New Zealand's population grew 2% in the year to September, equivalent to 90,600 people, which is the fastest growth rate since Statistics New Zealand started tracking population estimates in 1991.
Statistics NZ estimates the country's population hit 4,622,200 at September 30, an increase of 90,600 from 4,531,600 a year earlier. An increase of 2% over 12 months has only been reached once before, during the 12 months to June 2003 when the population swelled by 78,700 to 4,027,200.
Technically, however, the spike this year is slightly higher coming in at 1.999% versus 1.993% in 2003. And the annual population growth of 90,600 is the biggest in the Statistics NZ series.
That is more than the whole Whangarei District, or Palmerston North city - in one year.
The population surge comes off the back of record net migration, which hit a record high of 61,234 in the year to September 2015. The annual gain in permanent and long-term migrants has been setting new records for more than a year, helping add to pressures in the Auckland housing market given the lion's share of new arrivals set up home in Auckland.
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11 Comments
and big business loves it lots of cheap labour
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=115…
Winston Peters and Andrew Little need to get on top of this and point out to NZ that these so called "skilled" migrants are taking our unskilled jobs, taking up our social services, and driving up the cost of housing.
As an anecdote: on a construction job of mine being undertaken by a large firm last week, the company doing absolutely straightforward demolition work employed unskilled labourers from Asia who barely spoke any English and were almost a danger on site as they couldn't understand instructions. What the hell is going on? They could have employed locals but opted for cheap labour imports...
Note: I did not want to employ the said contractor but it was a joint arrangement with a neighbour and their insurer, so I was forced into it as part of a negotiated "arrangement"...(despite vehement opposition).
At that rate, the population will double by 2050.
What stupid policy... pack in sardines and hope this will trigger better lifestyles for existing NZers...
Moreover don't charge anyone for the privilege of coming here...and furthermore let them come here with nothing, not even any skills or qualifications, work for minimum wage and bludge off our social services...
A perfect strategy to send NZ straight to the third world by a short sighted day trader who can't even hammer a nail...
Which is leading to the likes of this -
http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/74069772/middlemore-hospital-full-as-do…
Talk to some of your Hosp Drs and Nurses and they will tell of the large numbers of 'new people' who cannot speak english (so interpretor at $80 hour) who have chronic illnesses from their home country (look at some of their home country smoking rates) and you can get an idea of where this nonsense is heading. Labour and the Greens are too socially blind to make an issue, so Winnie aside, the Nats go unchallenged..
Last year was at North Shore hospital and witnessed two old Chinese folk trying to make the the nurses understand where the pain was. Ooh Ahh Cantona they were going on with. Two aspirin and go home. They had most likely come in under the balance of family and sonny boy and wife had gone back to the home country to continue running the family business after setting up the bolt hole. No tax probably getting paid here I imagine.
Housing, hospitals, schools, road traffic, crime.
Well at least we get the short term increase in GDP from immigrants building houses for immigrants building houses for immigrants ....that might give the wide boy another term if Kiwis are foolish enough to allow this immigration Ponzi to continue.
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