John Key arrives with his wife Bronagh at National’s northern convention at Waipuna Hotel yesterday. Photo / Dean Purcell

Prime Minister John Key laid out the welcome mat for foreigners yesterday and said it was a point of contrast between National and other parties.

“We don’t put up the fear factor you see from other political parties about the multicultural society that is emerging in New Zealand,” he told more than 300 delegates to National’s northern conference at Waipuna Hotel yesterday.

“We welcome tourists that come from overseas; we welcome people that are going to come and study at our schools and universities; we welcome people who want to invest in New Zealand and we welcome people who want to make their home in New Zealand,” he said. “And yes, we welcome people who want to buy a home here and raise a family. That’s what a multicultural, confident society is about.”

New Zealand’s future lay in selling things to the rest of the world and the future of the world was about being more connected, he said.

“Do any of us think we are really going to get rich selling things to four and a half million New Zealanders?” Mr Key said.

There was a larger than usual representation of Pacific Island delegates from South Auckland seats and Mr Key made special mention of it.

He referred to the imminent departure of former economic development spokesman Shane Jones from Labour – to take up a position as a Pacific fisheries ambassador for the Government.

“If you look at Labour, they have lost the only guy in their caucus who vaguely even cares about economic growth or prosperity or people getting ahead under their own steam.”

He said it was critical in the campaign to demonstrate contrast on offer by political parties and opposition by Labour and the Greens to jobs and growth. “You don’t need to take my word for it – take Shane Jones’ word for it, because that is exactly what he is saying, that there is no point being economic development minister in a Labour-Greens Government that doesn’t believe in economic development.”

Despite high polling for National, Mr Key said September’s election would not be easy to win. “There is absolutely no room in our party for complacency … we have to fight for every single one of those votes.”

Maurice Williamson did not attend the conference.

Sourced for you by The New Zealand Immigration Consultant. Media Source | NZ Herald 5 May 2014

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source – The NZ Herald.

New Zealand migration rose to an 11-year high in March, the second-highest gain on record, as fewer kiwis left for Australia.

The country gained a seasonally adjusted 3,800 net new migrants in March, the most since February 2003, said Statistics New Zealand. A net 400 people left for Australia in March, down from 600 in February, according to seasonally adjusted figures.

In the year through March, New Zealand gained a net 31,900 migrants, a 10-year high, as 98,000 people arrived while 66,100 departed. That’s more than 12 times the 2,500 annual net migration gain in the year through March 2013 and compares with an average net gain of 11,700 migrants over the past 20 years.

The Reserve Bank last month said the rapid increase in net migration over the past 18 months, which has boosted demand for housing and consumer spending, is an inflationary pressure which prompted it to lift the official cash rate a quarter-point to 2.75 percent. The central bank reviews interest rates tomorrow, and is widely expected to hike a further 25 basis points.

“We expect annual net migration to peak just below 40,000 later this year – which implies some slowing from the current pace,” Daniel Smith, an economist at ASB Bank, said in a note. “Additional workers will help meet strong demand in the Canterbury construction sector, but stronger population growth overall is likely to add to domestic demand and exacerbate housing market pressures, particularly in Auckland.

“That is one of the reasons why interest rates will continue to rise over the next couple of years,” Smith said.

China was the nation’s biggest source of net long-term arrivals, with 6,200 people relocating to New Zealand in the year ended March, followed by 6,100 Indian migrants and 5,800 British arrivals. Auckland attracted 14,800 migrants, with Canterbury seeing 5,200 international arrivals settling there over the year.

Today’s figures showed short-term visitor arrivals fell 6 percent to 253,600 in March compared to a year earlier, as a late Easter meant school holidays in Australia, the UK and Hong Kong started in April rather than March. In the month visitors from across the Tasman dropped 13 percent, UK visitors were down 19 percent and Hong Kong short-term arrivals fell 42 percent.

Annually short-term visitors rose 5 percent to 2.75 million, as Germans out stripped Japanese arrivals to become the fifth biggest source of visitors. Australian visits rose 4.3 percent to 1.2 million in the year, China rose 14 percent to 239,700, the US gained 10 percent to 207,700 while annual UK visitors rose 1.3 percent to 191,900.

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New Zealand is the most socially advanced nation in the world, according to a new global index published today.

New Zealand topped the Social Progress Index (SPI) of 132 countries ranked on social and environmental performance by the US-based nonprofit, the Social Progress Imperative.

“New Zealand’s ranking as the most socially progressive nation on Earth is is an exceptional result,” Social Progress Imperative executive directive Michael Green said.

The top five countries in order were New Zealand, Switzerland, Netherlands, Iceland, and Norway.

The SPI defined social progress as: “The capacity of a society to meet the basic human needs of its citizens, establish the building blocks that allow citizens and communities to enhance and sustain the quality of their lives, and create the conditions for all individuals to reach their full potential.”

Eighty years after gross domestic product was first conceived, SPI was designed to offer another – more wholesome – way to measure national performance.

Green said the researchers had decided to exclude GDP so it could be compared with social progress.

Under three main categories – basic human needs, foundations of wellbeing, and opportunity – 12 components, further split into 54 indicators, determined overall ratings.

New Zealand ranked first overall in opportunity, and had the best score in 20 components, including measures of homicide, corruption, religious tolerance, personal freedom and choice, secondary school enrolment, and press freedoms.

The result was particularly impressive in the context of New Zealand’s “relative economic weakness” compared to countries that finished much lower on the SPI, Green said.

“People always say it’s going to be the Scandinavians who come top, and they have done well,” Green said.

“But what’s striking about New Zealand’s result is that it has only the 25th GDP in the world. Per capita, that’s half of Norway’s. On half the income, NZ can show higher social progress than Norway.”

New Zealand did not have any specific weaknesses on the SPI, Green said, but its lowest scoring indicator – at 115th globally – was obesity.

New Zealand also ranked poorly in suicide – 76th globally.

Green said the project highlighted where there were data gaps, such as violence against women.

“One of the things we want to highlight as part of this report is that we’re using the best available data that’s globally comparable. But there are data gaps.”

SPI allowed individual countries to benchmark themselves against peer countries, both at the level of individual indicators as well as overall.

“If you want to be a successful country, it’s so much more than economic growth,” Green said.

“If we drive our world on GDP alone, we’re going to miss so much.”

See the full report here.

Key global highlights:

* The top five countries in order of ranking are: New Zealand, Switzerland, Netherlands, Iceland, and Norway.

* Canada is the best performing G8 country.

* Brazil is the top of the BRICS, followed by South Africa, Russia, China and India. Apart from Brazil, the BRICS are all significant under-performers on social progress, suggesting that, for China and India in particular, rapid economic growth is not yet being converted into better lives for their citizens. Source Fairfax NZ

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New Zealanders living in Australia are protesting tonight against “incredibly unjust and discriminative” immigration laws.

The protests, organised by the `Iwi n Aus Foundation’, are scheduled to take place across New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, and Western Australia, starting at 8pm Australian time.

The group says legislation passed in 2001 blocks New Zealanders living across the Tasman from benefits including disability care, welfare and social housing.

“Australian and New Zealand families are being disadvantaged and penalised due to the current legislations,” the group said.

“The system that is in place is not working and sadly many of the repercussions and consequences are being placed upon our children and our grandchildren.

“We stand united together in true ANZAC spirit fighting to change a system denying dignity and inclusion because we migrate from Aotearoa/New Zealand.”

Iwi n Aus, run by a group of mothers, said the discriminative laws affect not just their children but Australian-born grandchildren.

Founder member Erina Anderson told AAP that many people back in their homeland are unaware how tough things can be for New Zealanders living in Australia.

“If Prime Minister John Key wanted to stop New Zealanders from coming to Australia, there’s one simple way thing he could do – tell people what they can expect,” she told AAP.

“Nobody would willingly pick up their family and move across if they knew their children weren’t going to be afforded equal rights.”

Ms Anderson told the news agency that many New Zealanders can’t get permanent residency or citizenship because their occupations don’t feature on Australia’s wanted-skills list.

When Prime Minister Tony Abbott met his New Zealand counterpart John Key earlier this month, he said Kiwis enjoyed the unique privilege of being free to live and work in Australia without approval. But he wouldn’t budge on New Zealanders’ eligibility for other benefits, saying he expected migrants to be “lifters not leaners”

“Thank God, the vast majority of them have been and will continue to be – and that’s as it should be.”

– NZ Herald

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New Zealand is a dream migration destination for millions around the globe, and our population could rise by 134 per cent if everyone could choose to live where they wanted, a survey has found.

Gallup’s Potential Net Migration Index found people’s desire to migrate permanently to other countries had cooled to 13 per cent, but scores of people wanting to move to New Zealand are “still positive and high”.

The survey involved about 520,000 interviews in 154 countries, and the net migration index value is obtained by subtracting the number of people who would want to leave each country from the number who want to move there.

Despite a drop from the high of 184 per cent in surveys conducted between 2007 and 2009, New Zealand was still the fifth most popular destination, ahead of Singapore and Canada and just slightly behind Australia and Switzerland.

New Zealand’s population of 4,242,048 would swell to 9,926,393 if everyone who wanted to move here made the shift.

Professor Paul Spoonley, a Massey University sociologist, believed “cooling of the job market” in New Zealand over 2010 to 2012 – the period when the survey was conducted – was the reason for the decline in interest from potential migrants.

“The global financial crisis has seen a softening of people applying to come to New Zealand in real terms, and the slowdown in the job market over the period also affected the desire of people on wanting to move here,”he said.

“The big change in the last couple of years was the strength in the Australian labour market and the weakening of the job market in New Zealand, which could explain why Australia became a more popular choice.”

In previous surveys, New Zealand was by far a more desired destination, scoring 184 points in 2009 against Australia’s 148.

About 630 million people or 13 per cent of the world’s adults wish they lived somewhere other than their home country.

But Professor Spoonley said New Zealand’s limited infrastructure would make it “near impossible” to support a population of 10 million.

Saudi Arabia, at 218 per cent, and Kuwait, on 198 per cent, were the top two most desired destinations for would-be migrants.

The Abu Dhabi Gallup Centre, which conducted a study on potential migrants to high-income countries, said more were becoming aware of Saudi Arabia as a possible destination “to seek economic opportunities and employment”.

About 53 per cent of those who would like to move to the Gulf nation are from Asia, 24 per cent from sub-Saharan Africa and 23 per cent from the Middle East and North Africa.

Europeans were less than 1 per cent of all potential migrants to Saudi Arabia, the centre found.

In absolute number terms, the United States was the most desired destination, with about 138 million stating they would like to move to America. Nearly 19 million from China, 13 million from Nigeria and 10 million from India wanted to live in the US permanently.

“The US remains the most popular … This is likely because of economic opportunities in the country and the established networks of potential migrants,” said the report. Participants in the survey were asked: “Ideally, if you had the opportunity, would you like to move permanently to another country, or would you prefer to continue living in this country?”, and “to which country would you like to move?”

The United Kingdom, Canada and France also ranked among the top choices.

The index showed the population would still grow in Europe, the Americas, North Africa and the Middle East, but populations in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa would shrink if everyone who wanted to move did.

In Europe, countries hard hit in the Eurozone crisis such as Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece, had large declines with Greece slipping from 11 per cent to negative 8 per cent.

In the Middle East, Syria’s score increased from -17 per cent to -27 per cent “no doubt because of the increase in the percentage desiring to leave the war-torn country if they could and fewer adults desiring to relocate there amid a civil war”.

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The prediction for the NZ economy for 2014.

A leading global bank says that New Zealand will be the “rock star” economy of 2014.

Paul Bloxham, HSBC chief economist for Australia and New Zealand said New Zealand’s growth is set to outpace most of its developed markets peers.

Mr Bloxham said yesterday “We think New Zealand will be the rock star <strong>economy of 2014.</strong>”

“Growth is going to pick up pretty solidly this year.” He also said there were three key factors contributing to further expansion.

The first was construction spending with the Canterbury rebuild.

He mentioned “There’s an enormous amount of construction that’s going into building that region of the economy.”

Mr Bloxham said the second driver was the country’s housing boom, encouraged by the low interest rates and a wave of net immigration during the past year.

The final factor was growing dairy prices, driven by strong demand from China. Mr Bloxham said, dairy prices, which were more than 50% higher than a year ago, were supporting rural incomes.

HSBC forecasts that the Kiwi economy would grow 3.4% in 2014, the fastest speed since 2007 and well above the trend growth of 2.5%.

It was expected to post a growth of 3% for 2013.

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May Peace, Joy, Hope and Happiness be yours during this Holiday Season and throughout the New Year.

From the team at

The Immigration Consultant – Auckand | New Zealand.

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Auckland named top 10 city to visit

29/10/2013

Despite it’s embattled mayor, Auckland has been rated as one of the top 10 cities in the world to visit next year.

The country’s most populous city made the list of Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2014, published today.

Auckland sits alongside iconic hotspots including Paris, Zurich, Shanghai and Vancouver in the ninth annual guide, which highlights the trendiest destinations, journeys and experiences for the upcoming year.

Auckland is recognised for its cuisine, culture and coastal scenery with Lonely Planet saying: “Food, arts and exploring the coastal hinterland are all excellent reasons to extend your stay in New Zealand’s biggest and most cosmopolitan city.”

Mayor Len Brown said the accolade from the world’s number one independent guidebook was well-deserved.

“It shows Auckland is becoming known the world over as a destination in its own right, an exciting international city in a stunning natural setting, and an umissable South Pacific urban experience. The work we are doing to make Auckland a fabulous place to live and visit is paying off and putting Auckland on the map,” he says.
The guide makes particular mention of the waterfront area and Britomart as well as the more far-flung parts of the region such as the west-coast beaches and Waiheke Island.

The recognition follows several others in the last year, including Lonely Planet’s current New Zealand guide labelling Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf and Islands and Auckland City the top two New Zealand experiences.

The top-10 cities were independently nominated by more than 500 Lonely Planet authors and staff and selected based on topicality, excitement and “special X-factor”.

Auckland Tourism Events and Economic Development is aiming to double the contribution from the visitor economy, growing it to $6 billion by 2021.

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It forecasts NZ’s growth rate this year to be 2.5 per cent, bettered among the 35 advanced economies only by Israel, Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea. The average for advanced economies in 2013 is just 1.2 per cent.

The IMF expected the growth rate to pick up to 2.9 per cent next year, exceeded only by the same four and Taiwan, and outperforming the advanced economy average of 2 per cent.

New Zealand also looked relatively good on the fiscal front, with a general government deficit of 0.4 per cent of gross domestic product over 2014, compared with an average deficit of 3.5 per cent for the advanced economies as a whole.

What impact does the economy have on New Zealand Immigration?

Next year’s unemployment rate of 5.3 per cent was not as bad as the 12.2 per cent projected for the euro area, 7.4 per cent for the United States or even Australia’s 6 per cent.

But the failing grade on the report card was the current account balance: a bottom-of-the-class deficit of 4.2 per cent of GDP this year and next year, worsening to 6.1 per cent by 2018.

The global economy has been stuck in low gear, the IMF said, expanding at an annual pace of around 2.5 per cent over the first half of 2013, about the same as the second half of last year.

Please view this recent article supporting the above information.  This article relates to the New Zealand Economy as published in the NZ Business Herald | October 2013

It expected a pick-up in the global growth rate, to 2.9 per cent for 2013 and 3.6 per cent for 2014, though for both years that was less than it forecast in July. Growth in world trade volumes was forecast to lift from 2.9 per cent this year to 4.9 per cent next year.

Emerging market economies would continue to account for the bulk of world output growth even though their collective growth has slowed.

The IMF forecasts China’s growth to slow from 7.6 per cent this year to 7.3 per cent next year. “The forecasts assume that Chinese authorities do not enact major stimulus and accept somewhat slower growth, consistent with the transition to a more balanced and sustainable growth part,” it said.

It has US growth picking up to 2.6 per cent next year, helped by a recovering real estate sector, higher household wealth and easier bank lending conditions.

In the euro areas, business confidence indicators suggested activity was close to stabilising in the periphery and already recovering in the core economies, the IMF said. But it was still only forecasting growth of 1 per cent next year, after a contraction of 0.5 per cent this year.

Your visa options

There is a range of New Zealand visas, some of which you may be eligible for. Choosing the best option for your circumstances will likely depend on how long you want to stay, whether you’ve already got a job lined up and if there is a shortage of your skills in New Zealand.

• Visas to work here
• Visas to study here
• Visas to invest here

Choosing the right New Zealand visa and submitting an immigration application can be challenging, especially if English isn’t your first language.  If you need some expert help you could get immigration advice.

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