India trade deal opening up a Pandora’s Box of prejudice - will our leaders close it?
Wednesday, 11 February 2026
Henry Cooke is deputy political editor of The Post, and writes a column every Wednesday.
OPINION: A few weeks ago, I posted the result of a poll on social media, and you’d have thought it said the country wanted to disown Edmund Hillary and ban IKEA, such was the response.
'Exclusive Propaganda in the Post' - there you go“. “Another BS poll.” Muppet…'polling in the post'?? Yes this is highly reliable data…[expletive] up“. “Lol. As if. Everyone wants indians deported.”
The poll was on the India Free Trade deal, and showed it was broadly popular with the nation, with supporters outnumbering opponents among voters from every party except Te Pāti Māori.
No one likes when a poll goes against their preferred version of reality, but my responses were just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the seething prejudice and racism one finds against Indians online right now, right here in New Zealand.
Accounts with thousands of followers - including politicians - suggest Indians in New Zealand should be put on a “fleet of big boats. India can either take them back or sink them”. Others post photos of crowded trains in India, promising this is what is coming for New Zealand. Accounts with fewer followers but plenty of engagement post repeatedly about how Indians are: “born dishonest” and will “flood into the country”. You don’t have to follow them to notice - look under the replies to almost any news story about Auckland residential zoning and you will find people saying we wouldn’t have a housing crisis if it weren’t for all the Indians.
Read More:
India FTA: Hipkins says National came to Labour far too late as visa questions mount
Poll: India free trade deal is popular - even with NZ First voters
And it isn’t just online. Protesters draped a huge banner calling for “remigration now” - over a highway overpass in Wellington recently. “Remigration” is a concept that has caught fire on the European far right, describing a policy of mass deportation of minority communities, whether new migrants or not.
The poll obviously suggested these views were not quite as popular as those spreading them would like.
Indeed, New Zealand has seen far less anti-migrant prejudice than other Anglosphere nations in recent years. Asked what the top three issues facing them were, just 5% of Kiwis named “immigration” in the most recent IPSOS issue monitor poll. The same pollster found 50% in the UK naming immigration as one of their top issues. An MBIE survey in 2023 found 91% of recent migrants felt welcome in the community they live in.
You can put up many theories as to why New Zealand isn’t chasing its English-speaking cousins on this one. I tend to ascribe it to a few related factors - a lack of irregular migration (people arriving on boats), a preoccupation on the populist right with Māoridom instead of migrants, and the fact that migrant communities are too deeply enmeshed in our political culture already to be effectively scapegoated.
Now, these surveys were conducted before the India free trade agreement was announced in December, with its slight uptick in the number of visas afforded to India - and perhaps more importantly its restriction on New Zealand clamping down on Indian student visas in the future. (New Zealand could still clamp down on all student visas - just not Indian ones specifically.)
It is possible that anti-immigration sentiment has ticked up now that this deal has huge prominence in news media, with Winston Peters standing against it and Labour slowly finding its way to probably supporting it.
After all, it is far easier to be against new “unfettered Indian immigration” - in the words of Shane Jones - than to call for 21st century dawn raids on people already here.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins has an uneven path to walk. It is far from out of bounds to want to get clarity on how visa changes might impact New Zealand in the future, especially as Hipkins’ experience as Education Minister means he will know just how shoddy some of the private tertiary sector is. He will be aware that anti-migrant feeling, particularly in a time of high unemployment, is present on the left - and that these voters are perhaps the most likely to leave his party for NZ First.
Both Hipkins and Trade Minister Todd McClay were eager to avoid suggesting the debate had become racialised when asked this week, saying these were all legitimate questions that deserved serious answers.
In all likelihood Labour will soon join with National in supporting the trade pact. As tempting as it might be to bloody National’s nose on the matter, Labour is at heart a party that believes in free trade, and giving National an excuse for the poor economy would be silly.
The deal will then pass, but will the debate? As our living standards continue to fall further behind Australia’s, politics becomes increasingly internationalised, and the dream of home ownership remains just out of reach for so many, it’s not hard to imagine anti-migration politics taking a real hold here.
If our major party politicians want to avoid that it will take concerted effort. MPs will have to explain why immigration is so crucial to a country facing such a demographic challenge. They will have to work hard at making sure people’s lives are actually getting better, so they don’t blame the new neighbours when they don’t. And they might even have to negotiate better trade deals.