That’s a question we need to ask in New Zealand. Should immigration targets be linked to positive spending on infrastructure and housing to cope?

On last Sunday’s Q+A, most of the panel and the interviewees seemed to think that New Zealand needed a larger population, built up by immigration. Or that immigration-fuelled growth was, at any rate, inevitable.

Indeed, why shouldn’t New Zealand grow its population and its cities? By the standards of many other countries, we have the room.

And yet, New Zealand has a longstanding habit of failing to make sure that all the necessary transport links, pipes, wires, schools, hospitals, houses and jobs are in place, before the population is bumped up by immigration.

As far back as the mid-1970s, this failure to plan led to the rise of Rob Muldoon’s brand of anti-immigrant populism.

Nothing much has changed since then. Except that the problem of too few houses, in particular, has got worse.

Do we need a referendum linking permitted levels of immigration to prior provision for jobs, housing and infrastructure, to force the New Zealand state to lift its planning game?

Note regarding featured image: A much cheaper house than almost any in New Zealand, at Port Elliot, South Australia.

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/do-we-need-referendum-immigration-population-infrastructure-housing