NZ Labour Anti-Export

Paying Off the Boys in Back Rooms

The real price of a Labour government in New Zealand is its cloth cap attitude the trade unions.  When the unions bark, "Jump" all Labour MP's in the caucus intone, "How high?" as they are already off the floor and moving upwards.  Union money means an awful lot to the impecunious, poorly funded party.  

What this means is that Labour can do an awful lot of economic damage to the country as they do the unions' bidding.  It makes it all the more galling when one considers that unions are a pale shell of their former presence.  Here is an example of how it works:

Labour Says its Student Visa Crackdown Will Cost $130 Million

NZ Herald

Labour has admitted that its planned crackdown on student visas will chop $130 million a year off the country's education export income.  Labour education spokesman Chris Hipkins disclosed the figure at an international education conference in Auckland today, revealing that the party had done an "economic impact analysis" of its proposals.

That's a serious cost.  In effect the student visa shut down will virtually kill a busy and thriving export industry, since its earnings come from offshore accounts.  So that's bad enough.  But it gets worse.  The Government has had a look at Labour's figures and claims they are woefully shonky.

National's Tertiary Education Minister Paul Goldsmith said his analysis put the cost of Labour's proposals at "closer to $1 billion".

Independent Tertiary Education NZ chair Christine Clark said she agreed with Goldsmith, pointing to a recent Infometrics study estimating that overseas students contributed $1.1 billion to the NZ economy in 2015-16 in private training establishments (PTEs), $511 million in polytechnics and $552 million in English language schools.  "I believe he could quite easily wipe 50 per cent of the PTE benefit to the country with Labour's policy," she said.

Chris Hipkins is not the brightest pin in the cushion, nor does the noun, integrity sit well on his shoulders.  "Political hack", however, does.  Why would a Labour government want to kill off a thriving export industry?  Because in its perverted world-view the state does a better job of training and education than the non-state sector.  And the state education sector is controlled substantially by the education unions.  State unions hate competition.  Socialists hate competition.