At a recent election townhall in Christchurch, Labour's Dr. Megan Woods, National's Dale Stephens, and ACT's Laura Trusk spoke to the Kiwi-Indian community, laying out their parties' vision for the community and answered questions about immigration, crime, and India-New Zealand trade relations.
Organised by The Indian Weekender and moderated by Sadat Naseem Abbasi and Amitrajit Sarkar, the event took place on 5th October at Te Hapua: Halswell Centre with around 50 community members attending.
National's Christchurch Central candidate, Chris Stephens, began by explaining the party's recently announced multiple-entry Parent Visa Boost, which would allow parents and grandparents of migrants to visit their family in New Zealand for up to five years, with the possibility of renewal for a further five years.
Stephens emphasised the importance of immigration to New Zealand's economic growth. "We look very closely at what we need to do to open up the country and create opportunities to bring the quality expertise we need in this country,” he said.
"We want to encourage high-tech expertise to come into the country and get our high-tech, agri-tech, and medi-tech sectors up and running," Stephens said. "There is a great opportunity."
He also acknowledged the current shortage of skilled workers in New Zealand and the need to make the immigration process more accessible and efficient.
"We need to change the parameters by which we bring highly skilled migrants, we need to make it accessible and we need to speed up the whole process," he said. "We need to get all the red tape out of the way."
Woods, Labour's candidate for Wigram, shared that a re-elected Labour government will introduce a 10-year multiple-entry Super Visa that will allow grandparents and parents of migrants to make successive visits of between 6 months and five years.
The parental visa was closed in 2016 by the previous National government. Woods said Labour's policy is just an extension of their vision to give communities the flexibility to be with their families.
"This builds on a number of other changes that we want to make and have made to the immigration system," Woods said. "One of the things that we were so pleased to be able to do is to introduce the Resident Visa 2021, which has allowed over 100,000 people to stay in New Zealand."
Woods also highlighted the fact that since the borders have reopened, there has been a surge in people coming back to New Zealand, including 70,000 working holiday visa holders, 9000 healthcare workers, 37,000 construction workers, and 16,000 hospitality workers.
"But one of the things that we really want to do is the family unification piece and the parental visa is an important part of that," Woods said. "We also need to have an immigration system what it is about our plan to grow the economy. So we need to attract highly skilled people from India and other places."
The Act Party's candidate for Banks Peninsula, Trusk, also explained the party's Unite Visa policy which would provide a pathway for families to be together again by allowing parents of Kiwi-Indians to visit for up to five years at a time, with a renewal requirement each year. The Unite Visa would have an annual fee of $3500 to cover potential health costs.
Moving on to the issue of rising crime, Woods, emphasised the importance of evidence-based policymaking when it comes to addressing ram raids and youth crime.
"I acknowledge that crime has been an issue for all communities across our country," Woods said. "We already have policies underway and are working on this. One of the things we can see is that the ram-raids are trending down, I think there was a peak in August last year with your 116 cases in one month. The good thing is that in August this year, we had just 35."
Woods said that she had been impressed by the success of Project Circuit Breaker, which has a 75-80% success rate in preventing young people from reoffending.
"It is our responsibility as a community to make sure we're putting that love and support around the youth and the structures around them."
Stephens, who has spent 22 years with the police, called for a tougher stance on crime.
"I have never seen a society in NZ the way it is now," Stephens said. "There is a breakdown in our legislation, enforcement, and communities. So there's not one answer to fixing this. It's a many-headed beast."
Stephens said that the judiciary and legislation are allowing a soft-on-crime approach and that there is a need for young people to understand that there are consequences for their actions.
Stephens outlined National’s five-step process for dealing with young offenders. The first three steps are about social services and wraparound support for parents and young people. If they are still committing crimes, they go to step four– a 12-month military academy with the best available resources to help them. At the end of the 12 months, or step five, is a 12-month follow-up and wraparound supervision support, moving them into a new environment, so that they can flourish in a new environment.
ACT's Trusk explained a three-tier system to combat youth crime in New Zealand.
"It cost $2.6 billion to small businesses last year due to robberies, which is an astronomic amount," Trusk said. "We need to have some kind of consequence in place for youth crime."
She said boot camps for youth offenders should focus on giving them a vision for the future, rather than institutionalizing them or traumatizing them.
"We want to stop the cycle and give them some kind of goals. That can be achieving an NCAA qualification, getting a driver's licence or starting an apprenticeship. Some of the young kids that I've talked to who have been ram-raiding, do not see a future for themselves and they don't feel part of the community. So that is where we want to deal with that issue."
Trusk also reiterated ACT's support for the three-strikes policy for serious offenders.
The three candidates also reiterated their parties’ commitment to working closely with India and improving trade relations between the two countries. Both the Labour Party and the National Party have said that taking a trade delegation to India will be among their first priorities if they form the government.
Stephens emphasizes the importance of India in diversifying New Zealand's market opportunities away from China.
"There's been a huge focus on China," Stephens said. "What we have been trying to do for some years is mitigate away from China because of the risk of putting all your eggs in one basket and if something goes wrong, then you bring the whole business to a risk. When you think about margins, the opportunity in India is quite different. And so we've been very clear on the fact that we see India as a key player for us, and our move to diversify our market opportunities away from China."
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