New Zealand’s Prime Minister Bill English’s Weakness on Immigration
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Bill English decided to do some leftist virtue signalling in response to the Australian government’s announcement last week that it would be tightening its citizenship requirements. Bill English wasn’t happy that Australian permanent residents would now have to wait four years to become citizens and claimed it was unfair to New Zealanders who migrated to Australia for apparently undermining the pathways to citizenship agreement the two countries made to make migration between Australia and New Zealand easier.
English’s remarks were an unwarranted interference in the domestic politics of Australia. He would have had little idea about the current immigration crises we are having, regular Islamic terror plots being uncovered (or in some cases carried out), Muslim ghettos forming in suburbs in our major cities where woman face extreme misogyny and other minorities are discriminated against. The increase in crime in areas with large immigration is easy to see especially in the suburbs of Melbourne. New Zealand is lucky it doesn’t have to deal with unauthorized boats arriving on its doorstep as well.
If he had concerns about the changes he should have expressed them through the proper diplomatic channels rather than say them during a media conference. He would have known that the leftist media in Australia would report his comments with glee to whack Malcolm Turnbull and Peter Dutton, but it would seem English was more focused on trying to please his own leftist media in New Zealand.
The most hypocritical part of English’s comments is that New Zealand has a five year wait on permanent residents being able to become citizens which includes an English language test. But these comments are telling about what type of immigration program English wants for New Zealand. It is an area of concern for citizens of both Australian and New Zealand because of the free travel arrangements the two countries have.
English and his allegedly conservative National Party have announced an increase in their refugee intake from 750 to 1000. The most alarming thing about this policy is that it was advocated by the party’s youth wing along with a whole bunch of left wing policies.
English also offered to accept 150 asylum seekers from Australia’s detention centres but Turnbull rejected this because he knew that they could just end up back in Australia anyway. Migration to New Zealand last year hit 71,000 with English deciding, rather than conceding it was too many announced he was tweaking their migrant program to allow for migrant skills to be better matched with job requirements.
New Zealand has largely avoided the immigration problems of its Tasman neighbour, but rather than learn from Australia’s mistakes English looks set to follow the same path that Australian and other western nations have taken. The worst part is that this is coming from the main conservative party in New Zealand. This means that many New Zealanders with concerns about immigration are disenfranchised and will have to look to the minor parties for an alternative at that nation’s election in September this year. If Australians thought Malcolm Turnbull was bad, New Zealanders might have it worse with Bill English.
