Dalziel rules out population target

Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel has ruled out aiming for a specific population target amid calls for New Zealand to reach the 5 million mark within 12 years.

United Future leader Peter Dunne said New Zealand needed a 10-year population policy based on multi-party agreement, and that the Government should set a target of 5 million by 2015.

"We've meandered our way to the 4 million mark with no particular vision or strategy, and that needs to change."

Mr Dunne said predictions that the population would never reach 5 million were based on past trends. "That's no way to run a country."

At least 60,000 new immigrants a year were necessary to complement New Zealand's natural population growth, he said.

But Ms Dalziel said last night it was not possible to identify a specific population target, and what was important was the mix of gender, age, skills and other factors, and the regional spread of immigrants.

Act leader Richard Prebble said Mr Dunne's proposed target was "nuts", and would require inward migration of 1.7 million.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has questioned the belief New Zealand has just reached the 4 million mark. He said the figure was probably reached a long time ago due to overstayers, illegal immigrants and people changing their status after arriving from overseas. "The only immigration record kept is a card filled in by the person arriving."

Mr Peters said the "lax" immigration system meant no one knew how many people were in the country.

"Our social, economic and physical infrastructure cannot cope with the population increase, particularly in Auckland, and if immigration is not curbed the problems will become insurmountable."

Statistics NZ chief demographer Mansoor Khawaja said the population was calculated using an internationally recognised system based on the last census, and was adjusted for overstayers.

Mr Dunne is not the first to call for 5 million people. Nearly 70 years ago, MP Bill Barnard travelled the country to drum up support for the "Five Million Club" to spearhead immigration policy.

At a public meeting in Napier in 1937, he said: "Now is the time to plan for an increased and increasing population, as the solving of the problem will take years."

Mr Barnard's fears that New Zealand's population would stagnate at just over 1.6 million in 1960 were never realised.

He was ahead of his time when he called for "the provision of well-planned easements or concessions to married couples who produced families", to counteract a falling birthrate.

However, the club's view that new immigrants should be of "readily assimilable" races such as Scandinavians, Dutch, German and Czechs would find little favour these days.

New Zealand's population hit 1 million in 1908, the year Ernest Rutherford won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for splitting the atom, and the Auckland to Wellington main trunk railway line opened. It was the year the country lost one of its most treasured people, when author Katherine Mansfield left never to return. Significantly for New Zealand's population of the day, Chinese people were no longer allowed to become naturalised citizens and were required to be thumbprinted on entering or leaving New Zealand.

The 2 million mark was reached in 1952, the year 19,000 Dutch immigrants swelled the numbers. The victims of past injustice, Chinese, were allowed to become citizens.

Like the former milestones, the 3 million mark went unrecorded in the Herald in 1973, the year colour TV was introduced and the DPB became available for all sole parents. That year, statisticians predicted New Zealand would reach 4.6 million by 2001.

Population Counter
Continuously updated by Statistics New Zealand