The Government’s new proposal to bring in more Polynesian guest workers has gained the support of New Zealand First while drawing criticism from National.
The proposal allows for up to 5000 guest workers from Polynesia to fill seasonal labour shortages in viticulture and horticulture.
Given New Zealand First’s focus on export led growth, it seems that it prefers a guest worker programme to the idea of increased Polynesian immigration in the future. National, showing unusual concern for the wider public interest, points out that the country has up to 20,000 over stayers at any one time and that there is nothing to stop the workers from running off to get lost in the big city.
Personally, I have mixed views on guest worker programmes. I prefer them to large-scale immigration initiatives but realise that there is a lot of potential for abuse by both employers and workers.
This is an important issue that is getting nowhere near enough media attention.
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Any chance you can give a sentence or two on each of the major New Zealand political parties so I (and presumably other ignorant residents of the Western hemisphere) can make sense of your posts on internal NZ politics?
Thanks, good point, I will get onto a few posts on NZ political history.
A few points to note:
In terms of comparing NZ politics with other countries, we are probably most like Britain.
We have a very centralised political system and a similar level of state involvelment in welfare and public infrastructure. However, in the 1990s we switched from a 'first-past-the-post' system to proportional representation, so we now have minor parties involved in goverment.
The two largest parties are National and Labour.
National are a centre-right neo-conservative party, similar to the UK Conservative party, while Labour are similar to the UK Labour party, although more cautious on foreign policy matters.
The largest minor party is New Zealand First.
New Zealand First were formed as a breakaway party from National in the early 1990s.
They generally promote limited immigration, a cautious foreign policy and fairly nationalistic economic policies.
In some respects, Winston Peters - NZ First's leader, is a bit like Patrick Buchanan in the US.
In NZ, political commentators (for some strange reason)use the word 'new-right' to refer to economic neo-liberalism. The term 'new-right' in NZ has nothing to do with nationalism or social conservatism.
Fascinating. Thank you.
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