We have tightened our Commenting Policy guidelines around the discussion of immigration issues

International students studying in NZ are our 5th largest export revenue earner,earning 2.6 billion.   NZ has a good reputation in this area of tolerance.   

After living for a long time is Singapore, I have found:

-        Most things cost more for foreigners.  From a drink at the local “dairy” to hospitals and healthcare.  It’s blatant. There is a pricing structure for almost everything based on whether you are a foreigner or not.

-        Buying property in Singapore is subject to huge taxes, and in a lot of cases is not possible for foreigners.

-        Certain races of people are barred from using some condo facilities, like pools.

-        Career progression is frowned upon for foreigners, over Singaporeans

-        It’s okay to list the race of persons you do not want to rent your apartment in an advert.

-        Police do not investigate crimes perpetrated on people of certain races

-        Etc etc etc

After coming from NZ, where we uphold the strictest levels of anti-racism, this has come as quite a shock.  It is clear to me that the rest of the world does not have such high standards!

I’m not saying we should be more racist, but discussion of policies that include restriction of property purchase to foreigners is in my opinion not racist OR xenophobic at all.

When will NZ’ers realise that we are one of the few countries left in the world without such policies?  When the NZ economy crashes because of retreating foreign investment? When the majority of NZ’es are renters in their own country?

By then, it will be too late.

I have just had a long time friend staying with me here in Melbourne for a couple of weeks on the latest of his 5 year returns to renew his Australian passport and drivers licence and medicare.

He is an Indian national

He came to Australia 20 years ago, settled, and obtained Australian citizenship

Some years ago his parents died

He sold his apartment in Melbourne and returned back to India

It is unlikely he will return to reside in Australia permanently

He now lives in his deceased parents apartment in Mumbai

He can't register or transfer it into his own name

As an Australian citizen he is not allowed to own property in India

Even though he was born there and grew up there

I will most certainly continue to state my opposition to sales of land, houses and some strategic businesses to non-resident foreigners. I will also continue to express my opposition to the what looks like pretty lax immigration rules to me, as I believe we now live in an age where growth can longer be the basket we put all our prosperity eggs into

There's racism then there's burying your head in the sand.

New Zealand's real economy involves exporting primary produce to the rest of world does it not? How David does increasing our internal consumption of these products through constant population increase truly enrich our country?



The great appeal of the 'kiwi lifestyle' and our 'clean green image' *cough cough* is based around our low population by international standards. The fact that we can get into unspoilt nature with minimal effort or time compared to other countries. Look at the UK, China, India, is that would we aspire to become like one day? Why do you think people from the larger countries are flocking here to get a piece of this lifestyle!?



What I'd like to ask people like you is where does growth for growths sake ever end? I'd rather we aim for a stable population level at a similar level to what we have now so that we are not putting ever increasing pressures on infrastructure, environment or compromising our current standards of living. I don't give a damn where the immigrants are from, it's not about race. It's about preserving what makes this country so unique and allowing future generations to enjoy the same environment that we did.



Why can’t we be that one country in the world that aims not to fill itself to the brim with people, do we really need to go down the same track.

Yes David.  Stupid racist personalised abuse should be chopped.  But your new notice does seem to suggest you might also chop any  view on immigration you disagree with.

There are better moves.  Plrease chop PDK every time he tells somebody they don't know how to think.  

An Australian perspective

quote

Forget about off-the-plan apartments. What cashed-up overseas Chinese buyers really want is a house in Australia, and more precisely, the land on which the house sits.

For the right house in the right suburb, they are outbidding Australian buyers by $100,000 to $200,000 – and sometimes more – to secure the property. They are importing inflation to their country of choice.

Agree with you , DC , I can remember growing up in the 60's when it wasn't just the one TV station ( NZBC ) that was black & white .... our whole lives were gloomy shades of grey .... The 6 o'clock swill .... long queues at the P.O. .... needing to beg for a house mortgage .... watching the drippy " Carry On " flicks at the local cinema .... grey and khaki trousers only , nothing in blue ... the only pasta was soggy spaghetti out of a tin ....

... the only foreign food was some dodgy Chinese restuarants in one of the 4 big cities ....

We're living the global dream now in NZ , fully connected to the rest of the planet , enjoying cultural diversity , fresh perspectives , fostering business interconnections across the globe ...

... seriously don't wanna go back to Winston Peters  " fortress NZ " concept .... the mistake of those who wish to push back the clock to a " golden " bygone era  is their lack of memory  , because if anything it's more like it was now than it was then ...

Interesting directive David Chaston

Your "mission statement" is "helping you make financial decisions"

A common belief is the house you purchase to live in will be the biggest investment you ever make. On one view, both the penetration of non-resident investors and migration into New Zealand is possibly the largest influence on the financial fabric of New Zealand society in so many respects. It is affecting land prices, house prices, leading to the cost of infrastructure, education, health, and impacting on lifestyle as we know it, and the now, new, emerging impact of pollution on our coastal beaches. It is potentially the most important topic you can and should discuss in this coming election year

Your policy runs the risk of being akin to "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil"

Journalistically you should reflect the views of the financial "community"  in which you operate and exist in

This is a huge iceberg like topic with the visible part on the surface and the invisible part looming underneath - unseen - but it is there - should you ignore it?

Any "force" has a cause and effect. Newtons Law - For every action, there is always an equal and opposite reaction. ... Forces always come in pairs - equal and opposite action-reaction force pairs

It is quite evident that the inbound flood of off-shore-owned-money pouring into hard-assets is having a profound societal impact. It is starting to show up in a two-tier society. The tier that is coming into new zealand is very wealthy. The two-tiered division is being imported, supported and encouraged by government policies.

This debate is currently being conducted in a vacuum. What is government policy? Policy with regard to both cause and affect? It is all very well saying immigration is good. It has a less visible downside which has a societal affect. If you feel you need to control the debate you should lead from the front.

Start off with a series of interviews with the government boffins and ask the questions both the positive case, and the negative case, find out what the policies are, then, with a structure available, we can have the debate.

Your editorial track record has been to ignore it. On the two occasions you have ventured into print you have only presented the positive case in the face of increasingly evident downsides If the societal changes occurring in Auckland as a result of unfettered migration continue and you remain silent, and you enforce silence, then you are both complicit and culpable in the results.

Your pink slip is showing David Chaston

This is a true story. I know. I was working at the Auckland Star

The General Manager was Bill Hickey, the Managing Director and editor-in-chief was Geoffery Upton

One day the paper was running an article that was contrary to the personal views of Geoff Upton who was a tall man, an impressive 6ft 6". The press run had started for the day, and Upton went down to the press room and clambered down the gallery decks and commanded the press operator to "stop the presses". The chief press operator, a large corpulent maori who was 6ft tall himself, turned to Upton and told him to "piss off - I only stop the presses for a pink-slip"

Upton rose up to his full imposing height and yelled "I am the pink-slip"

[low quality comment deleted. Ed]

Thank you, David.

This country has been built on a long-term programme of welcoming migrants [from multicultural backgrounds? ].

.................

But we reach diminishing returns? We are developed?

Our main industries don't benefit from economies of scale?

The construction industry has grown by 10,000 firms since 2002, [and] now employed 7 per cent of the New Zealand workforce - around 170,000 people - and generated annual revenues of $30 billion. Faces challenges  - low productivity, the aftermath of the leaky building fiasco, and the vulnerability of the industry to boom and bust cycles

Assimilation can take a generation or so, and so far, using tolerant long-term assessments this process has been hugely beneficial for the country.

There is no consensus that immigration is good for New Zealanders. Multiculturalism is a left-wing (social engineering policy) on which the tide is turning. Population increase benefits some people but not others; percapita GDP and the effect on the lived environment are what matter.

so far, using tolerant long-term assessments this process has been hugely beneficial for the country.

You can't compare our developmental stages as when aerial topdressing was developed bringing the hill country into productivity. From the 1990's:

“The big adverse gap in productivity between New Zealand and other countries opened up from the 1970s to the early 1990s. The policy choice that increased immigration – given the number of employers increasingly unable to pay First-World wages to the existing population and all the capital requirements that increasing populations involve – looks likely to have worked almost directly against the adjustment New Zealand needed to make and it might have been better off with a lower rate of net immigration. This adjustment would have involved a lower real interest rate (and cost of capital) and a lower real exchange rate, meaning a more favourable environment for raising the low level of productive capital per worker and labour productivity. The low level of capital per worker is a striking symptom of New Zealand’s economic challenge.
”
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/reviews-consultation/savingsworkinggroup/pdfs/swg-report-jan11.pdf

There is an enormous difference between discrimination as outlined in the NZ Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and commenting on a persons ethnicity.

Maybe posters on interest should identify ethnicity by longitude and latitude ;-)

Maybe comments on immigration would be more moderate if journalists could be more balanced.  By a country mile journalists portray immigration as positve whereas people may suffer cognitive dissonance. The truth is that many economists don't believe high immigration levels are good for NZ but bank economists are the most prominent comentators. In academia you have people like Professor Spoonley whose starting point  is the problemisation of immigration (immigration isn't a problem until it is made one). His theories seem to suggest that opposition to immigration is about maintaining white power. The evidence is that all humans are racist in so far they have an initial preference for people of their own ethnicity having evolved in societies which were homogenous. This applies to Chinese or any group.

If we had land based taxation so the person in the prime site pays more than the person in a gully; when property developers and banks stop benefiting from land inflation

. Then (as Warren Buffet says) we will see whose (moral position) is swimming in the nude.

I think interest.co.nz's tightening of policy on immigration debates shows that it knows it's the anti-immigration-types that can't be trusted to not drag the debate into a 'racist gutter' so to speak.

And I am not surprised at these policy changes either. The views some people air on this website are only expressed when they are hiding behind their anonomous website name.

Whenever a comment is deleted, it's always and everytime written by one of the anti-immigrant mob, the type of person who demonstrates their own insecurity about aspects of their own life. 

Immigrants, with appropriate skills as defined by the rules, can only add to the dynamism, variety and economic well-being of the country.

I think interest.co.nz's tightening of policy on immigration debates shows that it knows it's the anti-immigration-types that can't be trusted to not drag the debate into a 'racist gutter' so to speak.

.......

Down in the gutter you will find the Savings working Group, the Australian Productivity Commision, Paul Krugman, the british House of Lords, various economists (no time for links )

on the other hand (in favour) you'll find property investors, Harcourts Shanghai, the construction industry, immigration lawyers, the left (Labour/ Green), banks.

One of the problems is (as where) Asians keep putting their hands up at auction. But who are these? They are Kiwis (we are told). But they didn't all come in the gold rushes and aren't we assured that immigrants don't buy houses (it's returning Kiwis). That last point was a corner stone assumption of the NZ Productivity Commision.

Mr Chaston, the people that comment here are not stupid. If they were, they would comenting on stuff.co.nz or something. Read the thread and get a feeling for what folks feel like. It's pretty obvious.

David I don't know if you missed it last year but I posted on the effect that non-resident buyers of property have on the money supply. While immigration is an economic issue that does need to be discussed in greater depth, the allowance of unrestrained foreign buying could be a crisis in the making.

The money supply is increased when mortgages are created. RBNZ stats show that about 74% of our money supply consists of this sort of debt with a furthe 8% personal borrowing. That doesn't leave much for business.

When a non-resident buyer pays cash for a property they retire a mortage. This action as the effect of contracting the money supply and making borrowing more difficult for productive enterprise. Since the economy relies on an expanding money supply then contracting it will definitely cause a recession at some point, and the artificially inflated house prices will collapse.

What I haven't yet looked at is how the shortfall from this contraction is made up, is it possible that these non-resident buyers are causing greater borrowing by the government?

"This country has been built on a long-term programme of welcoming migrants [from multicultural backgrounds"

I don't believe that is the case at all David, the history of this country is about property speculation and finance surrounding that. Ask Iain Parker about all that, he has the evidence. The treaty was primarily about the crown securing the right to issue title over land so that money could then be loaned against it. Nothing has changed and there is a need for finance to keep increasing the number and value of titles.

“When truth is replaced by silence,the silence is a lie.” 

― Yevgeny Yevtushenko

“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.” 

― Salman Rushdie

“Did you ever hear anyone say, 'That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very damaging to me'?” 

― Joseph Henry Jackson

“All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news.” 

― George Orwell, 

You are reaching pretty hard there AndrewJ with those quotes. That's kind of the problem the internet allows - making grand claims that hardly relate to the issue at hand, except perhaps in some pointy-headed way.

The issue is migrant bashing, under cover of some boomer angst over taking some perceived restriction of common 'rights' to resources. It's an unwillingness to share. In my view it is highly selfish. It has nothing to do with what other countries do, nor even how we regulate non-resident behaviour here.

It is certainly nothing to do with censorship. Anyone can set up their own blog or news service. It does take work though which might put some people off. Or there is a huge choice about where to comment, even in New Zealand.

Just no immigrant bashing - no matter how couched - on interest.co.nz.

Actually, the tone of this thread is pretty good. Which proves immigration policy discussions can be held successfully here.

Immigration ?

Make it so Number One.

Competing with new rich immigrants is the problem in New Zealand for all existing average residents, here already.

Kiwis cannot out bid anyone who comes in with more money than the average Kiwi can borrow or have already.

That is simple economics.

That some people will welcome this to make money any way they can, will simply be obvious to everyone here.

That some greedy people do not care about average people is obvious. 

That Auckland is the main centre for this rich pickings is obvious to a blind man.

That we cannot say the obvious, is obviously censorship, wherever we originated from.

I am an immgrant. I came here to get away from this type of put down, no freedom of expression. 

If being racist is being observant, then I am racist.

Censorship on the internet or the written word, or even the phone lines is an obvious trait of those who do not welcome the truth, no matter how carefully we word ourselves.

Some countries control their people, their economies this way.

Is it racist to point this out.

Is this the thin end of the wedge.

Whatever next, will we import? to control the money supply.