National Party leader Christopher Luxon says that the Labour government is an anti-immigration government even before it came to power hence it’s so insensitive about the immigrants and split families who are stuck overseas due to border closure. His remark came during an exclusive conversation with The Indian News, on Sunday 27th March. He said he understands the pain and anguish of those migrants who are stuck overseas due to Labour government’s insensitivity towards migrants. He said government’s approach of slow processing of migrants’ application was very much in place even before Covid struck. The visa processing period was increased from 50 to 100 days much before Covid arrived in the country. This is all happening when there is an acute shortage of skilled and non-skilled labour in the country and every single sector of the economy is badly suffering due to this shortage and this is badly impacting New Zealand economy.

Luxon further said National Party is a pro-immigration party and was all praise for his colleague and National Party MP, Erica Stanford, who is also party’s Immigration spokesperson. Luxon claimed that she will make a much better Immigration Minister than Chris Faafoi as she cares for migrants and understands split family migrant’s situation. He said there is no pathway for residency available under the current immigration policies. He said there is wealth of talent available around the world and government should allow all sort of skilled people from world over to make our economy move and get rid of the shortage of skilled labour but nothing much has been done about it in past two years. He said if we want best of the talent coming to New Zealand then we will need to have best immigration system in place to get the job done correctly. He said because of Immigration New Zealand’s this attitude we are losing the best of talent to countries like Canada and Australia.

On being asked about Labour government’s handling of Covid and the economy in post Covid period, Luxon was supportive of government’s handling of Covid response including instant closure of borders to contain the pandemic in the first year. He said while the government did a good job in year 2020 when Covid first struck but needed to keep evolving its responses as the situation changed in 2021 and in 2022. The government appears to be in the same 2020 mindset when we are in 2022 and did not act fast enough as per the situation when Omicron hit this year. This could have been dealt more effectively by administering vaccines faster or making the RAT kits available and using a whole bunch of new tools that were needed to deal with new challenges. The situation has been in total shambles this year and it has been made up as it came along and most New Zealanders are frustrated with this approach of government. Luxon was critical of government on its handling of economy and said it has slowly started opening up and happening but it’s too little and too late. He said the real worry is the rising inflation and lots of wasteful expenditure by this government. He said this government talks a lot but delivers nothing.

Luxon also spoke about the rising crimes, especially against the Indian community businesses and blamed the government for not providing adequate number of police personals on the street to keep a check on the crime. Government has instead diverted a chunk of force to unproductive works like managing MIQ facilities. Luxon emphasised on having better relations with India when National Party is in government and said he understands how important India can be for the New Zealand economy. He was critical of Labour party of not taking advantage of having a good trading partner in India. Luxon said when his party is back in power, they will bring more and more people back to work force instead of putting them on benefits. To listen to the entire interview please see below. Picture courtesy: Christopher Luxon Facebook page