O'Rourke Denis: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: General Debate[Sitting date: 05 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:650. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First):In this year’s election only one party addressed the widespread concerns that New Zealanders have with the current immigration policy and that was New Zealand First. New Zealand First will be making immigration a major theme of our role in this parliamentary term too and we will probably be the only party to do so. This Government has a completely irresponsible and irrational immigration policy that is causing great damage to the interests of New Zealand. The Government has been boasting of net immigration at uncontrolled record levels. It is actually telling the public that uncontrolled record net immigration is some kind of measure of success. It claims that this massive unplanned immigration is an achievement. In fact the record numbers of migrants show that New Zealand has a slack uncontrolled immigration policy—in effect an open-door policy. The numbers of migrants are nothing short of an indictment on this Government’s incompetence on immigration.For a start what record numbers of immigrants show is that no consideration is given to the relationship between immigration and housing policy while every day brings new horror stories about the housing crisis especially in Auckland and Christchurch. In Auckland there are soaring house prices as desperate people scramble to get a home. Hundreds of families are left to squat in caravans and garages. The Government is full of empty rhetoric about the housing crisis. Its failure to address the crisis for over 6 years continues. This Government does not have any genuine concern about the desperate housing situation faced by thousands of New Zealanders because the one meaningful action it could take today if it was serious about housing would be to turn off the tap to new migrants.Of course we cannot stop New Zealanders returning to New Zealand and neither would we want to but we do not have to let the rest of the world in. All the Government’s talk about housing is bogus. It is a total smokescreen. It is looking at only one side of the supply and demand equation for housing because it stupidly refuses to deal with the demand for housing generated by high immigration. Cut immigration now—that is what we say. That is the quickest and most effective way to relieve pressure on the housing market immediately. It is utterly astonishing if not bizarre that the Government cannot make the connection between immigration and housing.But the Government’s immigration policy is deeply flawed for a whole range of reasons not just housing. Take jobs. We have over 140000 unemployed. Tens of thousands more have given up on finding any sort of job at all. Yet migrants are flooding in on a temporary work visa basis. The wages and conditions of most New Zealanders are hardly moving leaving tens of thousands of families in severe financial stress and it is no wonder. Massive immigration is undermining the pay of ordinary New Zealanders.The truth is that the Government is only too happy to see that happening. Cheap labour is what its corporate cronies want and it fits with National’s commitment to globalisation. And then there is the foreign student visa racket and a racket it is. Why are we allowing foreign students to work in New Zealand? In case the Government has not noticed there are thousands of very able young New Zealand school-leavers and graduates who cannot find a job. Why should they have to compete with hordes of foreign students? It does not make sense. Of course if New Zealanders are displaced in the job market they may well end up on the unemployment benefit.Thanks to wildly excessive immigration New Zealand now has one of the fastest-growing populations in the OECD. That is causing great stress on housing the labour market and our infrastructure generally and there is no follow-up to see just how well these migrants have settled in New Zealand. What checking is being done to ensure migrants have not become a burden on the taxpayer? We certainly have a lot more taxi drivers and some on benefits so just what skills are we actually getting? There is no genuine attempt to really verify that at all. This is now an open-door land. [Bell rung] It is the usual—