Erica Stanford and Nicola Willis deliver an immigration announcement
Video / NZ Herald
THE FACTS
The National Party and New Zealand First disagree on immigration policy focusing on fast-tracks to residency for skilled migrants.
Immigration Minister Erica Stanford supports the pathways to address workforce shortages, while NZ First leader Winston Peters advocates extending work visas and training locals.
NZ First’s Shane Jones warns the policy could lead to increased migration and will be a key election issue for his party.
The National Party and New Zealand First are at odds over a central pillar of immigration policy, a disagreement that will almost certainly turn into a political football at the 2026 election.
Both parties acknowledge that retaining migrants with critical skills is important to support New Zealand’s economy,but the lengths to which the Government should go to do that appear to be in dispute.
The Government policy announced on Tuesday includes two new fast-tracks to residency for migrants in specified skilled roles with certain levels of experience, including time spent working in relevant jobs in New Zealand.
The downside of that for the economy is that people currently contributing to Kiwi businesses may have to leave the country, stalling growth and hampering productivity while employers replace them.
There will be a variety of restrictions and exclusions attached and many of those expected to benefit are already working in New Zealand, just without a clear pathway to residency.
The changes won’t lead to a “flood of people” coming here, Stanford said, but “a very small, targeted number of very highly skilled people that we desperately need”.
Immigration Minister Erica Stanford said only a small number of additional migrants will come in on these pathways. Photo / Mark Mitchell
NZ First leader Winston Peters, in explaining his party’s decision to “agree to disagree” on the policy, said filling workforce gaps isn’t a new issue and he recognised “the importance of retaining some critical workers”.
His alternative to what the Government ended up putting forward was to instead extend existing work visas for workers already in New Zealand for another three years to address “short-term demand”.
That’s classic NZ First policy and has been throughout the party’s several stints in power. Get the neffs off the couch, out of the dole queue and into jobs instead of relying on people coming from offshore.
“We, like wise countries, have always believed we should be training and employing our own people first and not use immigration as an excuse not to do that. That is still our plan,” he said.
Back in 2003, when he spoke from the Opposition benches, Peters complained that “a hundred thousand New Zealanders are out of work, yet we are bringing in tens of thousands of immigrants”.
Fast-forward to 2025 and Peters is in Government. At the end of June, there were more than 216,000 New Zealanders on the Jobseeker benefit, about 120,000 of whom were “work-ready”. There were also still thousands of migrants coming to New Zealand.
Peters blamed the media for not giving his message more prominence. If it had received more attention, the party would have more MPs and more power to make change, he said. That would include greater “drivers to take people from secondary school into employment”.
NZ First leader Winston Peters wants a system focused on upskilling Kiwi kids. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Stanford, both the Immigration Minister and the Education Minister, may argue she is attempting to strengthen just that.
Her scrapping of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) and the reforms to secondary school qualifications put a significant focus on improving the attractiveness of vocational education, putting it on a par with academic pathways and ensuring courses are relevant to the real-world careers that it is meant to lead to.
The Government has also added more sanctions for beneficiaries who don’t meet their obligations, intended to incentivise the unemployed to do everything they can to find a job. That was part of NZ First’s coalition agreement with National.
Peters has already indicated immigration will be a major part of NZ First’s election campaign next year.
His deputy Shane Jones was explicit on Tuesday that this was a “political issue we have identified ourselves with and we are going to fight the next election on it”.
“Our objection is that increasingly large number of peoples are going to be fast-tracked to residency, which means they’ll either become citizens or, after a period of time, they will continue to use our country as a staging post and go to Australia,” Jones said on Herald NOW.
“It is a deep and fundamental point. No doubt it will feature widely in the next election campaign as to what is the optimal immigration policy.”
Jones said those migrants getting residency may bring in their children or spouses.
“If you want to change the population character of New Zealand, go and campaign on it.”
The Australian Department of Home Affairs has been reported as saying that between July 2023 and the end of June this year, more than 92,000 New Zealand nationals with a Special Category Visa have applied for Australian citizenship. Of those, 48% were born outside of New Zealand.
Recent Stats NZ data also highlighted that 35.1% of New Zealand citizens who migrated to Australia in 2024 were born outside of New Zealand. That’s slightly higher than the proportion of New Zealand’s population who are overseas-born (29% in 2023).
But Stanford said suggesting New Zealand is becoming a stepping stone to Australia isn’t borne out in reality.
For many of the roles these pathways cover, she said it would be easier for the migrants to go straight to Australia to get residency.
“Australia is more likely to be used as a stepping stone to New Zealand. It is just not the case that people are coming here [and] waiting to get into Australia,” she said.
It would also require significant forward planning by the applicant if they were coming to New Zealand with that intention.
Those getting citizenship in Australia today would have entered New Zealand at least 14 years ago, Stanford said. Many may have been there for a long time already and were now taking advantage of the new Australian citizenship pathway.
They’d have to spend a substantial period contributing to our economy first before they can get New Zealand permanent residency and then citizenship, which “adds up to about a decade”, Stanford said.
Then there is a four-year required period living in Australia before they can become citizens there.
Migrants won’t be able to just arrive here, get residency, hop across the Ditch and become Aussies.
Jamie Ensor is a senior political reporter in the NZ Herald press gallery team based at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. He was a finalist this year for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.
