  come  under heavy  fire  in recent  weeks,  even   though  the  shortages  of  key  workers — nurses  for  example — have  become  acute.

One response to the critics – included among the latest Beehive announcements – is something the government is calling its  “Immigration Rebalance  strategy”.  But one flaw quickly becomes obvious.

More of that later.

For now, let’s note that the Immigration Rebalance strategy is vying for media attention, analysis and debate  along with

• The latest ministerial bragging about benefits continuing to fall;
• A message to the biggest polluters that they will have to do more to help meet climate targets because of changes the government is making to decade-old settings (these settings “have allocated far too many free climate pollution credits to New Zealand’s largest emitters”, Climate Change Minister James Shaw said);
• The launch of the country’s  first nationwide tsunami evacuation map (perhaps to heighten our anxieties as we increasingly observe the impacts of climate change around the world);
• The provision of $179m of government funding to seven centres around the country for groundwork infrastructure such as  pipes and roads that will enable over 8,000 new homes to be built;
• A speech from the PM to the Local Government New Zealand conference (our team is struggling to find nuggets of hard news in the contents).

NZ economy must remain nimble and agile, says Robertson – but then NZ went into lockdown and a hobble was applied

It   seems   an aeon  ago,  but it  was  only  last  week that  New Zealand’s wellbeing-focused government was  contemplating   how  to connect the country safely   with the rest  of the  world.   Now, achingly,  the  question is how  long the  lockdown  will last.

Whereas  last  week   the  headlines (like   this one from Newsroom) chorused “Covid success  weighs on Ardern’s  shoulders”, feelings among the  team  of  5 million might now be  deepening over why  such  a  relatively  small percentage  of  the population  is   fully  vaccinated. 

Or  why  the  elderly, in particular, are  not  queueing  for  booster  shots.

NZ,   by  some counts, has  had the slowest  vaccination rollout in the developed world.

The  PM’s  insistence that her government’s Covid response and recovery path has been dictated by the “best evidence we have about how to protect people’s lives and livelihoods’’  accordingly rings  a  bit  hollow.