The Government has asked the Productivity Commission to undertake a wide-ranging review of current immigration settings

Inquiry? Labour Market? Depressed wages. Housing? Bubble, sprawl, homelessness. Environment, more emissions, more resource use, more waste, more crowding. There. That wasn't too difficult? Is my cheque in the mail?

Good but does the Productivity Commission really need 1 full year to compile such a report? Does not seem that "productive"

Long overdue. No party campaigned on increasing immigration from 10-15k a year (net) to 50k a year. National just decided to do it with no thought or research into the impacts.

What a disaster its been.

Great! This should have been done this years ago.
Stop the use of the student visa as a pathway to residency. Get quality migrants, not people who drive ubers and work menial jobs.
Also note there will be a massive surge in migrants from South East Asia given the pandemic is raging there right now. Once things settle a bit, those who can, will get out of their country and you will see the number of applicants grow even higher from countries like India.

The government should also tighten rules around sponsorship and using family ties under immigration law. Certain groups bring the whole village if you let one in. Most of them don't bring any special skills - why are we giving residence status to people who work at a supermarket checkout or pack in a factory? Are kiwis that lazy??

I’d say it’s extremely productive “politically”. The government continues its go slow on approving migrant visas with the excuse we are waiting to see the commission report. Meanwhile they hope the “housing development boom comes to fruition correcting the supply demand issue and then the government reintroduces migration at current levels. Problem solved until the next supply / demand crisis or business bleats it’s paying too much for labour or we have stagflation resulting in a recession - one of the three

Labour should have had this in their election campaign. And the work should have started in November last year, not now, and been completed by November this year.

NZ has being managed by people only capable of talking nonsense for very longtime and the damage seems irreversible.

Finally the possibility of some sanity being injected into the immigration debacle.

And yes – should have been sorted out some years ago.

I’ll take it as a real positive if between now and the implementation (hopefully) of a more soundly based policy the immigration doors remain relatively shut.

20 years too late and 1m extra people. Horse and house has bolted.

Meanwhile the John Key is listened to as a man of knowledge. The shambles surrounding us directly attributed to the smile and wave nothing to see here populist do nothing approach.
Why he gets any traction is beyond me. As far as foresight, the man had none.

Can we please stop using GDP growth rate as a measurement of economic well being.
It attributes any activity as being good and that simply is not the case. We could have a country of Baristas, beauty technicians, prostitutes, land agents and investment advisors etc. These carry equal weight to farmers, doctors, nurses, factories, and all the other sectors that produce exports, goods and services that make a really meaningful contribution to the countries material and social well being.
How about adding a weighting to the index. 0% weighting to prostitutes up to 100% for exporters?

A completely wrong agency to look at immigration policy. The fundamental question of is one of environmental/biophysical sustainability and wellbeing of the human population, as well as giving voice to our Treaty partner in the discussion/decision-making;

https://teara.govt.nz/en/document/1364/immigration-and-the-treaty-of-wa…

Immigration policy need have little to nothing to do with productivity (economics) - disciplines more needed are anthropology, ecology and sociology.

Pretty sure they know NZ runs an immigration economy since the change of the immigration framework in the late 1980s. I refer to all major political parties when I say "they".

Another witch hunting attempt at distracting their lemmings from Labour's failures.

The "impact" studies would probably cost a couple of million and I won't be surprise it takes 5 years for a strong report.

Every time something went south for Labour, it seems like the strategy is to find something that the public has a bias on and blame it; thereafter, announce themselves to be the saviour and offer to 'fix' it.

Not much brains are required to see that since the pandemic, immigration grind to a halt, house prices rose even faster, state housing wait list expanded more than ever and the economy went into recession.

I find it also a joke that whilst it appear Labour is concerned about social cohesion for this pet project, it is splitting the country into halve with a barrage of new policies based on race.

The failure is with the those in the government, not immigration. It's extremely childish to blame one's failure on something or someone else.

I'm pretty sure that when you're in government you never ask for a commission of enquiry if you don't know what outcome will come from it i.e. what the commission will come up with.

So they'll get the report they want. And then ignore any of the smaller bits they don't like. So, as others have said, cue mass immigration again, low skills totally OK, students using crappy courses as a residency pathway and so on.

If you put in place perverse incentives to encourage a behavior. You will get that behavior. Anyone remember the Tax Working Group?

The best immigration minister NZ has had in the last 20 years has been Mr Covid.

1) The holistic NZ Inc goal should be to increase total welfare (wellbeing) per capita & its distribution thereof. (not just gdp/capita & definitely not gdp growth)

2) This requires a population strategy that targets increasing wellbeing per capita (this is likely to be a growth rate that grows gdp/capita but keeps externalities low so net wellbeing increases.)

3) The PC needs to take this approach & make recommendations from that perspective. e.g.

i) our carbon emission requirements are absolute & not per capita. NZ cannot sustain a high population growth rate and meet a zero carbon target

ii) we've proven we cant build enough houses (ignoring RMA, capital gains tax & low interest rate issues) to keep up with a high immigration growth rate.

iii) Our roads cant sustain high traffic growth rates. We cant fund the capacity increases needed and most of the network is very unsafe 1x1 undivided roads with unsafe priority intersections.

3) [now 4] If we have a population target then based on 1 & 2 the government can tender immigration places to employers to bid for. Employers then need to decide whether to pay the bid fee (i.e. the skilled labour is worth the fee or no the fee is too high and train New Zealanders instead)

And the Greens want to give residence to illegals. FFS. Those drop kicks will bring in their whole families at a massive cost to the tax payer. NZ needs heavily reduced immigration, much tighter controls on eligibility for superannuation and medical e.g. residence and tax paying status for 25yrs. Start cutting off residence after 40yrs of age except in exceptional circumstances. #5millionistoomany.

""more people were entering this country's labour market through permanent and long term migration than from the school system""! Insane.

The Productivity Commission has produce reports about productivity but our productivity continues to decline compared to other countries. What probability a report on a subject they are not expert in will be any more persuasive.

It kicks the can down the road for another year or two. At least the Greens have said what they want however dumb some of those suggestions were.

Not planning for our population growth using immigration is the main reason we have a housing crisis, and infrastructure is struggling due to not being able to cope with the rapid population growth. Can't believe they are only doing this now. 15 years too late IMO.

Well, we've ignored all the Productivity Comissions other recommendations so why not keep going?

They'll soon leave for aussie when they discover paradise ain't cheap

Let me guess the outcomes: "Costs of living are making Kiwis have smaller families, therefore we need to import more people to pay taxes to offset our living costs".

Where can I collect my cheque for $400,000?