Our Leader- Indian Newslink Digital Edition (February 15, 2023)
Auckland, February 16, 2023
For too long New Zealand has dabbled with immigration as an ad hoc issue. We let in people as demand surges, shut the doors, make businesses suffer and then open them again. There is no defined structure that spells out the type of migrants we want, how we bring them into the country and most important of all, how we help them to integrate.
New Zealand is a migrant-dependent nation. It will be so for a length of time and all that talk of managing the indigenous population and optimisation of inherent human resources has never worked and there is no hope that they will in the future.
We need a sound Population Policy to define our demographic balance, understand the demand for skills and manage the supply accordingly.
Public debate
Former Regional Development Minister Shane Jones was keen on a public debate.
Three years ago, prior to the general election in 2020, he had said that Population Policy would be a major issue for the New Zealand First Party.
“I want to put forward a Population Policy and the role of Immigration in that Policy and the ongoing problems that we see as unaddressed far too long both, for the treatment of the Indian language students and the ongoing awful conduct chartered out through the courses, where a lot of these students are being treated of what I consider to be in medieval fashion,” he said.
But unfortunately, the subject never came up.
According to Vaia.com, an ed-tech startup from Munich, Germany, Population forms the core of a country’s profile and progress.
“Overpopulation can lead to over-consumption and increased pressures on resources and services such as health care and education. A country can also become underpopulated, which is often unsustainable and can lead to economic loss due to the fact there are fewer adults of working age in the population. Population policies, implemented by governments, are a series of actions that are introduced to a country to adjust the county’s population size,” it said.
Please visit https://www.vaia.com
Policy components
Vaia.com has recommended governments examine their past and present population demographics and predict future population and demographic trends and changes.
“This will lead to the most suitable population policies being chosen for the country. Different population policies have different components. Therefore, three main elements are considered when deciding on a population policy, these are fertility, mortality, and migration,” it said.
Mr Jones had a few ideas to mitigate the immigration problem: freeze short-term migration, improve the social infrastructure and end worker exploitation.
Before Covid-19, New Zealand received about 20,000 people every year, worsening the prospects of exploitation because of their vulnerable status.
Mr Jones said that New Zealand employers had addicted to ‘this type of labour flow,’ and that the emerging issues will undermine social cohesion.
“I am a product of biculturalism. “I do understand that what I say rankles and offends the multicultural advocates and indeed some in the Indian community. My vocabulary has been dismissed as too muscular and overblown. I am willing to take it on the chin that some of my language is bombastic but I want to say to you that I am a politician whose ancestry goes back a 1000 years in this country and I want people to focus on the lingering and continuing problems that wash up in our district court and our high court and leaders of the Indian ethnic community cannot walk away from that,” he said.
The following is from the Royal Society of New Zealand website: Paul Spoonley, a Distinguished Professor in Sociology at Massey University, has recently published a book on New Zealand’s changing demography, in part to remind New Zealanders that while they should consider the country’s future in terms of the disruptive consequences of climate change or technology, equally significant is the demographic transformation that is underway.
His book, The New New Zealand. Facing Demographic Disruption is published by Massey University Press.
Natalie Jackson, Professor of Demography and Director at the National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis, University of Waikato is preparing a Paper titled, ‘Does New Zealand need a Population Policy and if so, what should it be?’
She will present the Paper at the Plenary Session of a conference being organised by the Biennial Population Association of New Zealand in Wellington in June 2013.
We look forward to publishing the recommendations made at the Conference.
