Critics take the floor at NZ-India FTA select committee hearings
Tuesday, 2 June 2026
MPs have been told that unscrupulous immigration agents in India are already advertising that work rights attached to temporary student visas in the soon-to-be-ratified New Zealand-India Free Trade Agreement (FTA) are a route to permanent migration to New Zealand.
Indian New Zealander Clyde Soares, who migrated to New Zealand in 1989, was among those who were invited to voice their concerns over the NZ-India FTA in five-minute slots at hearings of the foreign affairs, defence and trade select committee on Tuesday.
Soares said that even though the FTA has yet to be ratified, he had already seen adverts in India from immigration agents looking to exploit the immigration provisions it contains.
These grant 20 hours a week working rights to Indians doing degrees in New Zealand, as well as granting them post-study visas of two to four years after they graduate.
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“They are seeing this as a gateway to immigration. That’s how it is being promoted in India,” Soares said.
“In the last decade I have watched the floodgates open to uncontrolled immigration, especially from India, and the corresponding change to the value system of New Zealand,” Soares told MPs.
“I have first hand experience of mass exploitation of Indians coming into New Zealand on student, tourist and even work visas,” he said, exploitation he claimed was primarily done by “unscrupulous Indian business owners”.
“Kiwis, I’m sad to say, are naive on how this deal will see massive fraud and cheating by bad actors,” he said.
The FTA has become controversial, and opponents who spoke on Tuesday included trade union representatives concerned the FTA did not require India to tackle modern slavery within its borders, young New Zealanders concerned about high house prices and graduate unemployment, and people who saw the FTA as undermining democratic conventions.
However, the hearings were dismissed as “sham” by academic Jane Kelsey, who described the FTA as a “fait accompli” after Labour committed to backing it.
But Kelsey also expressed dismay at some of the things said during Tuesday’s hearing, claiming: “The racism directed towards Indians here is appalling.”
Many of the objections voiced at the hearings were to do with the immigration settings embedded in the FTA, which some submitters said should not have been included as it created what one called a “sovereignty problem”, as it tied the hands of future governments as they would be very hard to reverse.
Young submitter William Fitzgerald was one of several new, and soon-to-be, graduates worried about their chances of finding a job.
“There’s no domestic shortage of new graduates,” Fitzgerald said. “This reduces opportunities for citizen graduates trying to start their careers.”
Economics graduate Ryan Henderson said: “The heaviest costs fall on workers. Youth unemployment is 14% and climbing.”
Chris Newman, the father of a university student, claimed migrants filling low-paid, low-skilled jobs were making it hard for young New Zealanders to find part-time work.
Henderson said the national interest analysis had ignored the issue of migrant workers sending money back to family, which threatened to undermine the weak economic gains of the FTA to New Zealand.
However, National MP Tim Costley said when the China FTA was signed people criticised it as delivering only weak economic gains for this country.
Dylan Shaw told MPs that he was one of the young New Zealanders who felt “unheard, unseen and unwanted in their own land” who had sought better opportunities overseas.
He said immigration had already put huge pressures on New Zealand’s infrastructure, and due to the failure to plan, had driven up house prices.
“Before increasing migration, New Zealand needs to ensure its infrastructure can cope with current demand,” he said.
That included prioritising affordable housing, he said.
Shaw said the China FTA, signed in 2008, had put pressure on dairy prices in supermarkets in New Zealand as exporters sought the highest-value markets.
He said New Zealand risked becoming a farm “where we see food being grown, but can’t afford to eat it”.
Shaw felt the FTA was geared to the interests of big business.
“I’m disturbed by an agreement that will exacerbate problems faced by New Zealanders every day to fatten the wallets of the few to the detriment of the many,” he said.
He also felt it was short-sighted to be locking in future migration at a time when technology was reducing the need for workers.
Big business was represented at the hearings, with some associations of exporters expressing their support, however, they struggled to answer pointed questioning by several MPs.
Labour MP Damien O’Connor was concerned that the FTA committed New Zealand to transferring knowledge, and even world-leading genetic intellectual property, in the form of kiwifruit, apple and pear varieties to India.
The FTA would give some increased access to the Indian market to apple, pear and kiwifruit-growers, but it is capped with quotas, and it is tied to “action plans” for New Zealand to help India build its horticulture industry.
Danielle Adsett from New Zealand Apples and Pears Incorporated, which represents growers, admitted genetic IP transfer could happen.
Kelsey said while it was understandable that India wanted New Zealand to assist its producers to be able to compete with New Zealand producers, she said: “It rather reminds me of a previous occasion when there was a New Zealand export award to exporters of the kiwi fruit stock to Chile, which then meant that Chile ended up being a major competitor, not only in Chile, but internationally.”
“It's an own goal from New Zealand’s side,” she said.
India could unilaterally decide after five years that New Zealand had not met its part of the development bargain, she said, and remove the tariff-free capped quotas for New Zealand growers.
“There is no dispute mechanism that would apply to this,” she said.
Incredulity was expressed by several speakers on the FTA committing New Zealand to “promote” US$20 billion (about NZ$33b) of private New Zealand investment in India in the 15 years after the FTA was ratified.
If less is invested, the FTA would allow ndia to unilaterally decide whether New Zealand had made its best endeavours in encouraging that investment, and if it decided it hadn’t, India could impose tariffs in retaliation, Kelsey said.
“India will be the one that decides this, and there is no appeal in this chapter, there is no dispute mechanism in this chapter,” Kelsey said.
She described the FTA as 'asymmetrical' in favour of India, criticising Prime Minister Christopher Luxon for signalling the FTA needed to be completed before the upcoming election, which had “disarmed our negotiators” and given India the upper hand in “rushed” negotiations.