Heather du Plessis-Allan: Immigration is a chicken and egg situation

I like the idea of letting another 4 million people into New Zealand in the next ten years, that doesn’t scare me. 

I know that’s going to scare a lot of people, so let’s talk about it.

This is the suggestion from an economist called Dr Kirdan Lees who works for Sense Partners.

Kirdan reckons that if New Zealand removed restrictions on immigration and aimed to rebuild the country like Australia and Canada are doing, we could add another 4 million people by 2032. 

This would mean we’d be pushing 10 million people.

What’s the problem with that? 

Critics will say we don’t’ have the houses. That’s true.

They’ll say we don’t’ have the schools and teachers and the roads to carry that many people. That’s true as well.

But what’s also true is that we will not be able to build those houses and schools and roads quickly, unless we get the immigrants in to do the work.

So it’s a chicken and egg situation. 

You can’t house the immigrants, but you can’t build the houses without the immigrants.

Here are two reasons we don’t have a choice:  

First; we have to take more people. Right now we have two vacancies for every unemployed person in this country.

So even if we forced every one of them into work, we’d only fill half the jobs.

There’s only way to fill the vacancies; bring in people. 

Secondly; we can’t afford to run this country with only 5 million people.  

Everything’s going backwards, from health to crime to roading.

We are almost the size of Japan in terms of geography, yet we’re trying to pay for the necessary roading networks with five million people, compared to Japan's 125 million. 

Ultimately, this is a question of whether we want to supercharge New Zealand or just grind down our economic growth.

If bringing in 4 million people over the next ten years helps us make money and pay for things, I’m up for it. 

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