Estimates Debate — Vote Immigration

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I understand that in Committee, or in the House, it is inappropriate for us to challenge your ruling. Far be it from me to speak on behalf of New Zealand First—it certainly does not need my protection—but it would seem to me that, as the third-largest party in Parliament, the first call on a vote should go to New Zealand First, unless it yields to United Future. My understanding is that Dail Jones has not done that.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I thank the member. He is perfectly correct, and I stand corrected. But the problem now is that, under Speaker’s ruling 25/4, because I have already called Mr Adams I have to give him the call. I will certainly come to Mr Jones straight after that.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I was going to seek two calls. Now I am in the invidious position where, if Mr Adams goes first, I will have to seek two calls in a row.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The member can have two calls in a row. I have already taken two calls in a row before.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Notwithstanding Speaker’s ruling 25/4, which you quoted, you have an opportunity here to make a bit of a mark and perhaps make your own ruling in this matter. I know that sounds like a rash thing to do on the last day that Parliament sits officially—although today rolls on into tomorrow, in one of the vagaries of the parliamentary system—but here is an opportunity for H V Ross Robertson, MP for Papatoetoe, to be noted in Speakers’ Rulings.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The member is questioning my ruling. I have made the ruling. I am not creating a new precedent; I am following Speaker’s ruling 25/4. I call the honourable member Paul Adams.

To build a prosperous nation, first, obviously, we have to build prosperous people. As spokesperson on immigration for United Future, I asked the library to look up some figures so that I could see exactly what has been going on in the people area over the past 6 years, seeing as Vote Immigration is $160 million.

In 1999 our estimated population was 3,832,900 people, and by 2004 it had grown to 4,054,300 people, which is an increase of 221,400. Live births in the same period were 337,641, and deaths were 165,537, which brings an increase by natural births of 172,104 people. It should be noted that those births were genuine Kiwi kids. Their parents would have come from a wide variety of countries and cultures—just as many of ours did—as we are a very multicultural nation. However, those children were born New Zealanders. Natural births, therefore, accounted for over 75 percent of our population increase in that period.

So what did we have to do to achieve, over 6 years, an increase of an additional 49,296 people—an increase, in reality, of only 8,216 per year? Despite all New Zealand First’s negative talk about immigration and the pressure it has caused on our infrastructure, even New Zealand First will have difficulty arguing with the reality of those figures, and our ability as a nation to handle that level of increase. Our infrastructure problems are obviously, in part, due to an expanding economy and growing tourism industry. Surely they are good challenges to work through, but, no, the third tired old party wants to take New Zealand back to the Dark Ages, and United Future says “No way!”.

However, those figures should certainly indicate to us that we do not have the formula right yet, as we need to consider seriously the things we need to do better. Permanent long-term arrivals in that period were a massive 461,210 people. Our permanent long-term departures were 294,938. That is a difference of 166,272 people in a 6-year period. From 166,272 people, how come we achieved a net gain of only 49,296, which is a retention rate of only 30 percent? Are we becoming only a transfer station to other nations? What are we doing so wrong that people who wanted to make New Zealand their home are finding it impossible to do so and have to move on? They are questions the incoming Government should seriously address.

In closing, I note that we had an inflow of 461,210 people to achieve that 49,000 gain, yet in the same period we aborted 112,116 genuine New Zealand babies who would have become true New Zealanders. Yes, future doctors, carpenters, dentists, schoolteachers, and union delegates, to name a few, die at the hand of the abortionists. If that number had even been halved, our population increase would have been better than what we achieved over those 6 years. That is why United Future believes that a decrease in the number of abortions must be good for our families and good for our country.

We are proud to grow our own meats and our own wines. We have discovered that what we can grow at home, in New Zealand, ends up being among the best in the world. Our children have been no exception. Many of the world’s greatest achievers—such as Michael Campbell, whose success we have celebrated just tonight—have been New Zealanders. We need to realise this with our children, who, after all, are the fruit of the womb. If we lift the rate of home-grown children, we will find that many of our current challenges are a lot easier to handle. Therefore, let us keep the issues the issue, and not blame immigration for pressures that immigration in itself simply has not caused.

I would like to thank the member who has just resumed his seat for his speech. He and I have been to a couple of meetings together, and he has obviously listened to what I have to say and he has been working around the information I have been putting forward.

New Zealand First has made it clear that we need a population policy, and the Rt Hon Winston Peters made this very clear in his Ōrewa speech about 5 or 6 weeks ago. New Zealand First intends to stop the knee-jerk annual immigration planning and start working on 10-year and 25-year plans for New Zealand. We want to establish long-term labour market demands and import the skills needed if sufficient New Zealanders cannot be trained. We want to target people with the skills needed and ensure that immigrants have jobs to go to. We want to consult New Zealanders about the make-up of those people coming here, and we want to produce a targeted programme aimed at retaining skilled New Zealanders and encouraging others offshore to return.

New Zealand is the only First World country with an agricultural base. We have to decide the size of our population and the nature of our environment. We rely on our clean, green image to encourage tourists to come here—in fact, tourism is now our major foreign exchange earner. Yet our population increased by more than 25 percent in the last 18 years to take us to over 4 million, and the suggestion from United Future, from the member who has just spoken, that we should have a population of 5 million in another 10 years, must give us cause for concern.

What is happening in New Zealand at the moment to say that such a policy is overdue? Well, the member has just given us some figures. From 1976 to 1986 New Zealand’s population increased by 160,000. But from 1996 to 2004, for example, eight years out of 10, our population increased by 329,400, which is more than double the increase from 1975 to 1986 in four-fifths of the time. In 1986 our population was 3,298,000. In 2004 it was 4,061,400, an increase of 772,400 in 18 years, which is a 25 percent increase. Where did it all go? In the Auckland region the population increase from 1986 to 2004 was 435,000. Almost 60 percent of that new population in those 18 years went to Auckland. That increase in Auckland’s population in 18 years—and I am talking about the Auckland region—is almost the same as Wellington’s entire population in the region from year one.

So the problem for Auckland is this: did we get the same number of schools that Wellington has, the same number of hospitals that Wellington has, and the same number of roads that Wellington has, in order to compensate for that 18-year growth in Auckland’s population—which was the same as the total population of Wellington since the year dot? The answer is no. In speaking about the effect of immigration on the people of the Auckland area, for example, in west Auckland, when I was the member of Parliament from 1975 to 1984, a new school was built in 1975 and good on the Kirk-Rowling Government and the previous planners for doing that. On the North Shore, at Long Bay, a new secondary school was built in about 1975. Has another secondary school been built in that region since 1975, when Auckland’s population has shot through the roof? No. Not one other secondary school has been built. No wonder the schools have large rolls. There has not been another secondary school built in west Auckland, in the Waitakere College or Long Bay College area, since 1975. I went to the opening of Waitakere College in 1975. Mr Garelja does a wonderful job at Waitakere College, but that is the problem we have in Auckland in so far as immigration is concerned.

What are we going to do about it? We see the effects of this massive immigration to New Zealand, which is totally out of control. We have an electricity crisis in Auckland now. We read about it every day. What will be one of the consequences of that? Well, I am pleased to see that they will have electricity power stations, but there is nothing to stop them from building a nuclear power station. There is no law that stops the building of a nuclear power station. The Royal Commission on Nuclear Power, which we set up from 1975 to 1978, indicated that as of 2005 two nuclear power stations should already be commissioned. The plan was to have two in the North Island and one in the South Island. They should be commissioned now, based on that 160,000 increase in population every 10 years projected back in those days, and we have gone well beyond that today.

That is one of the effects that immigration has. We know that law and order is out of control, and that housing is out of control, and these are all indications of the failure of successive Labour Governments, starting in about 1988 when they opened the floodgates, and of National Governments in the 1990s. There was a slight decrease when New Zealand First was part of the coalition, as we were trying to turn the tap down, and another roaring increase in the last few years.

From 1996 to 2004 the increase has been 329,000 people, in that short space of time. That is an impossible rate of growth for New Zealand. It is about the size of the Canterbury region’s population in total. We have had increases in Wellington of 15 percent, in Canterbury of about 20 percent, and in Tauranga of 30 percent, but in Auckland, the biggest city, the population increase has been over 50 percent in 18 years. That is a disgrace. New Zealand First says, and I suggest, that we have what David Lange suggested once: not a cup of tea, but a pot of tea and a good, long think about where we are heading now.

It does not matter how many roads the Labour Party puts in, and I am really pleased with the roading programme that the Labour Party has put up; over the upper harbour bridge, in Mount Roskill, on the northern motorway and the city motorway. It is doing a great job. But it does not matter how many roads we build for the current population because if we increase the population by the same amount again in 10 years, from 4 million to 5 million, no amount of roading can ever stop the problems that Auckland will feel. When I come to Wellington I come to a city that is the same as it was in 1984. I think that the way in which Wellington’s population has increased should have been the master plan for New Zealand, at about 15 percent over 18 years, or about 60,000 in about 18 years in the region, and not the 50 to 60 percent Auckland has had.

Wellington is old New Zealand to me. When I come here I see that there has really been no change since I was here in 1984. When I go to Auckland, it is a foreign city. Auckland is a foreign city to Aucklanders now. If one is a fair-dinkum Aucklander, in the mainstream, walking up and down the main street of Auckland, one feels that Auckland is a foreign city. That is what Aucklanders feel. I welcome multiculturalism. I know what it is to be a minority of 0.001 percent myself, but we must have an infrastructure. Immigrants get the blame, but it is the Government’s fault. It is the fault of the Labour Party, and it is the fault of the National Party. Immigrants get blamed for all these things, but it is the fault of successive Governments. That is what the real problem is and that is what New Zealand First highlights time and time again. We have to put in the infrastructure, and that is why we in New Zealand First say that we need a population policy. I am so pleased that Taiwanese people agree with me.

A party vote was called for on the question that Vote Immigration be agreed to.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. There must be some mistake. The New Zealand First member has just spent 10 minutes railing against immigration policy, and now he is abstaining.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): That is not a point of order.

How can he abstain?

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): That is not a point of order.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. My apologies to the Committee but I think I may have inadvertently said “nine abstentions” in the previous votes after the dinner break, rather than eight.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The member has to seek leave to correct the vote.

I seek leave to—[Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I say to honourable members when there is a point of order on the floor there is to be absolute silence. The member is seeking leave to alter the vote. Is there any objection to that course of action being taken? There appears to be none.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The member should tell us what particular vote he wants to change.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): It concerns Vote Treaty Negotiations.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Actually, your intervention did not help, because in order for us to understand what the honourable member is requesting, we need to hear precisely what his dilemma is. That was not clear. He said he “thought” he had made an error.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Can I ask the member to clarify—

We are being asked right now whether we object to something about which we are not clear. I think the member deserves an opportunity to make clear precisely what the problem is, so we can decide.

Mr Chairperson, if the Committee will give me a moment I will clarify that and then seek leave.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I just say that not too many minutes are left in this debate. Is there any objection to that course of action being taken? There is no objection. The vote will be corrected.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. What is “that course of action”?

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Does the member wish to change the vote, which is, as I understand it, and correct me if I am wrong, Vote Treaty Negotiations?

Yes.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Instead of nine votes it should be eight?

Correct.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Leave has been sought. Is there any objection? There is not.

Vote Labour agreed to.

Vote State-Owned Enterprises agreed to.

Vote Environment