An extraordinary demographic transformation is happening in rural Tasmania, almost without comment. Even in tiny farming hamlets, Asian and African faces are suddenly appearing in the main streets and shopping centres.
Now, before anyone plays the tiresome “racism” canard, this is not to disparage the owners of those faces. This is merely to observe that a profound change is taking place in even remote Tasmanian agricultural communities. To put it into perspective, it’s as startling a change as if thousands of white expats from Birmingham suddenly started settling in remote Motuo in China, or Arunachal Pradesh in India.
These are not tourists or retirees, though. They’re not permanent migrants, either. These able-bodied young folk from Africa and China are “457” workers: the face of the massive globalist Ponzi scheme of temporary migrant workers.
But, it’s not just Tasmania dealing with this suddenly influx of temporary workers – and all the associated problems.
Despite their 2017 election rhetoric about reducing the pressure on wages and infrastructure from low-skilled migration, the coalition Labour-New Zealand First Government has actually increased temporary work visas and not reduced student arrivals. There were 355,000 temporary worker and student visas approved in the year to September, up from 335,000 in the year before the 2017 election…
But just like the previous National government, Labour and New Zealand First have squeezed down permanent residency approvals…we are inviting in more and more temporary workers with the subtle and not-so-subtle suggestion we might let them stay, but we’re making it harder and harder for them to win that permanence. We have become the Dubai of the South Pacific where we treat migrants as second-class or non-citizens, allow them to be exploited, and then throw them away when we’re done with them.
The migrant workers do pretty well out of this. This isn’t to say that employers aren’t ripping them off – there is plenty of evidence that employers of temporary migrant workers (usually labour hire firms run by their own countrymen) badly underpay migrant workers. But even what are rip-off wages in Australia and New Zealand are still far higher than average earnings in China. So what if they’re not allowed to stay permanently? That was never part of the temporary worker deal, anyway.
The people who are really being short-changed – in Tasmania just the same as New Zealand – are locals, especially young people.
This Government, also like the previous government, is also doing very little to deal with the infrastructure pressure from massive population growth driven by all the temporary workers. And the dirtiest secret of all is that’s just the way home-owning and business-owning voters like it because it keeps government debt down, keeps interest rates low, keeps house prices rising and keeps wages down. Treasury also loves it because all those workers are pumping up the surplus with fresh income taxes and GST revenues, but without the infrastructure spending to go with it.
Leaving aside the bullshit generational-war whinging about “home-owning voters”, there is some truth, here. Treasury loves it because of the continuous, drip-fed sugar hit to the economy which masks the failings of successive governments and businesses to make solid investments in the future of the nation.
Employers like it, because they get a steady supply of cheap labour, without the hassle of investing in training and experience. The Launceston Chamber of Commerce recently pleaded that migration was essential to the economy because employers couldn’t find skilled labour. The suggestion was hammered by Tasmanian punters, who rightly pointed out that employers are too damn lazy to invest in training and experience for local people. Apprenticeships and traineeships in Australia have declined dramatically in the past decade. Jobseekers will tell you that, for every job advertised, there are hundreds of applicants.
Like the Treasury bureaucrats, employers are addicted to the easy solution of just importing cheap labour while locals battle rising unemployment and housing costs, and choked infrastructure. Whining that they can’t get skilled labour is just so much bullshit from employers. What they really want is cheap labour served up on a plate. Government immigration policy, both in Australia and New Zealand, is serving it up to them.
New Zealand is kidding itself that it is growing its economy and its wealth, but all it is doing is bringing in more people, working them harder for less pay, and refusing to invest in the underlying infrastructure and social fabric of the country because its delivers a short-term financial and political gain. It is disgraceful.
newsroom.co.nz/2019/11/11/899072/the-dirty-little-secret-about-this-migration-debate