Green Party have released their new Refugee Policy which is aspirational and righteous but utterly unrealistic.
I believe we desperately need to lift our refugee numbers. We should be ashamed at the way we have done so little to help human beings from the worst areas of the planet, and I certainly believe that the Greens are right to start including climate refugees from the Pacific as a specific target within those refugee numbers, but the problem for the Greens on this policy is two fold – the cost and the fact we can’t even properly house NZ citizens who are homeless and sleeping in cars right now.
The Greens intend to build a new refugee settlement centre and offset the cost of increased refugee numbers by putting a 10% levy on new rich migrants moving to NZ.
That would raise $67.5 million a year. Problem is the full cost of 4000 refugees would be $350million each year.
The Greens are almost $300million out.
That’s a shit load of money we need to make up when you consider we have 41 000 homeless NZers. How is this going to look when NZers see their own citizens on the streets juxtaposed with new refugee centres?
Where else could that $300 million each year go? It would only cost $100 million each year to feed every poor kid in every school throughout NZ and the remaining $200million could go some way to solving our own homelessness problems.
To spend $300 million annually to house refugees when our own poor are in such poverty is a huge political gamble.
This would be a problematic policy to implement in such a short time because of the enormous housing pressures we have right now on our own domestic population.
This Policy will work wonders for the Green base, and also might appeal to new migrants, but expect political opponents to use it to club the Greens with repeatedly throughout the election. You might find that it will be the Greens political opponents who use it more than the Greens themselves.
Good post. Get realistic. Help those in your backyard first and then turn to the rest of the world.
Also many refugees don’t even want to be forced to flee from their homes. NZ should be helping to end wars, famine and corruption and holding those to account who are making the refugee crisis much worse.
Stopping those bombing Syria and Yeman would help for a start. Climate change and water shortages will make things worse.
Don’t be the ambulance at the bottom, concentrate on stopping the issues before they start.
+100 SAVENZ
Thought you where a commercial banker Shaw. Come on buddy. Dig deep mate.
We could take 4000 climate refugees and maybe the Islands cold take 4000 of our own housing refugees.
Quite. Not that I was planning to vote Green, but this nails it. They will likely get, and if so, deserve, crucifixion.
Stop supporting the USA and NATO in their wars and solve the refugee problem at its source.
+100 IAN KiDDLE
why aren’t the perpetrators of the refugee crisis taking in most of the refugees?….ie USA, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UK, France…warmongering in the Middle East and creating the de-tabilisation ?
Well first off, there aren’t any climate refugees. None.
Second, the Greens are flying in the face of public sentiment over ‘refugees’. It will lose them votes. The populace is rightly cautious over allowing people into the country who are unlikely to be able to work and bring with them failed cultures and the very things the Greens claim to fight. Sydney, Melbourne and most of the European capitals have a refugee based crime wave on their hands. NZ voters don’t want it here too.
Of course we should take more refugees. It’d only be marginally better here for them though, what with all the selfish, ignorant, racist, science-denying scum the New Zealand population is made up of.
It’s like this country really is just another Australian state.
Well you could ‘dis-establish’ about 20-30 senior management positions at the Ministry of Health and get about 8 million for a start. But then that’d be better spent probably at the DHB’s
I’m for it. None of us Brits were intrinsically lovable , except for deterring Maori and draining Britain and Ireland of the needy. My heart prefers the ‘poor, weak, sick’ over someone’s idea of the ‘apt’ recruit on that account. Don’t give a shit about it being ‘politic’, given the last 33 years of the ‘politic’.
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