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Jacinda Ardern is next prime minister of New Zealand (after 9 years of right wing)

Window

Member
I know very well what Auckland's position is in NZ. I lived there for 7 years. I don't consider this to be something which took everyone by surprise. It's been like this for a while but seems to have gotten worse over time. One cannot lay the blame for this on immigration.
 

rjc571

Banned
It really depends on your job. If your job is considered in shortage it could be pretty easy.

Are programming jobs in shortage? I was looking into applying for a skilled migrant worker visa after the election last year but they made it sound like the requirements for being accepted were pretty steep.
 

Bastables

Member
Kinda surprised tbh as I imagined there would greater overlap in policy between National and NZ First than Labour/Greens and NZ First. Wonder what compromises were made to arrive at this deal.
Not really, Winston was part of the national party that believed in big government and in his debates has cited the idea that back in the day they could recite the names of the unemployed because there were so few of them.
Winston is a racist, patriarchal throwback to when even the right wing built government houses for citizens, provided full health care including gp visits free and thought maintaning full employment was actually a objective for the government.

The current national party is very neoliberal as are redisvists in Labour.
 

Window

Member
Fair enough, I wasn't aware of Winston's economic ideology.

I thought both parties still aim to maintain 'full' employment because I don't think neo-liberalism thought is counter to this but again I'm not well informed on the specifics of the policy platform of each party so may very well be wrong.
 
Fair enough, I wasn't aware of Winston's economic ideology.

I thought both parties still aim to maintain 'full' employment because I don't think neo-liberalism thought is counter to this but again I'm not well informed on the specifics of the policy platform of each party so may very well be wrong.

Neo-liberal / conventional economic thought wants a percentage of the population unemployed because a) having a pool of unemployed people limits wage growth from competition for workers and this limits hyper inflation (which occurs when wages grow faster than productivity) and b) it provides a pool of labor for new markets / new entrants to markets.

There have been some hassles with this setup recently though, like underemployment* in Australia , which is preventing wage growth despite increasing productivity and falling unemployment, inflation on the other hand is ticking on along fairly regularly and which is leading to some severe political misfortune for the government since cost of living is rising and wages aren't.

*Underemployment used to approximately track unemployment but since the GFC it decidedly has not.
 

Window

Member
I know, thus the quotations around the word full. I thought the NAIRU is well accepted and integrated into modern economic policies of most major parties and imagined Labour would be no different.
 
I know, thus the quotations around the world full. I thought the NAIRU is well accepted and integrated into modern economic policies of most countries.

If we redefine full employment as the fullest employment that neo-liberal economics supports than yes neo-liberal economics supports "full" employment. That's kind of different to supporting full employment in the sense that a job is available for anyone who wants a job (ie a 0% involuntary unemployment rate) though.
 

Window

Member
No, I'm saying this definition permeates all of modern economic thought and no longer should be identified as strictly 'neo-liberal' despite its origins.
 
No, I'm saying this definition permeates all of modern economic thought and no longer should be identified as strictly 'neo-liberal' despite its origins.

To some extent all modern Anglosphere orthodox economics is "neo-liberal" , the embrace of deregulation, globalization (via removal of protectionism) and privatization (even (or especially) by centre - left parties) in the 80s and 90s kind of embedded it into the very foundations of what is now accepted modern economic theory (it's basically been a generation now), other economic viewpoints have been thought of as distinctly heterodox. I guess this is what people mean when they say the term has lost objective meaning ?

ETA - You're probably right in that's unlikely the NZ Government will try for true full employment too.
 
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medrew

Member
Get your facts straight before shouting from the sidelines. Labour isn't anti-immigration, just anti-rampant immigration, something National has used to bolster the economy at the expense of our infrastructure, environment and services. Shit's a mess right now.

Note that while National are in favour of rampant immigration, their support of refugee programs is pathetic.

Debateable. What could arguably be called the reason for the mess (compounded by head in the sand) is that when national entered into Parliament there was a significant amount of nzers emigrating overseas (uk and Australia being the main destinations). There was an outflow. Now there is an inflow (not helped by those countries changing their policies) of around 37k nzers coming back, which is more than half the number.
Anyone recall all the political points years ago by both parties saying we need to stem the outflow because of the brain drain? The reversal is happening now and it is having it's impact felt (students and working holiday visa people don't buy houses which is what will be targeted).

I'm not supporting national (I am politically agnostic and do not support any party). But we're not really discussing this at any real level of details. No one is getting into the weeds here it is just high level nonsense. No one is addressing the expat component of this. And quite frankly I can't fully reconcile why expats should be treated any differently to an immigrant. You choose to leave the country then there is an argument that you should be placed on the same level as someone else wanting to get in. Just because you were born in NZ it means you have special entitlement? Hmm. Can't say that is fully logical.
 
I'm not supporting national (I am politically agnostic and do not support any party). But we're not really discussing this at any real level of details. No one is getting into the weeds here it is just high level nonsense. No one is addressing the expat component of this. And quite frankly I can't fully reconcile why expats should be treated any differently to an immigrant. You choose to leave the country then there is an argument that you should be placed on the same level as someone else wanting to get in. Just because you were born in NZ it means you have special entitlement? Hmm. Can't say that is fully logical.

You can't just make citizens stateless because they leave the country. It goes against Article 15 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

The government would be within their right to disallow dual citizenship, however, and many countries exercise this right. This would mean that any citizen of New Zealand that acquired a second nationality would automatically lose their New Zealand citizenship. It would also mean that anyone seeking to acquire citizenship of New Zealand renounce their citizenship of any other countries.

The practical problem of this is that a lot of people seem to hold both Australian and New Zealand citizenship – a large enough number as to make changing this law difficult politically. If you force someone to renounce their citizenship of another country, be prepared for that person never to vote for you again.
 
You can't just make citizens stateless because they leave the country. It goes against Article 15 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

The government would be within their right to disallow dual citizenship, however, and many countries exercise this right. This would mean that any citizen of New Zealand that acquired a second nationality would automatically lose their New Zealand citizenship. It would also mean that anyone seeking to acquire citizenship of New Zealand renounce their citizenship of any other countries.

The practical problem of this is that a lot of people seem to hold both Australian and New Zealand citizenship – a large enough number as to make changing this law difficult politically. If you force someone to renounce their citizenship of another country, be prepared for that person never to vote for you again.

It used to be very easy for NZers to get Australian citizenship, and Australian Citizenship can be passed by descent fairly trivially (the reverse was fairly easy too but far less of the population of Australia spends significant time in NZ). Howard made that significantly harder and Dutton is trying to make it harder again, so the share Aus / NZ of dual citizens should decrease with time.
 
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