New Government, New Immigration Settings?

On October 14 New Zealanders voted to change the government. The incumbent Labour Party, all powerful back in 2020 with an absolute majority in the Parliament, wasn’t so much voted out as thrown off a cliff.        

I am constantly asked how the landscape might change on the immigration front with a change in government. Short answer is I don’t know. While I helped the National Party with some advice on what I’d change to make for better, more globally competitive immigration policy settings along with ways to make the visa process more efficient, they will need coalition partners. I understand meetings are taking place this week on that front.

National has 50 of the 61 seats it needs (more or less) to form a Government.

The electoral dust however is far from settled. The final results are unknown as there’s 560,000 ‘special’ votes (including my own) to be counted which represents around 20% of the total. Traditionally these ‘specials’ have gone the way of the left leaning parties but there is a body of opinion which suggests there’s a lot of expats who like me were effectively exiled during Covid and not allowed to re-enter NZ who might have still been smarting over their treatment. Meaning when they might not usually have bothered voting, they have this time around and that traditional left leaning special vote might not eventuate.

This suggests that the centre/right parties might not do as ‘badly’ as they often do when the ‘specials’ aer counted this time around.

That suggests among the swirling dust there are two outcomes, one likely, one not so much.

The not so much outcome is a two party coalition between the National Party and the more right of centre ACT party. These two made clear they wanted to work together in a two way coalition but it seems they might end up being a seat or two short of a working majority in the Parliament. They need another party to govern.

Enter from stage centre left or right depending on which way the wind is blowing, the mercurial NZ First party which could best be described as centre hugging populists who appeal to a statistically small but significant number of people. It is almost a certainty their eight seats or so will be needed to form a government.

National and Act are clearly pro-immigration and recognize that unless and until we produce the skills we need locally we are going to have to import them. Neither stand for an open door and unlimited numbers but are more pragmatic and less ideologically driven than the outgoing government that railed from 2017 - 2022 against too many migrants (before spectacularly backflipping 12 months ago and granting, largely temporary visas, to virtually anyone with a pulse).

The ACT Party is a ‘less government in our lives’ bunch and the National Party profess a similar worldview with greater individual responsibility. Both parties believe that the politicians and their civil servants have all the answers. And both campaigned on cutting the numbers of civiul servants.

NZ First has always been known as the most vocal anti-immigration party yet this time round it was noted they never mentioned immigration once during the campaign.  In fact, in a political first for him, their leader pointed out we need to import more people – especially Doctors and Nurses.

And that’s the clearest signal to me we are going to return to a much more welcoming New Zealand because NZ First, which likes to refer to itself as a ‘handbrake’, seems to have cobbled together enough new supporters who feel disaffected about other things that they no longer needed to attack immigration.

The National Party didn’t release any real immigration policy during the campaign and they have never really differed that much from the Labour Party anyway.

Whatever the new government looks like I am sure we will see at least some recognition that New Zealand, as great a country as it is, needs to compete internationally with the likes of Australia and Canada for the skills and capital the country needs.        

My suspicion is, given the probable make up of the next Parliament the Immigration Department will receive a long overdue shakeup and that I hope includes being forced to work more closely with private sector legal representatives in order to boost their own productivity, efficiency and consistency of decision making. This appears to be a central plank of the National Party and given the ACT Party are all about less government and greater efficiency from it, I am confident we will see my proposal, rejected by INZ earlier this year, get a strong hearing.

Don’t hold your breath however on radical or wholesale changes to immigration policy but the ‘you are not welcome’ mat has I hope been rolled up and put under the stairs – hopefully forever.

You might also see:

1.      Job checks (labour marketing testing) being dropped for, at least, Green List occupations; and

2.      The possibility that those meeting criteria for Green List residence may no longer have to secure a skilled job before they can file a resident visa;

3.      A moratorium or abandonment on annual increases in the median income requirements on work visas (soon to be around $31 per hour).  How that policy might be unwound will take some serious thought.

4.      A return to a more nuanced points based system for skilled migrants given there is a strong body of thought the new 6 point system is pretty blunt.

One thing is for sure – the days of blaming immigrants for all our problems are very likely behind us and we can once again welcome people on a long term basis.

Until next week

Iain MacLeod

Southern Man