Jo
Moir, Political Editor
New Zealand
First’s Winston Peters sees no need for a relaxation of New
Zealand’s immigration settings in any trade talks with
India.
He told Morning Report on Monday any
liberalisation of the country’s immigration settings would
provide an unnecessary “incentive”.
The Prime Minister
has just returned from a five-day trip to India where he held
bilateral talks with his counterpart Narendra Modi, and
announced the beginning of official trade talks between the
two countries.
While Sir John Key tried in both 2011
and 2016 to get a free trade agreement off the ground, talks
never really progressed, and under the previous Labour
government the focus shifted to more achievable deals with
the likes of the United Kingdom and the European
Union.
Dairy access for New Zealand’s exporters is the
big sticking point with India, due to its economy being made
up of a number of small farmers – some with only one or two
cows each – who fear the impact a big milk producer like New
Zealand would have on their livelihoods.
Progressing
an FTA with India that doesn’t include dairy, however, is
seen as a non-starter by both the New Zealand dairy sector
and trade experts.
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One area important to India that
could be used as a bargaining chip by the coalition is
immigration and any freeing up of New Zealand’s settings to
make it easier for Indians to gain residency.
In 2019
the Indian community in New Zealand spoke
out against a change in approach by immigration
officials to partnership visas, which insisted couples had
to spend time living together in order to be
eligible.
The change in directive required immigration
officials to stop waiving requirements, such as couples
needing to have lived together for 12 months – a test Indian
couples who have had arranged marriages can’t
meet.
New Zealand First was in coalition with Labour
at the time – Winston Peters was deputy prime minister – and
happily took the credit for a tougher approach to
partnership visas.
Shane Jones was also a Cabinet
minister in that government and took aim at the Indian
community’s frustrations with the changes.
“I would
just say to the activists from the Indian community, tame
down your rhetoric, you have no legitimate expectations in
my view to bring your whole village to New Zealand and if
you don’t like it and you’re threatening to go home – catch
the next flight home,” Jones told RNZ in October
2019.
Jones ramped
those comments up further the following month, telling
RNZ as “the son of the Treaty” he was “one of the most
eminently qualified people to talk about population policy,
immigration, the blend of economics, the blend of migrant
labour”.
At the time the Opposition leader, National’s
Simon Bridges, called Jones’ comments “entirely
unacceptable, distasteful and wrong”.
The
then-immigration minister, Labour’s Iain Lees-Galloway,
denied a new directive had been given to his department but
as a result of the changes he had asked officials to go away
and sort out a solution.
It all ground to a halt a few
months later, however, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit and
the processing of immigration visas dried up.
Bharat
Chawla, chair of the India New Zealand Business Council,
said he expected people-to-people movement to be part of
discussions, and did not believe dairy would be kept
aside.
“They’re both two different areas. They can’t
be replicated, or can be one taken one given. Having both
the things will be helpful. But there are more areas,
opening visitor visas, or opening more long-term visas for
Indian residents, or the family of Indian residents or
Indian-origin citizens of New Zealand,” he
said.
“Currently, education settings are not too bad
for India. What they want to see is how it can be more
streamlined. Possibly, the areas that can be covered will be
more on visitor visas and the business or investment visas,
because that’s an area which can be done better.”
He
did not think the Gulf countries should be used as a
comparison.
“Gulf settings are very different
settings, and then they’re very low-skilled workers we are
talking about. But here in New Zealand, we don’t have that
kind of growth, if you see in terms of infrastructure
growth, what the Gulf has seen,” he said.
“It’ll be
more like skilled visas for IT people, or very high-end
individuals who can add value to the economy.”
What is
the right balance for the country’s immigration settings
looks to be firmly back on the table.
Speaking to
Morning Report on Monday Peters said India had the
“biggest population in the world now – 1.4 billion
people”.
“Do you really think Immigration New Zealand
is going to help? Get serious for goodness
sake.”
Peters has no issue with New Zealand being
opened up to India for education and work, but drew the line
at that extending to being able to stay
permanently.
“Economies like Singapore, and dare I say
it all around the world, bring people in to do jobs. The
United Arab Emirates do that, all the Gulf countries do it,
but when they finish the job they go home.
“And that’s
what we can do, we can still get all the benefits without
making the stupid mistake of a failed immigration policy
that says, we’re so bad at what we do, we’re so bad at
education, that we’re going to give them the incentive to
actually come here and immigrate to our
country.”
Peters told Morning Report New
Zealanders needed to be asked the question about the
country’s immigration settings, and what was
appropriate.
Asked whether he opposed any
liberalisation of Indian immigration under a trade deal,
Peters responded, “where in that deal is that part of the
process?”
The prime minister has given an assurance
that all three parties in the coalition “know that we want
to have a deeper, bigger, better relationship with
India”.
He told TVNZ’s Q+A on Sunday that
Peters was on board with a free trade deal with India, and
had visited himself as foreign minister.
Luxon firmly
holds the view that New Zealand is a richer country for the
diversity it enjoys from a range of “new New
Zealanders”.
“They come to New Zealand and leave
everything behind, often their language, their friends,
their family, their culture. They come to New Zealand and
work incredibly hard – they take one job, two jobs, three
jobs to get a deposit for a business or a house – they
really focus on their kids having opportunities they didn’t
have, they see a future for themselves in New Zealand, and
as new New Zealanders they add a lot of energy into the
country as well,” Luxon said.
“The New Zealand I grew
up in versus the New Zealand today is much more diverse,
interesting, and richer culturally,” he
said.
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