Chart o’ the day: getting the hell out of dodge

Written By: - Date published: 11:43 am, June 22nd, 2011 - 18 comments
Categories: disaster, im/migration - Tags:

Perfectly understandable. Reckon it’ll be up heaps this month.

Not so understandable is the government’s blase attitude to how the rebuilding will happen:

Hon David Cunliffe: Given his aspirational reply to my earlier supplementary question, is it now he who is dancing from cloud to cloud, or has he seen the new immigration report from Statistics New Zealand that shows chippies, plumbers, and other building industry professionals are leaving the country at a rate of 20 a day, and over 4,000 have left since the first Christchurch earthquake, and how will Christchurch rebuilding happen if his Government makes no effort to retain the skilled workforce we need to undertake that work?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I have not seen those figures. In the first place, it is the responsibility of the companies that expect to rebuild Christchurch to ensure that they have skills. Of course it will be tight, because they are competing with very, very large salaries, particularly those in Western Australia where something like $250 billion worth of capital projects are in the pipeline. However, we are confident that we have the resources of both funding and skills to rebuild Christchurch.

So. No workforce planning. They’re going to wing it.

18 comments on “Chart o’ the day: getting the hell out of dodge ”

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  1. travellerev 1
    22 June 2011 at 12:06 pm

    They never wanted to rebuild the city in the first place. It’s called the politics of discouragement.

  2. jackal 2
    22 June 2011 at 12:22 pm

    The Herald had an OK article today:

    “The people who are leaving can afford to go, in terms of getting employment and many of those left behind in Christchurch are locked in there because they haven’t got any option.”

    • Colonial Viper 2.1
      22 June 2011 at 12:30 pm

      So Christchurch is becoming a city with only the impoverished and desperate left. I can see a few additional social and community problems turning up over the next few months.

      • burt 2.1.1
        22 June 2011 at 9:40 pm

        So Christchurch is becoming a city with only the impoverished and desperate left.

        Yes, those on the right would have accepted that to find work they need to move and they wouldn’t be expecting the tax payers to continue supporting them when they remain in a location with no current employment prospects.

        • ianupnorth 2.1.1.1
          22 June 2011 at 9:47 pm

          You are so full of shit; does your toothbrush come out of your gob with brown stains? Cretin

          Where are they going to find work you muppet? oh that’s right, one of the 170K jobs bill says are going to appear!

    • travellerev 2.2
      22 June 2011 at 12:32 pm

      Wow, are we on speaking terms here? Are you sure what with the pathetic and all?

  3. Alexandra 3
    22 June 2011 at 12:25 pm

    There will be a plan, a secret one which doesnt entail retaining our trades people, or investing enough into trades training for unemployed youth. Instead the government will recruit cheap labourers from asia with the promise of permanent residency. Perhaps even offer them accomodation in shipping containers.

  4. Lanthanide 4
    22 June 2011 at 12:26 pm

    “In the first place, it is the responsibility of the companies that expect to rebuild Christchurch to ensure that they have skills.”
     
    Now I’m not calling for a command-economy, but isn’t it the government’s responsibility (the people whom we elect to manage the economy for us), to ensure that companies responding to a major national event like this are supported for the good of the country?

    • Colonial Viper 4.1
      22 June 2011 at 12:32 pm

      if the private sector decides it is not profitable enough for them to do the rebuild, what then? The usual tactic we see in the US is that the private sector will push for more and more subsidies and breaks from the government until they get the fat they want to do the job.

      Cheaper and faster to do the work needed in the next 10 years with a set up similar to the old Ministry of Works.

  5. higherstandard 5
    22 June 2011 at 1:33 pm

    Frankly I’m astounded it’s so low – they certainly breed them resilient in Canterbury.

  6. dave brown 6
    22 June 2011 at 1:42 pm

    Drives home the point that NZ is part of Australia eh? This means a new Div of Lab where ChCh is tourist hop off, rural servicing hub and cultural watering hole (or half) to keep up the colonial kulcha.
    Doesnt matter what happens to workers so long as there is cheap mobile labour pool cause parliament is a joke votes dont count and banks pull the strings. Banksters dont recognise borders cause their money doesnt. Reckon we should see the RWC as branding the new/old role as farm with circus attached.

    • Colonial Viper 6.1
      22 June 2011 at 6:14 pm

      Seems the bankster occupation of NZ has reached the top of our political food chain.

  7. uke 7
    22 June 2011 at 6:08 pm

    On a trivial note – shouldn’t that be “Dodge” with a capital “D” (as in Dodge City)?

  8. Mike - move2nz 8
    23 June 2011 at 11:03 am

    This is just the tip of the iceberg. While training programmes are planned to provide semi-skilled workers and graduates New Zealand business has been starved of the highest group of skilled, qualified and experienced staff needed to drive the recovery and business growth.

    Record numbers of the most able and experienced New Zealanders leave for Australia. Knowing what is at stake in the international battle for skills Australia and Canada have increased their ‘skilled’ immigration streams by 11 and 22 percent respectively.

    New Zealand has cut immigration overall by 13 percent in answer to our raised unemployment rate, but inexplicably has cut immigration for skilled and experienced workers by much more.

    Careful management of immigration would mean attracting qualified and experienced workers with skills we are short of. They don’t complete with New Zealanders for jobs but instead create jobs and support business growth.

    However temporary workers in the Essential Skills stream (i.e. skills we really need in the short term) have been cut by 25.9 percent (or 7,201 applicants) in the 11 months to May 2011 compared to the same period in the previous year.

    Permanent migrants through the Skilled Migrant Category (i.e. skills we are in dire shortage of and will need for a long time) have been cut by over 21 percent (5,150 so far this year). Lost direct income alone equates to $1.3 billion (let alone taxes and levies).

    Quietly the Immigration Minister has created a massive and unprecedented skills shortfall which will be almost impossible to turn around in the next two to three years.

    Full article:
    http://move2nz.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/228/

    Mike
    move2nz.com

    • dave brown 8.1
      23 June 2011 at 11:55 am

      I think Mike’s information is further evidence of the place of NZ in a changing global division of labor. NZ is returning to its 19th century role as relatively cheap wage, unprocessed commodity producing country adjunct to Australia both under the increasing dominance of China (the 21st century UK). The NACTs are mouthing ‘national pride’ but their pride is in their overseas bank balances. The NACTs are merely the passive agents of this change, clipping their tickets (shareholdings, land grabs, water etc) and keeping the lid on with national emergencies, circuses and Wellywood pap. It also explains the vacancy of the Labour Party whose historic role was to represent ‘national capital’ which is almost completely hollowed out. Its desperate attempts to revive local private entrepreneurism cannot replace this absent national capital. Labour is lost unless it recognises that the state itself is the only national capitalist that can resist the total domination of international finance capital. This should not be a huge leap since it only has to look to China to see the success of this model of development.