Written By: - Date published: 4:01 pm, June 20th, 2008 - 48 comments
Categories: im/migration, national, slippery -
Tags: 'new zealand sucks' campaign
Every month, Stats releases migration figures. Each month, they show little change in the pattern from last month. And each month, National comes out all in a fury over the figures as if they herald Armageddon while offering no substance, just a lot of bluster.
Nothing has changed from April. In the month of April, a net 3210 Kiwis emigrated to Aussie, in May 2,833. We are at a high point of the migration cycle, and it remains well within the trends of previous cycles. Net immigration in the April year was 4666, in the May year: 4,931. As before, in the last year 99.33% of Kiwis liked New Zealand so much they stayed here.
We could have a serious debate about how to improve wages and public services so more people will stay here but National’s ‘New Zealand sucks’ campaign is not about serious debate. This is just another hit and run attack from National designed to sow discontent, not provide answers.
No mention in the Nats’ press release of the wage gap they used to be so obsessed with, either. Because they’ve got no policy, no answer, only attack lines and they think that’s all it will take to get them back into power.
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Scoopit!
Reading this:
The grass isn’t greener across the Ditch
I would say that people are leaving for perceived economic reasons.
erikter: “Labour has started The Standard.” Colin Espiner appears to agree with you.
bill brown: “I would say that people are leaving for perceived economic reasons.”
The Sunday Star Times article was interesting (though the link you gave appears to go nowhere now).
It was interesting that the examples they offered for housing were within 4km of the central city, I suspect the situation would be similarly unaffordable within 4 kms of downtown Auckland i.e. Herne Bay, Newmarket, Parnell, Remuera, Ponsonby. It would be interesting to compare Botany Downs with its equivalent in Australia: this is more the kind of dormitory suburb young families would be headed to.
Lynn – It might just be me but you seem to be getting pretty heavy handed with the ban threats lately. Is this nicotine deprivation frustration, or is there a policy drift going on? I don’t really like most of the people you threaten anyway, but I’m just really wary of bans. I assume you want to keep this a forum for ideas and not a podium for moderated speech? Irish, you made a similar comment about “not appreciating being told how to run our blog” just the other day.
I know we’re guests, and you are hosts. But why the menace?
Maybe it’s not really menace and I’m just overly sensitive to it. The rules on banning just seem very subjective.
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Bernard, I re-read your article and can barely be bothered commenting on it. I think your analysis is quite weak. A couple of points.
1)
Tax policy clearly will have almost no impact on the disparities you mention earlier in the piece, especially since you’re simultaneously condemning what people DO with their discretionary income when they have it. The rest of your second paragraph is just meaningless platitudes.
2.
That’s your vision for NZ? Farming and tourism? Oh yeah, real high value stuff that – if we followed your guidelines then all the professionals who are leaving would really have a reason!
You also ignore my point above, that the actual level of immigration is almost meaninglessly small and is unlikely to result in any long term skill or culture shift, and the stuff article which Bill linked to (functional link here), which says that (with the obvious exception of those who are unemployed in NZ and become employed in Aus) many are likely to be worse off economically in Australia.
T-rex
Oy T-rex what are you saying here?
Crap coming out of the exhaust isn’t so flash, but you could run it on a oxyhydrogen mix just as readily as you could a helicopter
Just talking to bill about helicopters and person-sized jet wings.
If you’re wondering about the oxyhydrogen reference – Things like jets and helicopters traditionally require fuels with high energy and power density. While there are numerous replacement technologies potentially becoming available in the time frame we’re talking about, they’ll both be equally applicable to each technology, so not really relevant. I just took the most obvious existing one – reasonably high power density combustible which would work in a gas turbine engine and was low emission (I’d say zero, except there are some issues with high-atmosphere water vapour).
Although really you’d never carry the oxygen around with you. Way too heavy considering it’s abundantly available all around.
I think the only reason the electrolysis systems you’re playing with inject oxyhydro rather than just hydrogen is that you’re generating it anyway and it’s far less effort just to squirt it in as well than to try and separate the two (for no benefit).
yeah, but in 100 years I’ll want to go out of the atmosphere, so taking O(subscript)2 will be necessary anyway.
Nah, combustion will be old hat by then
Unless you meant to breath.
Maybe breathing will be old hat by then too though. 100 years? You’re a nano-medicine fan then?
Your helicopter wouldn’t work in space anyway
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Mods – after careful consideration (while driving to buy delicious iskender kebab for dinner, mmm) I decided that actually “We’ll ban you if you piss us off” is a fantastic system and subjective justice is fine with me. If you’ve got the time to apply it, more power to you!
The NZ Sucks Party will be cancelling their Sunday Star Times subscriptions today. At last someone is writing in depth on the reality that the grass is not so green as Key and the Kiwi Sucks Party make out on the other side of the Tasman.
Well done SST.
T-Rex: Partially will be nicotine. But mostly ‘policy’.
I do tend to cycle my moderation anyway for general uncertainty reasons. The point is that if we stuck in actual written down rules or followed a absolutely consistent pattern, then some damn legal orientated person will try to rort the system. So what we have is vigilante justice with some general principles which each of us interpretes as we choose and as we have time. That leaves it up to the commentators to assess their own level of risk.
You’ll note that I usually warn first these days. But I’m quite sarcastic because a lot of this should be obvious to anyone who has bothered read the blog comments before putting in their penny’s worth. Hell if they read the policy it’d be obvious. So I reward stupidity.
So it is subjective and yes we’re very aware of the need to not stifle debate. But we’re also aware of what happens when it isn’t moderated. It was tried and we got threads with massive number of comments with essentially zero useful content.
It seems to work for the majority of the commentators both left and right and other. Certainly shows up in the quality of the comments.
“Your helicopter wouldn’t work in space anyway”
You’re right – I think you may have a convert – baby steps.