ACT has launched its immigration policy ahead of this year's election - with surcharges and tougher limits for serious offenders.
It includes a $6 a day infrastructure surcharge on temporary work visas, which is expected to pocket $80 million a year.
The party also wants stronger English language requirements, and would also establish a dedicated unit around enforcement for people over-staying their visas.
Leader David Seymour says New Zealand was built on immigration, but it's important to keep the right balance.
"What those waves of settlement have done is two things. One is that they built a Kiwi character that's the envy of the world...whether it's our troops out there doing peacekeeping, our sportspeople, our businesspeople - Kiwis have a reputation that we can fix anything, we do what we say we're going to do, we're compassionate and thoughtful people."
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News TALKS'B nine.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
ACT has today announced it's immigration policy. It is a
six point plan that welcomes new migrants, but only if
they share New Zealand's values and we'll play by the
rules to talk us through it. Actlely to David ce
Seymour joins me. Now, good morning, Thank you so much
for coming into the studio.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Good morning, Francesca.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Well done on releasing an immigration policy without referring to
an ethnicity as a meal. No.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Well, look, this is not about anybody or their identity.
It's about what works for New Zealand in the long term.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
So you can concern that there isn't or wouldn't be
any targeting of specific ethnicities.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Of course, not like I mean, we fight racial discrimination
wherever it rears its head, from whatever direction. Our party
is founded in part on the idea that each of
us have exactly the same basic dignity. We're ninety nine
point nine percent the same DNA and our view there's
been far too much focus on the other point one lately.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
So this policy announcement is it's about immigration that works
for New Zealand. So what is it about our current
policies that aren't working well?
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Just to go back one step to help answer that
our country has been built on waves of settlement. You know,
some of my ancestors came here seven hundred years ago
on an open boat. Others came in slightly more closed,
better boats as from Scotland, and every in New Zealander
has a story. But what those waves of settlement have
done is two things. One is that they've built a
(01:38):
Kiwi character that's the envy of the world. I mean,
I've just sound parochial, but whether it's you know, our
troops out there doing peacekeeping, our sports people, our business people,
Kiwis have a reputation that we can fix anything. We
do what we say we're going to do. We're compassionate
and thoughtful people. I think that I'm not just biased.
I think that's true. The second thing they've done is
they've built up an enormous amount of infrastructure. So I
(02:00):
know we frequently point to the problems we have with
infrastructure and the serious no, but if you just take
a moment, in two hundred years, we've gone from basically
a bunch of fishing villages joined together by Canutra to
what we have today, which is a pretty incredible achievement
considering how long and mountainous our country is with a
(02:22):
very small population. So the question is if it's not
working today, And this is the answer to your question,
are we making sure that we keep that deal? And
when I see some of the electoral fraud that we've
had in South Auckland and the latest local body election,
when I talk to people who are working in healthcare
(02:43):
and education saying, look, the amount of issues that we
have with translation are just making it hard to get
our job done. And then when I look at the
infrastructure challenges we have, the way a population grows by
the size of Dunedin every couple of years, but the
actual Dunedin took one hundred and eighty years to build,
I think there needs to be some rebalancing. So it
(03:05):
will always be a country that has built on migration
to some extent, but our building up of infrastructure and
our maintenance of the Kiwi character, those I think are unbalanced.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Right now, you're not necessarily eager to curb emigration, but
it's about treating the right people correct.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
That's absolutely right. And look I mean again, people say
that they're going to cut down an immigration. I just
look at New Zealand First and Labor. You know, they
came in in twenty seventeen. New Zealand First said ten
thousand per year. Labour said twenty thousand per year. When
they were elected it was sixty thousand. So you'd think, okay,
they're going to get it down a bit based on
(03:42):
what they campaigned on. By the time they closed the
border for COVID, it was eighty thousand. Now those guys
brought in a couple of hundred thousand people, and then
in the midst of COVID they gave the resident visa
twenty twenty one and just said, hey, no questions asked,
you're all residents. That is what we're dealing with. A
huge number of low skilled people that got stranded here
(04:03):
during COVID suddenly became residiance.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
So who are the right people?
Speaker 3 (04:06):
I think the people that are the right people, first
of all, are people that are going to sign up
to a set of values. You know, we believe men
and women are equal, we have to speak English, we
believe in free speech. Religions a private matter, so you
have to be prepared to sign up to that basic
Kiwi character that we've built. The second thing is that
you have to be somebody who is a net contributor
(04:27):
to our infrastructure and our social services. And that's why
we're saying, look, and this is an idea that was
in my book that I published almost a decade ago.
There should be a daily fee or levee for infrastructure
for your first couple of years here. So if you
get a temporary visa, not a residence visa, but a
temporary visa, then we would say there's a six dollars
(04:51):
a day levy and that effectively goes into a fund
for infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Okay, that's interesting, So how does that work. Is that
someone who's got a temporary working visa, so they're coming
to a job yep. So they're immediately starting a job yep.
And they're paying tax and on top of that, they're
going to pay an infrastructure fee exactly.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
And what we calculate is that that would generate about
eighty million dollars a year. So you imagine every few
years saying look out of the temporary worker fund. Migrants
to New Zealand have just funded the building of a
new hospital and that reminds me of what our colonial
(05:29):
migrant history was like that people came and people built.
I think we've lost a bit of that and it's
led to some resentment but also genuine infrastructure problem.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
So if you've come, you've got a job, you're working,
you're paying your tax, how many for how many years
you're gonna have to pay tax? And six dollars a day?
When's your contribution?
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Well, well, it's while you're on a temporary migrant visa.
So by the time you've become a permanent resident, let
alone a citizen, you're out of that. But if you're
on a temporary migrant visa, like a skilled workforce visa,
a student visa, whatever, then you're liable to that fee.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Okay, And do you think that you know a lot
of these people are potentially coming in to work on
low wage jobs. Do you think that will have an
impact on getting the workers, the skilled workers that we need.
Is similar to what happens in Australia.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Say, well, just bear in mind that Australia charges quite
a lot more than us. In fact, most countries do.
Most New Zealand does our visas on a cost recovery basis.
So we basically give people visas for the cost of
processing the visas. Just about every other country, including Australia,
eclips of the ticket what we're proposing with the six
dollars a day. Obviously that depends on what type of
(06:35):
visa and how long you're there and so on, but
basically brings us into line with Australia.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
I find the population policy really fascinating because it's an
interesting problem to try and solve because we've got slow
population growth, we've got record low fertility, we've got a
rapidly aging population. We kind of need young tax paying
workers to help us deal with the ballooning costs that
we're going to deal with that like superannuation and the
(07:01):
pressure on health. But at the same time you need
to manage the population so that it's not adding to
the pressure, as you say, on infrastructure and health. That's
a really tricky balance to me, is it?
Speaker 3 (07:12):
And balance is the key word here? Absolutely right. We
are in a way in a war for a talent,
So we're not going out there saying immigration is going
to stop. We're not saying we're going to slash it.
The reason I gave that example of New Zealand first
and labor. They tried this, they went the opposite direction
because they were faced up to reality. But we do
(07:32):
need to start asking how do we contribute to the
key character, how do we pay for infrastructure, how do
we ensure that people aren't wroughting the rules? And another
thing we would fund from this levee is much higher
and for who overstats and we just can't find them?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
And how are they draining on the country at the moment.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Well there, what they're doing is they're showing that you
don't actually have to follow the rules. And once you
have a culture where you say, actually the rules don't matter.
All the people that I've helped over the years have
come to my electorate office saying, we're trying to follow
the rules and we've been put in really difficult situations.
I don't believe that it's right to have twenty thousand
(08:08):
people out there who have just gone around that. And
when you look at some of these cultural problems with
the key we character, as I talk about it, that
doesn't include twenty thousand people who are law breakers from
the get go.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
So this isn't and there are parts of this policy
which aren't necessarily new, but they are about enforcing the
rules that are already in place, and this is an
example of them. So how do you go about enforcing that?
Speaker 3 (08:30):
So we propose having a unit within Immigration New Zealand
that will be funded in part from this levee, this
infrastructure levy we're talking about, and they're going to do
things like start asking what exactly is the point of
a Domino's being an accredited employer work visa holder, Because
(08:50):
at the moment we've had about two and a half
thousand fast food workers led in as high skilled workers allegedly,
whereas we haven't had anything like that when it comes
to say software engineers that are supposed to be the
point of it really just about saying, look, how do
we close the gap between the supposedly very strict rules
(09:11):
that New Zealand has and the reality that people see
every day people that have somehow got through the system
without anything like a high level of skill.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Why isn't the standard of English required at the moment
good enough?
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Frankly, because I talk to people who work in education,
I talk to people who work in healthcare, and these
are people who are not anti immigrant, you know, the
people who are not out there, you know with any
of that kind of sentiment normally, but they say, look,
I go to work, I do my best, and having
to get a translator in for every second patient just
makes it too hard. The inefficiency that we're facing is enormous.
(09:49):
And by the way, these are usually people that are
secondary applicants, so not the primary skilled person, but their
parents or family that have come in that they're just
putting a drain. They're one of the reasons that New
Zealand seems so hard right now, and I think we
have to start being a bit more honest about that.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Thank you so much for coming in on a Sunday morning.
Really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News TALKS'B nine.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
ACT has today announced it's immigration policy. It is a
six point plan that welcomes new migrants, but only if
they share New Zealand's values and we'll play by the
rules to talk us through it. Actlely to David ce
Seymour joins me. Now, good morning, Thank you so much
for coming into the studio.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Good morning, Francesca.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Well done on releasing an immigration policy without referring to
an ethnicity as a meal. No.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Well, look, this is not about anybody or their identity.
It's about what works for New Zealand in the long term.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
So you can concern that there isn't or wouldn't be
any targeting of specific ethnicities.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Of course, not like I mean, we fight racial discrimination
wherever it rears its head, from whatever direction. Our party
is founded in part on the idea that each of
us have exactly the same basic dignity. We're ninety nine
point nine percent the same DNA and our view there's
been far too much focus on the other point one lately.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
So this policy announcement is it's about immigration that works
for New Zealand. So what is it about our current
policies that aren't working well?
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Just to go back one step to help answer that
our country has been built on waves of settlement. You know,
some of my ancestors came here seven hundred years ago
on an open boat. Others came in slightly more closed,
better boats as from Scotland, and every in New Zealander
has a story. But what those waves of settlement have
done is two things. One is that they've built a
(01:38):
Kiwi character that's the envy of the world. I mean,
I've just sound parochial, but whether it's you know, our
troops out there doing peacekeeping, our sports people, our business people,
Kiwis have a reputation that we can fix anything. We
do what we say we're going to do. We're compassionate
and thoughtful people. I think that I'm not just biased.
I think that's true. The second thing they've done is
they've built up an enormous amount of infrastructure. So I
(02:00):
know we frequently point to the problems we have with
infrastructure and the serious no, but if you just take
a moment, in two hundred years, we've gone from basically
a bunch of fishing villages joined together by Canutra to
what we have today, which is a pretty incredible achievement
considering how long and mountainous our country is with a
(02:22):
very small population. So the question is if it's not
working today, And this is the answer to your question,
are we making sure that we keep that deal? And
when I see some of the electoral fraud that we've
had in South Auckland and the latest local body election,
when I talk to people who are working in healthcare
(02:43):
and education saying, look, the amount of issues that we
have with translation are just making it hard to get
our job done. And then when I look at the
infrastructure challenges we have, the way a population grows by
the size of Dunedin every couple of years, but the
actual Dunedin took one hundred and eighty years to build,
I think there needs to be some rebalancing. So it
(03:05):
will always be a country that has built on migration
to some extent, but our building up of infrastructure and
our maintenance of the Kiwi character, those I think are unbalanced.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Right now, you're not necessarily eager to curb emigration, but
it's about treating the right people correct.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
That's absolutely right. And look I mean again, people say
that they're going to cut down an immigration. I just
look at New Zealand First and Labor. You know, they
came in in twenty seventeen. New Zealand First said ten
thousand per year. Labour said twenty thousand per year. When
they were elected it was sixty thousand. So you'd think, okay,
they're going to get it down a bit based on
(03:42):
what they campaigned on. By the time they closed the
border for COVID, it was eighty thousand. Now those guys
brought in a couple of hundred thousand people, and then
in the midst of COVID they gave the resident visa
twenty twenty one and just said, hey, no questions asked,
you're all residents. That is what we're dealing with. A
huge number of low skilled people that got stranded here
(04:03):
during COVID suddenly became residiance.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
So who are the right people?
Speaker 3 (04:06):
I think the people that are the right people, first
of all, are people that are going to sign up
to a set of values. You know, we believe men
and women are equal, we have to speak English, we
believe in free speech. Religions a private matter, so you
have to be prepared to sign up to that basic
Kiwi character that we've built. The second thing is that
you have to be somebody who is a net contributor
(04:27):
to our infrastructure and our social services. And that's why
we're saying, look, and this is an idea that was
in my book that I published almost a decade ago.
There should be a daily fee or levee for infrastructure
for your first couple of years here. So if you
get a temporary visa, not a residence visa, but a
temporary visa, then we would say there's a six dollars
(04:51):
a day levy and that effectively goes into a fund
for infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Okay, that's interesting, So how does that work. Is that
someone who's got a temporary working visa, so they're coming
to a job yep. So they're immediately starting a job yep.
And they're paying tax and on top of that, they're
going to pay an infrastructure fee exactly.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
And what we calculate is that that would generate about
eighty million dollars a year. So you imagine every few
years saying look out of the temporary worker fund. Migrants
to New Zealand have just funded the building of a
new hospital and that reminds me of what our colonial
(05:29):
migrant history was like that people came and people built.
I think we've lost a bit of that and it's
led to some resentment but also genuine infrastructure problem.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
So if you've come, you've got a job, you're working,
you're paying your tax, how many for how many years
you're gonna have to pay tax? And six dollars a day?
When's your contribution?
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Well, well, it's while you're on a temporary migrant visa.
So by the time you've become a permanent resident, let
alone a citizen, you're out of that. But if you're
on a temporary migrant visa, like a skilled workforce visa,
a student visa, whatever, then you're liable to that fee.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Okay, And do you think that you know a lot
of these people are potentially coming in to work on
low wage jobs. Do you think that will have an
impact on getting the workers, the skilled workers that we need.
Is similar to what happens in Australia.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Say, well, just bear in mind that Australia charges quite
a lot more than us. In fact, most countries do.
Most New Zealand does our visas on a cost recovery basis.
So we basically give people visas for the cost of
processing the visas. Just about every other country, including Australia,
eclips of the ticket what we're proposing with the six
dollars a day. Obviously that depends on what type of
(06:35):
visa and how long you're there and so on, but
basically brings us into line with Australia.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
I find the population policy really fascinating because it's an
interesting problem to try and solve because we've got slow
population growth, we've got record low fertility, we've got a
rapidly aging population. We kind of need young tax paying
workers to help us deal with the ballooning costs that
we're going to deal with that like superannuation and the
(07:01):
pressure on health. But at the same time you need
to manage the population so that it's not adding to
the pressure, as you say, on infrastructure and health. That's
a really tricky balance to me, is it?
Speaker 3 (07:12):
And balance is the key word here? Absolutely right. We
are in a way in a war for a talent,
So we're not going out there saying immigration is going
to stop. We're not saying we're going to slash it.
The reason I gave that example of New Zealand first
and labor. They tried this, they went the opposite direction
because they were faced up to reality. But we do
(07:32):
need to start asking how do we contribute to the
key character, how do we pay for infrastructure, how do
we ensure that people aren't wroughting the rules? And another
thing we would fund from this levee is much higher
and for who overstats and we just can't find them?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
And how are they draining on the country at the moment.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Well there, what they're doing is they're showing that you
don't actually have to follow the rules. And once you
have a culture where you say, actually the rules don't matter.
All the people that I've helped over the years have
come to my electorate office saying, we're trying to follow
the rules and we've been put in really difficult situations.
I don't believe that it's right to have twenty thousand
(08:08):
people out there who have just gone around that. And
when you look at some of these cultural problems with
the key we character, as I talk about it, that
doesn't include twenty thousand people who are law breakers from
the get go.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
So this isn't and there are parts of this policy
which aren't necessarily new, but they are about enforcing the
rules that are already in place, and this is an
example of them. So how do you go about enforcing that?
Speaker 3 (08:30):
So we propose having a unit within Immigration New Zealand
that will be funded in part from this levee, this
infrastructure levy we're talking about, and they're going to do
things like start asking what exactly is the point of
a Domino's being an accredited employer work visa holder, Because
(08:50):
at the moment we've had about two and a half
thousand fast food workers led in as high skilled workers allegedly,
whereas we haven't had anything like that when it comes
to say software engineers that are supposed to be the
point of it really just about saying, look, how do
we close the gap between the supposedly very strict rules
(09:11):
that New Zealand has and the reality that people see
every day people that have somehow got through the system
without anything like a high level of skill.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Why isn't the standard of English required at the moment
good enough?
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Frankly, because I talk to people who work in education,
I talk to people who work in healthcare, and these
are people who are not anti immigrant, you know, the
people who are not out there, you know with any
of that kind of sentiment normally, but they say, look,
I go to work, I do my best, and having
to get a translator in for every second patient just
makes it too hard. The inefficiency that we're facing is enormous.
(09:49):
And by the way, these are usually people that are
secondary applicants, so not the primary skilled person, but their
parents or family that have come in that they're just
putting a drain. They're one of the reasons that New
Zealand seems so hard right now, and I think we
have to start being a bit more honest about that.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Thank you so much for coming in on a Sunday morning.
Really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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