Population Policy debate comes into focus

Friday, 14 May 2021

One slide in Massey University Professor Paul Spoonley’s presentation to the Institute of Directors two weeks ago seemed to provoke the most audible gasp.

The country’s territorial authorities were laid out on a map colour-coded by demographic. By 2040 people over 65 years old will be the fastest growing demographic group in 56 of our 67 territorial authorities.

A later slide reported two-thirds of the country’s regions would be in a state of population stagnation or decline by then.

Up until now our ageing population has been bolstered by a huge growth in migrants. Between 2006 and 2013 we had a net gain of just 35,000 migrants over seven years, but between 2013 and 2020 we had a net migration gain of 400,000 people.

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**

In 2019 we had one of the highest net migration inflows per head of population, with 11.4 per 1000 people, compared to 2.4 per 1000 in Britain and 3.8 per 1000 in the United States.

Businesses have benefited from this large growth in labour, and admitted as much during the conference’s morning tea break. Over danishes, croissants, bliss balls and coffee, directors confessed migrants on work visas sometimes made up the majority of their workers in areas like information technology.

Now the migration tap has been turned off and those settings could stay this way for a significant period of time according to Spoonley.

He thinks other long-term trends could keep the migration tap turned off. For starters, one of our big sources of migrants, China, will be less willing to allow its best, most industrious, and brightest citizens to move here in the future because its own population is ageing too.

Spoonley says it’s time for a population policy so we can come to an agreement on what we need to do around population growth. Particularly in the regions, which are at real risk of population decline. In recent months there has been a bit of movement in this direction from different quarters.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson has included long-term migration issues in his letter setting out the terms of reference for the Productivity Commission’s investigation into immigration.

Combine this Productivity Commission investigation with another review into immigration settings for skilled migrants, initiated at the behest of Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi, and you have something which looks a lot like the beginnings of a population policy discussion already.

However, Spoonley says having all these migration-related reviews running in parallel are not really what he had in mind when he started advocating for a population policy.

A population policy is not just about the number of migrants coming into the country, but fertility levels, the size of the population, and its composition in terms of demographics like age.

“What we tend to do is treat things in isolation. For example, I’m not sure there’s much Government interest or even public interest in the decline in fertility.

“For me one of my frustrations is that immigration is seen simply as a form of labour supply in New Zealand rather than something which, in recent years, has dramatically altered our population.”

A population policy discussion is not what Faafoi has in mind either. He says the Productivity Commission investigation and the skilled migrant category review are not a population policy type initiative.

“The ongoing process of adjusting our immigration policy will be enhanced by the investigations the Productivity Commission is undertaking into New Zealand’s medium and long-term immigration needs.

“We are not proposing establishing a population policy or population target.”

National’s immigration spokeswoman Erica Stanford says she’s open to a broader discussion on population policy, but believes it shouldn’t come at the expense of dealing with more immediate immigration issues like the huge backlog of people waiting to be granted residency.

Stanford says the current discussion feels too much like we are blaming migrants for our problems rather than seeing migrants as a potential solution to them.

“Our immigration settings have been far too short-sighted, and we get ourselves in trouble. No-one, I don’t think, has taken a long-term view for a very long time.

“We can clearly see there are going to be issues coming down the pipeline in terms of our workforce. We need to plan for that.

Green Party Immigration spokesman Ricardo Menéndez March also says we need to sort out more immediate problems with immigration first.

When we do tackle population issues as a country he doesn't want this discussion to go ahead while we have an immigration policy which is already biased towards people from certain countries or ableist, because it doesn’t provide proper visa options for people with disabilities.

“There’s many underlying issues that have been raised by unions, migrant workers advocates, around the rights of immigrants that I think we should prioritise before we get into a really challenging conversation as a nation around population policy.”

Employer and Manufacturer’s Association (EMA) chief executive Brett O’Riley says he’s up for a big discussion on population, and even openly wonders whether the EMA should take a lead role in setting up a population conference like the one seen in 1997.

“If you look at New Zealand today our birth-rate is lower than our replacement rate. So it’s all very well to saying we don’t want to have migrants, but where are we going to find workers?

“What is our strategy to deal with a depopulating country? What is our strategy to deal with the fact that the only population growth really is happening north of Taupō? What is our strategy long-term for the South Island where there is the room for expansion?”

It is probably no accident that this burst of interest in long-term population growth is coming at a time when the immediate to medium-term issues around immigration have, arguably, never been more urgent.

Calls for a population policy and conference were part of the coalition agreement between National and NZ First after the huge backlash against Asian migration during the 1990s. Now population policy proposals are gaining steam after another anti-migrant backlash.

Migrant Workers Association President Anu Kaloti says there is a feeling that at the end of all these migration reviews and studies migrants who are already here will be unfairly blamed for long-standing problems in New Zealand.

Meaning migrants will have to leave while many of the broader policy settings around infrastructure, housing and inequality remain largely untouched.

“People are just at a loss as to why this Government is so anti-migrant,” Kaloti says.

“It feels like we are heading towards very dangerous and even more disastrous times. That’s the feeling I get unfortunately.”

To feel this fear you only have to look at how the number of expressions of interest for residency were filed after Faafoi announced the skilled migrant category review.

By the end of March, a month after the skilled migrant category review was announced, 1274 expressions of interest were filed. A jump in applications of 78 per cent on the previous month. A figure even more extraordinary when you consider selections for expressions of interest have been paused.

IntoNZ Immigration adviser Katy Armstrong uses the story of a carpenter who came into her office recently to illustrate just what some migrants are feeling at the moment.

“Everyone was saying New Zealand was a great place, really welcoming, very family friendly. Full of skill shortages … so he gives up everything, comes over, hasn't seen his wife or kids since.

“I told him he's going to be in a residency queue for the next two plus years, and he was crying. Grown man, carpenter, crying in my office.”

Those more immediate problems with immigration include the largest backlog of residency applications in history, built up largely thanks to a Government-set residency target which was pitched too low to accommodate the number of temporary migrants being let in.

Infrastructure also did not keep pace with population growth as councils and central government embraced a ‘low-debt’ philosophy which saw these investments either delayed or never made.

The pressure on infrastructure and housing led to an anti-migrant backlash with the public blaming them for everything from congestion to high house prices. It caused both National-led and Labour-led governments to restrict the number of people eligible for residency.

However, both governments didn't want to turn off the tap completely, lest the inflow of temporary migrants dry up altogether. It meant people shifted their entire lives thinking we wanted their labour, but years later were told we didn’t.

Some migrants left, but they were soon replaced by a new crop of temporary migrants because policies around temporary work visas remained relatively loose.

As a result there are now thousands of people clamouring to get admitted into another two-year queue for residency. At the beginning of last week, over 9000 EOIs were sitting in the queue waiting to be picked to get into the two-year skilled migrant residency queue of over 37,000 applications (more than one person is typically attached to a single application).

Some migrants eligible under the current residency rules fear a review of population settings could eventually see requirements raised even further, meaning they’d have to either live here as a temporary migrant for the rest of their lives or head back to Covid-19 affected countries.

New Zealand Initiative chief economist Eric Crampton says rather than a population policy we should be fixing the systems which don’t allow us to respond to population growth.

This failure means new migrants moving in then impose costs on people already here.

“If someone moving in isn’t hurting anybody else I have a hard time seeing why governments shouldn’t enable that as long as they’re paying their own way.”

If we do go ahead with a population conference, or try to engage people in a discussion around a population policy, those who want to rapidly pull-back on immigration might not get the result they’re anticipating.

Malcolm Pacific Immigration CEO David Cooper was at the 1997 population conference and says many of the experts at it actually ended up praising New Zealand's immigration policy.

One academic from the United States told conference attendees the US benefited from humanitarian and family migration so New Zealand’s immigration policies, which were more targeted at skills, must be delivering an even greater economic benefit to the country.

Parts of the 1997 population conference website are still accessible on the internet including aesthetic choices on its old website which are hard to understand now: a dark green background with bright green text on top.

The closing speech of the conference is there too. You can read then-Immigration Minister Max Bradford express his disappointment that the issue of “how many migrants we should have each year” wasn’t actually discussed during the entire conference.

He then discusses other issues, many of which are still with us, including fears NZ’s population could decline.

Our population levels were largely decided by outflows of New Zealanders. A policy lever government didn’t really have control of, Bradford said.

Which is a point Spoonley makes as well. We have gone through large swings in our migration flows because a large chunk of our population relocates overseas when the conditions are good and move back when they’re not.

When unexpectedly large numbers of New Zealanders return, or leave, we experience unexpected swings in our population, and use immigration policy to compensate for this.

So, with fertility and the free movement of citizens all coming into play with our population, Bradford asked the conference’s attendees one question:

“Is there any point in having a population policy when the only thing you can influence for all intents and purposes, is immigration policy?”

And that, was in 1997.