Election 2023: Mass immigration isn’t working. We need to get more Kiwis into jobs - Richard Prebble

Immigration has made New Zealand a more vibrant country, but mass immigration is lunacy and unnecessary, Richard Prebble says. Photo / Alex Burton

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OPINION

The New Zealand economy is a pyramid scheme. The Treasury’s Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Update (Prefu) says all that is keeping us out of a recession is increasing the population, at a rate expected to peak at close to 100,000 people a year.

In pyramid schemes, only the promoter wins and everyone else loses.

Auckland University economics professor Robert MacCulloch says “if total GDP is only growing at a bit over 1 per cent and the population is growing at 2 per cent, then GDP per capita must be declining (since GDP per capita equals total GDP over population size)”.

“In other words, from an individual perspective, we are entering a deep recession.”

Labour correctly says GDP does not measure “wellness”. Increasing the population by 274 people every day is the equivalent of adding almost another Dunedin every year. Dunedin has a university, hospital, schools, civic facilities, a stadium, shops, roads and 50,000 houses. It has taken Dunedin 175 years to build and fund the infrastructure that all those people need.

Most of the extra population will be in Auckland, which, according to Kiwibank, is also the location of most of the 65,000 shortfall in houses. Already, rents in the city are rapidly rising.

As individuals, we are economically going backwards and so too is our quality of life.

Labour campaigned in 2017 to cut immigration by as much as 30,000 people a year.

We are now in a vicious cycle. The declining “wellness” leads to emigration that necessitates immigration which further reduces our “wellness”, causing more Kiwis to migrate.

Immigration has made New Zealand a more vibrant country, but mass immigration is lunacy and unnecessary.

There are more than 100,000 idle, able-bodied adults who could join the workforce. There are 173,000 people on the Jobseeker benefit - up by 52,404 since Labour took office.

Act leader David Seymour is correct that there are drug addicts on the benefit. Paying benefits to addicts means we taxpayers are enabling their addiction. Wastewater testing reveals New Zealand has a serious P epidemic.

Act is also right to pledge to apply the requirement to take a suitable job.

Implementing what are known as the McCardle reforms would get able-bodied adults back into work. Peter McCardle was the Minister of Employment who, in the Jenny Shipley Government, introduced a work-for-the-dole scheme. The scheme, which got even long-term beneficiaries into work, was cancelled by the incoming Labour Government.

Getting beneficiaries into work is not cheap. There are not enough drug rehabilitation schemes. Short term, it is cheaper to pay the benefit than organising work. Long term, there is no government programme more expensive than paying people to be idle.

We are wasting so many people’s lives by importing immigrants to do work that we can and should do ourselves.

There are 173,000 people on the Jobseeker benefit, up by 52,404 since Labour took office. Image / 123rf

Election commentators are ignoring the tragedy revealed in the Treasury update, while they instead fixate on whether National’s tax cuts are fully-funded.

But National’s tax cuts amount to just $3.6 billion a year. Government revenue is expected to reach $151b by the end of 2023. There is a shortfall of $2b in the forecast company tax take. Compared with these figures, any shortfall in revenue from a foreign house buyers’ tax is insignificant.

Election commentators should be questioning the credibility of the spending and immigration forecasts in the Treasury update.

Former senior Treasury officer Dr Bryce Wilkinson pointed out in a Herald article: “The forecasts accept, as Treasury must, the Minister of Finance’s advice that the Government is going to be very tight with new spending initiatives through to 2027. Allowances for extra spending have been cut by around 1 per cent of GDP.”

Every election, Grant Robertson pledges to be prudent.

To quote Wilkinson: “Labour’s Fiscal Plan in 2017 proposed to increase core Crown operating spending by just $11.7 billion, spread over the five years to June 2022.

“Two years later (pre-Covid-19), Treasury put the increase at $27.7b.”

Labour’s 2017 election spending promise was exceeded by $16b.

Robertson did it again in the 2020 election. In the pre-election forecast, government spending was forecast to be $116b in the year to June 2024. Last week, that spending estimate was revised upward to $139b.

In other words, the 2020 election spending forecast was exceeded by $23b.

On the Finance Minister’s record, the latest spending forecasts will be massively exceeded. The promised return to a balanced budget in 2027 is a fantasy.

Importing waiters and truck drivers cannot be the answer. Both Labour’s and National’s economic plans rely on mass immigration that produced the housing crisis and will just add to the housing shortage. The economy will be bigger but most of us will be poorer.

The Howard League has a programme that assists prisoners to get driving, forklift and heavy vehicle licences. Over 90 per cent get employment. Reoffending is minimal. If it is possible to get convicts back into the workforce, how hard can it be to reintroduce beneficiaries to work?

We know mass immigration does not work. Why not try something that we know does work? Doing the work ourselves.

- Richard Prebble is a former leader of the Act Party and a former member of the Labour Party.