Dr Oliver Hartwich: The revolving door at the end of the Pacific

No country moves people the way New Zealand does.

Nearly three in ten New Zealand residents were born overseas. In our 29-country comparison, only Singapore, Switzerland and Australia have larger shares of foreign-born residents.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: NZ’s zombie rock star economy

Walk through Wellington, and you will see plenty of empty shopfronts and shuttered cafes. Switch on the radio, and you will hear experts say this is the best time to buy a house in years.

Talk to shoppers, and they will tell you about cost-of-living pressures. Listen to the Reserve Bank, and they will tell you inflation is back within its target band.

These are contradictory messages. Yet they all make sense, because the New Zealand economy in late 2025 is a complicated mix.

Professor Paul Spoonley: Latest numbers show NZ now at risk of population stagnation...

Growing, going, gone: latest numbers show NZ now at risk of population stagnation

A year after the 2023 census, changes were already taking place in New Zealand’s population that meant the data was in danger of being superseded.

Fertility was continuing to decline, the number of immigrants arriving was beginning to climb, there was an exodus of New Zealand citizens, Māori made up more of the population and Asian communities were continuing to grow.

Richard Eldred: This Is How Mass Migration Will Change Britain Beyond Recognition

In the Telegraph, Matthew Goodwin warns that mass immigration is reshaping Britain beyond recognition, with white Britons set to become a minority by 2063. Here’s an excerpt:

Alexander Gillespie: NZ report card 2024 - how the country fared in 25 key global and domestic rankings

If it’s good enough for school and university students, it’s good enough for entire countries, too.

This report card provides a snapshot of how New Zealand fared across a wide range of international measures – where it did well, and where there’s room for improvement.

David Barnhizer: Migration, Assimilation, and the Limits of Compassion

As I write this I am sitting on a balcony thirty feet above the Plaza Mayor in the center of Madrid Spain. Madrid is a fantastic city and, in my opinion, one of the last cities in the world where the idea and reality of what a healthy city should be still exists. This is my sixth visit to Spain where my wife lived during her Junior year of college, and brought me shortly after we were married. This trip is even more fascinating than the others. The reason for the difference is due to the dismaying contradictions posed by an exciting, safe, and strongly interactive urban giant such as Madrid and the declining, almost Third World, cities that now characterize much of America.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Shades of 1933 in German state elections

On Sunday, Germany experienced a political earthquake. For the first time since 1933, a far-right party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), became the largest party in a state election. In Thuringia, the AfD won 32.8% of the vote, gaining 9.4 percentage points on its previous performance.

This happened mere days after a knife attack at a festival in Solingen killed three people. The attacker, Issa Al H., was a 26-year-old Syrian who had lived in Germany since 2022 despite his claim for asylum being rejected. Unsurprisingly, this terrorist attack dominated the final week of the campaign. It put immigration and security at the centre of debate – right where the AfD likes to have it.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 8/4/24

There’s gold – or rather, energy without carbon – in that rock, but Jones reminds us of the Treaty and an ownership issue

Oh, dear. One News tells us an ownership spat is brewing between Māori and the Crown as New Zealand uses more renewable energy sources.

No, not water or the shoreline. Ownership of another resource has come into the reckoning.

Lushington D. Brady: Changing the Face of New Zealand

But if you notice, you’re a conspiracy theorist

New Zealand’s latest immigration figures tell a story being heard right across the West. Child-rearing age New Zealanders are fleeing their country in droves: now more so than ever. And they’re being more than replaced by child-bearing age migrants from the Global South.

But that’s all just a coincidence, I’m sure.

I mean, it’s not as if New Zealand’s media and political class are openly saying that they want to make New Zealand “less white”, oops, “more diverse”.

But first, the numbers.

Bob Brockie: Australian migrants

Here is Bob Brockie's cartoon commentary on Australia's superior lifestyle!

Greg Ninness: More than 14,000 overseas workers and 12,000 overseas students arrived in New Zealand during July

The number of people arriving in New Zealand on work visas declined for the second month in a row in July.

According to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE), 14,238 people arrived on work visas in July, down from 16,878 in June and 17,319 in May.

That may signal the rapid growth in the number of overseas workers coming to NZ that occurred since pandemic border restrictions were eased, is starting to slow.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 14/6/23

Statements gush from the Beehive but there’s a dearth of figures for taxpayers who might want to check the costings

A gush of press statements has poured from the Beehive in the past 24 hours.

Ministers, plainly, have been busy. But they were sparing with their information when it came to telling us how much is being spent on the initiatives and what-have-you they were announcing.

Bob Jones: The grim year ahead

Late last century it became evident world-wide that whenever economists agreed on a future economic forecast, invariably the opposite occurred.

To the best of my knowledge I was the first to point this out in my newspaper columns at the time. In my comic novel OGG, published in 2002, I had a scenario whereby an outfit at the centre of my story employing people searching the world’s newspapers seeking out such situations, then making a fortune backing the opposite outcome.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: The Government seems to have gone soft on slashing migration

 

The Government has finally announced its long-awaited immigration reset in the last 3 hours. 

So, here’s a first take on what it looks like: 

Depending on what industry you’re in and what job you're trying to fill you are either stoked or gutted with today’s announcement. 

Because that is really the theme here: picking winners. 

Phil McDermott: Just Another Stake in the Sand - Planning, Demographics, and Uncertainty

Another million or another myth?

The Mayor, Len Brown, reiterated the Council view that Auckland is facing an increase of around one million people over the next 30 years, and that planning for this level of growth is the prudent thing to do.  I cannot be so sure. 

The Mayor is pretty bullish about growth, though.  He even claimed that “our actual rate of population growth has been well above the highest projection” since 1999.