speech<\/a>\u00a0on 17 May 2026, entitled “By Their Deeds You Will Know Them”, Peters asserted that \u201cIn 2017 when we [NZ First] became part of the Government, immigration was dramatically cut back.\u201d<\/p>\nExcept, that\u2019s simply not true.<\/p>\n
As our Chart of the Month shows, non-NZ citizen migrant arrivals into New Zealand were virtually unchanged in 2018 and into 2019, when any change in immigration policy in 2017 would have had an effect. The annual running totals of non-NZ migrant arrivals ranged between 102,000 and 106,000 between the start of 2018 and May 2019, as it had done since February 2016. In fact, it never went below 100,000pa until the COVID-19 lockdown saw borders closed in 2020.<\/p>\n
We have focused on non-NZ citizen migration because NZ citizen migration is not something government can effectively regulate. You can\u2019t limit the number of New Zealanders entering or leaving the country on a permanent basis, but the government does control levels around non-NZ citizen migration, through visa settings and more.<\/p>\n
Annual net migration of non-NZ citizens reduced slightly, down 14% between the start of 2017 when net migration of non-NZ citizens stood at 64,900, and mid-2018 when a near-term low of 55,800 was reached. However, much of this decline would have occurred before any policy change from Peters. And even then, as outlined above, arrivals were unchanged, with a slightly higher level of non-NZ citizen departures seeing the annual net figure reducing. Importantly, even at the mid-2018 \u201clow\u201d, net migration of non-NZ citizens was higher than at any point between 2004 and 2015. That\u2019s hardly a dramatic \u201ccut back\u201d.<\/p>\n
In fact, current non-NZ migrant arrivals at present are still slightly higher levels that prevailed over 2015-2019.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s disappointing to see politicians resort to making up views on topics that are quite clear and objective. There was no period in 2017 where \u201cimmigration was dramatically cut back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Politics should be a contest of ideas. Peters\u2019 recent speech raised the idea of compulsory KiwiSaver enrolment at birth, alongside a Crown contribution of $1,000 to kick things off. We think that policy idea has merits. Another idea was to buy BNZ, and amalgamate it with Kiwibank. We think the figures Peters is quoting to buy the bank are far too low, but again, maybe there\u2019s merit in the policy conversation \u2013 with the right figures.<\/p>\n
But there is simply no data that backs up the view that immigration was dramatically cut back in 2017. There\u2019s no opinion to that, just figures. Peters is welcome to debate topics like migration. But he should really check his facts before he tries to tell the public what he did, when he clearly did nothing of the sort.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This article was first published here<\/a>. It is reposted with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Infometrics’ Brad Olsen says Winston Peters is welcome to debate topics like migration. But he should really check…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-447245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}