Voter motivators 2017: Immigration

IMMIGRATION has set the world on fire. The debt owed by Brexit and Donald Trump to the issue’s inflammatory power is huge. With record volumes of migrants pouring into New Zealand, immigration policy is expected to be among the biggest voter motivators of 2017.

Will New Zealanders react to these new arrivals in the same way as British and American voters? Or will the circumstances underpinning this country’s record migration flows smother the flames of racism and xenophobia before they take hold?

If our history is any guide, probably not. Net inward flows of migration have always signalled economic prosperity and growth. There’s an ancestral voice in the racial memory of Pakeha New Zealanders which commands their attention during periods of rapid population growth, which reminds them that, in these stolen islands, more nonindigenous people are a good thing.

For Maori New Zealanders, the opposite is true. The more immigrants, the more the indigenous essence of AotearoaNew Zealand is diluted. The Treaty the Maori chiefs signed with the British in 1840 seemed a wise and timely concession when barely 2000 Pakeha were sprinkled lightly across their lands. Twenty years later, when the number of British settlers overtook the population of tangata whenua, the promises given at Waitangi proved as cynical as they were unenforceable.

What is it, then, which stops the latest population projections from Statistics New Zealand from setting the fern leaves of Kiwi nationalism alight? The projections indicate in the next 20 years the number of immigrants from East and South Asia will double. By 2038 the number of New Zealanders of ‘‘Asian’’ ethnicity will represent nearly a quarter of the country’s population. Maori, by contrast, will see their share of the population rise by just 2 percentage points, from 16% to 18%. ‘‘European’’ New Zealanders’ share of the population is projected to fall from threequarters to twothirds.

In times past, projections such as these would have generated a massive public backlash. Twenty years ago, media headlines decrying an ‘‘Asian Invasion’’ were exploited by Winston Peters’ to secure 13% of the party vote for his NZ First Party. Why, then, 20 years later, is NZ First not polling twice or three times that number?

The explanation is, almost entirely, economic.

Chinese immigration has encouraged Auckland property prices to soar — producing a ‘‘wealth effect’’ (courtesy of taxfree capital gains!) for which Chinese investors are held responsible. Bolstering this shift in perception across the country has been the steady rise in China’s consumption of New Zealand’s exports. Rather than bite the hand which is, increasingly, feeding them, many Kiwis have considered it prudent to retire the worst of their prejudices.

In regional New Zealand, likewise, the sterling contribution of Filipino dairy farm workers is encouraging a hitherto undetected enthusiasm for multiculturalism.

Even in the workingclass heartlands, the money to be made hiringout the spare room to overseas students is often enough to defang traditional bluecollar hostility towards ‘‘lowwage workers’’ flooding ‘‘their’’ labour market.

The other factor which explains New Zealanders’ reluctance (so far!) to respond to nationalistic dogwhistles is the sheer number of Kiwis who have travelled overseas. Familiarity with ‘‘foreign’’ cultures has rendered ‘‘foreigners’’ a lot less frightening to young New Zealanders than old ones. New Zealanders raised in the globalisation era know there’s a big wide world out there which values the Kiwi’s ability to get along with just about anybody. Racism no longer pays.

None of which should be advanced as evidence that racism and xenophobia will find no purchase in the forthcoming general election. There are many thousands of New Zealanders who feel like strangers in their own land. Such voters are, however, a dwindling asset for all but the NZ First Party. Only Winston can afford to make A Whiter Shade of Pale his theme song.