MIQ rethink needed to ease labour pinch

It isn’t just Covid-19 that’s at the heart of New Zealand’s current labour shortage, it’s our solution to keeping the virus out of the country: Border traffic that is choked to a minimum by managed isolation and quarantine. No work visa holder can enter without a special exemption to allow them a coveted spot in MIQ. And the Government has rationed such spots down to just a few hundred a month, insisting most of the scarce capacity is needed for returning residents and citizens. The hundreds of thousands of migrant workers streaming into the country to fill jobs annually is now reduced to a trickle.

Meanwhile, New Zealand is suffering a sharp labour shortage that almost undoubtedly runs to tens of thousands of unfilled jobs, with deep pockets of need ranging from high-skilled areas like technology to relatively low-skilled industries like horticulture and hospitality.

But there’s no reason MIQ room capacity should sit at its current 4000 rooms a fortnight (many are kept spare). And there is no magic reason why every arrival should move through MIQ either.

While Government ministers are loath to vary the rules for any workers entering the country, they have done it in the past. Last year, ministers wanted to subject all NZ-based air crews to MIQ, but the plan was ditched. Air New Zealand’s chief executive warned the change would cut its international air freight and passenger capacity in half. And the Treasury argued the plan would achieve minimal health gain at a very high economic cost.

It’s now past time for considering other, similarly pragmatic, ways to better move workers through or around MIQ provisions. And the target of achieving a large economic gain at minimal community health risk is a good place to start.

Workers from countries with very little Covid19, like the Pacific Islands, are in many ways like Air NZ pilots. There is very little to be gained from funnelling them through MIQ facilities, and, given the potential that they come into contact with more high-risk travellers, something to be lost.

There are also a variety of worker-starved industries with considerable interest in running facilities that would expand the Government’s MIQ capacity. It makes sense to start where those workers pose a tiny risk in the first place.

In the past ministers have spiked a variety of proposals to divert travellers and workers away from capacity constrained MIQ facilities.

The apple industry offered a credible plan for isolation of foreign workers in Hawke’s Bay, and New Zealand Rugby (and others) proposed an MIQ facility for sport on the South Island.

Since then a mismatch between job creation and the available labour force has only deepened.

MIQ, however, is little changed. Where is the evolving thinking about fully vaccinated arrivals or those arriving from very low-risk countries?

While quarantine-free travel with Australia is a big and welcome step forward, it is also a doubleedged sword. Even as it alleviates demand on MIQ facilities, it increases the likelihood that a rising number of Kiwis will move offshore for jobs.