Jones Dail: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Jones Dail: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:627;Page:22217] 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 I would like to thank the member who has just resumed his seat for his speech. He and I have been to a couple of meetings together and he has obviously listened to what I have to say and he has been working around the information I have been putting forward. 
New Zealand First has made it clear that we need a population policy and the Rt Hon Winston Peters made this very clear in his Orewa speech about 5 or 6 weeks ago. New Zealand First intends to stop the knee-jerk annual immigration planning and start working on 10-year and 25-year plans for New Zealand. We want to establish long-term labour market demands and import the skills needed if sufficient New Zealanders cannot be trained. We want to target people with the skills needed and ensure that immigrants have jobs to go to. We want to consult New Zealanders about the make-up of those people coming here and we want to produce a targeted programme aimed at retaining skilled New Zealanders and encouraging others offshore to return. 
New Zealand is the only First World country with an agricultural base. We have to decide the size of our population and the nature of our environment. We rely on our clean green image to encourage tourists to come here—in fact tourism is now our major foreign exchange earner. Yet our population increased by more than 25 percent in the last 18 years to take us to over 4 million and the suggestion from United Future from the member who has just spoken that we should have a population of 5 million in another 10 years must give us cause for concern. 
What is happening in New Zealand at the moment to say that such a policy is overdue? Well the member has just given us some figures. From 1976 to 1986 New Zealand’s population increased by 160000. But from 1996 to 2004 for example eight years out of 10 our population increased by 329400 which is more than double the increase from 1975 to 1986 in four-fifths of the time. In 1986 our population was 3298000. In 2004 it was 4061400 an increase of 772400 in 18 years which is a 25 percent increase. Where did it all go? In the Auckland region the population increase from 1986 to 2004 was 435000. Almost 60 percent of that new population in those 18 years went to Auckland. That increase in Auckland’s population in 18 years—and I am talking about the Auckland region—is almost the same as Wellington’s entire population in the region from year one. 
So the problem for Auckland is this: did we get the same number of schools that Wellington has the same number of hospitals that Wellington has and the same number of roads that Wellington has in order to compensate for that 18-year growth in Auckland’s population—which was the same as the total population of Wellington since the year dot? The answer is no. In speaking about the effect of immigration on the people of the Auckland area for example in west Auckland when I was the member of Parliament from 1975 to 1984 a new school was built in 1975 and good on the Kirk-Rowling Government and the previous planners for doing that. On the North Shore at Long Bay a new secondary school was built in about 1975. Has another secondary school been built in that region since 1975 when Auckland’s population has shot through the roof? No. Not one other secondary school has been built. No wonder the schools have large rolls. There has not been another secondary school built in west Auckland in the Waitakere College or Long Bay College area since 1975. I went to the opening of Waitakere College in 1975. Mr Garelja does a wonderful job at Waitakere College but that is the problem we have in Auckland in so far as immigration is concerned. 
What are we going to do about it? We see the effects of this massive immigration to New Zealand which is totally out of control. We have an electricity crisis in Auckland now. We read about it every day. What will be one of the consequences of that? Well I am pleased to see that they will have electricity power stations but there is nothing to stop them from building a nuclear power station. There is no law that stops the building of a nuclear power station. The Royal Commission on Nuclear Power which we set up from 1975 to 1978 indicated that as of 2005 two nuclear power stations should already be commissioned. The plan was to have two in the North Island and one in the South Island. They should be commissioned now based on that 160000 increase in population every 10 years projected back in those days and we have gone well beyond that today. 
That is one of the effects that immigration has. We know that law and order is out of control and that housing is out of control and these are all indications of the failure of successive Labour Governments starting in about 1988 when they opened the floodgates and of National Governments in the 1990s. There was a slight decrease when New Zealand First was part of the coalition as we were trying to turn the tap down and another roaring increase in the last few years. 
From 1996 to 2004 the increase has been 329000 people in that short space of time. That is an impossible rate of growth for New Zealand. It is about the size of the Canterbury region’s population in total. We have had increases in Wellington of 15 percent in Canterbury of about 20 percent and in Tauranga of 30 percent but in Auckland the biggest city the population increase has been over 50 percent in 18 years. That is a disgrace. New Zealand First says and I suggest that we have what David Lange suggested once: not a cup of tea but a pot of tea and a good long think about where we are heading now. 
It does not matter how many roads the Labour Party puts in and I am really pleased with the roading programme that the Labour Party has put up; over the upper harbour bridge in Mount Roskill on the northern motorway and the city motorway. It is doing a great job. But it does not matter how many roads we build for the current population because if we increase the population by the same amount again in 10 years from 4 million to 5 million no amount of roading can ever stop the problems that Auckland will feel. When I come to Wellington I come to a city that is the same as it was in 1984. I think that the way in which Wellington’s population has increased should have been the master plan for New Zealand at about 15 percent over 18 years or about 60000 in about 18 years in the region and not the 50 to 60 percent Auckland has had. 
Wellington is old New Zealand to me. When I come here I see that there has really been no change since I was here in 1984. When I go to Auckland it is a foreign city. Auckland is a foreign city to Aucklanders now. If one is a fair-dinkum Aucklander in the mainstream walking up and down the main street of Auckland one feels that Auckland is a foreign city. That is what Aucklanders feel. I welcome multiculturalism. I know what it is to be a minority of 0.001 percent myself but we must have an infrastructure. Immigrants get the blame but it is the Government’s fault. It is the fault of the Labour Party and it is the fault of the National Party. Immigrants get blamed for all these things but it is the fault of successive Governments. That is what the real problem is and that is what New Zealand First highlights time and time again. We have to put in the infrastructure and that is why we in New Zealand First say that we need a population policy. I am so pleased that Taiwanese people agree with me. 
A party vote was called for on the question that Vote Immigration be agreed to 
.