The free speech / hate speech boundary is always a difficult call. I’m glad to live in a country that tries to err on the side of the former. Even so, this shit really rankles:
Anti-Chinese leaflets spark fear and anger
A far-right Christchurch group has been condemned for circulating flyers in Auckland claiming an “Asian invasion” is taking place.
The group, which calls itself the Right Wing Resistance, has distributed “Stop the Asian Invasion” leaflets in suburbs with high Asian populations, including Pakuranga, Howick and Northcote.
Police are concerned that the campaign could lead to “racially motivated violence”, says police Asian liaison officer Raymond Wong.
The group is headed by former National Front leader Kyle Chapman. It started the campaign in Christchurch last year.
What if it escalates and someone gets hurt?
Call for calm after Asians vent anger online over racist leaflets
A senior Chinese community leader is calling for calm as emotions run deep over race-attack pamphlets and plans by a far-right Christchurch group for an anti-Asian rally. …
Thousands of Chinese have taken their anger to the allegations online, and some have suggested that it is time to strike back. Many local ethnic newspapers have also published the anti-Asian campaign as headline news.
As for the argument that migrants are taking jobs (continued from above):
The Department of Labour says new migrants contribute $1.9 billion to the economy every year, and tourists and international students a further $2.9 billion in foreign exchange. …
The Immigration Service says if immigration stopped, by 2021 New Zealand’s population would drop by 9.6 per cent, GDP would fall by 11.3 per cent, available labour would drop 10.9 per cent and the export sector would decline 12.9 per cent.
Time for the “Right Wing Resistance” to be laughed out of existence.
When questioned, Chapman repeatedly says that “membership numbers are not important”. In other words, it’s only a very small group, probably 30-40 people.
At the same time, he says that he’s dropping leaflets so as to increase membership.
Either membership matters, or it doesn’t.
If they do a rally in Auckland, then I’m sure that I can help to organize a substantial heckle crew to exercise their free speech.
I’d suggest that the placards and commentary should concentrate on the RWR’s self-evident lacks and ask what they are trying to compensate for.
I put their numbers at five… Strangely Cameron Slater agrees.
its a bit of a misnomer to call them “far right” – the corect term is White Supremacists, aka Neo Nazis. they deny it in public, but their regalia is replete with nazi symbolism, and they link to the Aryan Brotherhood, the KKK and other bastions of extremely inbred fuckwits. They might be white, but are as far from supreme as it is possible to get.
Cameron Slater is a RWNJ. Thats like comparing someone with parking fines to a serial killer.
Aside: I wonder how many of his idiot brigade even have jobs, let alone the sorts of qualifications asian Immigrants require to gain entry to NZ. I’ll leave filling in the blanks as an exercise for the astute reader.
Likewise it’s wrong to call it free speech, when there’s a definite cost to their public display of racism.
“Time for the “Right Wing Resistance” to be laughed out of existence.”
Which is kind of why we err on the side of free speech.
Here, have some political hate speech (from 2004): http://imgur.com/y1vb6
Considering real physical limitations this is bad how?
dui bu qi, zhongguo xinxilanren.
Kyle Chapman (ye ta de pengyoumen) zongshi shuo de fei hua.
mei banfa….. tamen mei you nao.
duoshi xinxilanren xiang tamen tai ben dan ren.
danshi tamen bu hui zhuzui
(duibuqi, wode zhongwen xie de bu hao – wo man man xue)
Sorry, Chinese New Zealanders.
Kyle Chapman (and his mates) always talk shit. cant be helped – they are brainless.
most kiwis think they are extremely stupid.
but they are unable to shut up.
(sorry about my bad mandarin, I’m slowly learning)
🙂
To deny the losers any traffic here’s the google cache of their site.
Bandwidth costs them money. If they’re on a free account, they could blow their bandwidth and get the site disabled. If they pay, they could go over their limit and be charged excess. So it’d be better to link directly to their site – at the cost of giving them a hit/publicity, though.
Of the $1.9 billion mentioned by Dr. Coleman in his speech yesterday roughly $0.5 billion came through investment and $1.4 billion of that was contributed by skilled workers carefully selected for their rare skills and allowed in to NZ to fill skill shortages.
This is an important source of income for local NZ businesses because these newcomers buy cars, furniture and loads of other stuff to set up their new home. They are healthy, police checked and cost little by way of services.
Coleman says immigration is important for our economy. Of course with so many skilled kiwis leaving for Australia it’s also important to bring in a controlled number of young families to counter an ageing workforce.
So why have numbers been cut?
Quotas for permanent residence have been fixed since 2000/01, but in Jan 2009 Dr. Coleman quietly cut the number of applications accepted from skilled workers by 30%. So far there have been 20% less residency applications approved for skilled workers through this year compared to the same period last year.
That translates to a loss of around $935 million through the first three quarters of the immigration year that hasn’t gone straight into local businesses employing New Zealanders. These drops are not because of a lack of interest in New Zealand which I can assure you has been high.
So, over a billion dollars we didn’t get and increasing skill shortages affecting NZ businesses and services (which will be that much harder to fill when Australia creates half a million jobs as promised).
Now interest in New Zealand immigration is starting to fall as migrants realise risks in moving here have significantly increased (get sick, pregnant or ask to renew your visa and you’ll find out), while reasons for coming here have fallen (wages, employment security, clean and green country). Many globally mobile workers who were interested in NZ are instead asking about Australia.
Is this good immigration policy?
Mike
move2nz.com
You’re obviously in need of an education so here you go.
So educate me by addressing the points and evidence raised.
Trying to produce economic growth by finding new, imported consumers, is helpful to some degree, but at the end of the day its not what NZ needs. Which is the creation of new high employment, high pay industries.
Further, you never addressed how long these skilled workers actually stay in NZ.
For a good proportion of them, long enough to get their NZ citizenship and then move to Australia to collect 30-40% higher pay, I’d wager.
We can’t even keep our own professionals in this country.
Let me put it another way – in your world, ordinary people in NZ get rich by making this country a haven for international multimillionaires.
Doesn’t happen, hasn’t happened, won’t happen. In any country that I know of (except maybe Monaco and Switzerland).
New Zealand’s population is ageing and like most 1st world countries has a negative birth rate. I agree that creating new high-paid industries is vital, but what would happen over time if migration was stopped?
New Zealanders would still leave for Australia and other pastures new because of the opportunities. People tend to vote with their feet if they can (i.e. semi-skilled and skilled people do) and numbers heading offshore are already at record numbers.
Do you agree that a natural result would be a reduction over time of working people, skill levels and internal customers for business?
Do you agree that there would likewise be an increased burden on the remaining gradually reducing number of active workers to support the ageing population, infrastructure and services?
I believe that this would create a time bomb where at some point down the track New Zealand would cease to be viable in it’s current state unless some major change was introduced such as forcing a higher birth-rate or blocking requests to leave.
Careful management of immigration could stop this and ensure New Zealand grows.
How long people stay depends on what New Zealand needs them for. The current system works on skill shortages. Some skills we only need for a short while, some we need permanently. By carefully working out which is which (and applying very high standards for health, language, qualifications etc.) NZ gets the best of both worlds.
But this system has been broken by the current Minister. Immigration no longer uses the skill shortage lists (one for temporary, one for permanent) and instead is using the WINZ database against all applications.
Retention
Keeping hold of our professionals and those we attract from overseas is vital. I actually spent three years of my life creating, funding and running a free migrant ‘walk-in’ centre in Christchurch aimed at raising rates of retention and integration. It was wildly successful outperforming government ideas by 17:1 and costing a fraction.
When I invited the Minister to visit he said it was ‘not necessary’. When I invited the Associate Minister she said ‘thank you for your concerns’.
That centre, helping 7,000 families a year, was forced to close in 2009 after I criticised immigration policy on TV3 news.
In my world
No, you’re wrong. In my world people who love New Zealand, want to live and work here, want to invest everything they have and bring up their children here get to help enrich this country. They pay taxes, buy NZ made items and help grow NZ business with their skills, expertise and overseas contacts. This creates jobs for New Zealanders, adds to an environment where wages can grow and we can increase retention of our own talented young.
I disagree with the Minister’s fixation on investors – most of the profits head offshore anyway and the numbers are falling despite his best efforts. Profits from migration should stay in NZ.
Instead I concentrate on people who value what NZ is and has. People who aspire to being New Zealanders (rather than just living here or using it as a stepping stone), love the culture, people and add value to our economy.
Let me know what you think about these comments.
Mike, I am not anti immigration, but the fact is, that over the past 20 years, governments and employers have chosen to put the interest of immirgants over the interests of New Zealanders
1) businesses have been employing immigrants instead of training and upskilling our own people, and also employing migrant labour to keep wages down.
2) Educational instiutions have put the needs of international students ahead of domestic students.
Opening the immigration floodgates have kept wages down, and forced up house prices and accomodation costs, and also helped to drive down wages and conditions in the workplace. Instead of training our young people, we are just hiring immigrant labour and letting then rot on the dole, or in low wage jobs, and it is also the reason why the ‘dumb’ kids are being quitely pushed out of our schools to make them look good for international students.
It is because of the unwillingness by all major parties (except NZ First) to confront these realities, that wanna-be Nazis like Chapman are gaining ground.
Hi Millsy,
Thanks for your comments. What I was saying is why immigration is important for New Zealand.
It is vital that immigration is managed properly to better New Zealand. NZ workers should come foremost and I was very dis-heartened to see the apprenticeships cut, adult education cut and pressure placed on universities and students.
Sadly over the past two years the information being given to prospective migrants is so muddled and incorrect that many people who should not have come here have been encouraged to while the people we really need have had bureaucratic barriers lumped in their way.
What you must understand is that immigration is a useful tool in the box but does not operate in isolation. It must be used in conjunction with and beside sensible policies which create opportunities to upskill New Zealanders and give them a reason to stay.
Many of the issues you are talking about are not caused by immigration policy but by other issues.
For example, if there is a case where employers are undercutting local labour with foreign workers this is an employment issue and a decision by an NZ business. Immigration can be used alongside this to fend people off we don’t need, but this will only work with effective protection for employees such as minimum wages, unions, mediation etc.
Media love negative migration stories and rarely print positive ones. If they do they rarely point out the person is a migrant. Don’t believe all you read.
The same with education. If educational establishments are taking overseas students instead of local ones why is this? Is there a financial need where the schools are not being properly funded?
Through effective management of the educational system local students can be protected, schools can be protected and a service can be given on top of this to foreign students as a way of enriching the education of our youth.
Opening the immigration floodgates
I often meet the perception that there is a flood of migrants coming into this country. Net migration is actually low – an average of 11,900 per year across the entire country between 1990 and 2009. The tests migrants have to meet are extremely high.
Immigration has complete control over numbers which have actually been falling over the past two years. The drop in this year alone has cost NZ $935 million as I have pointed out.
There is however certainly a difference between high skill and low skill temporary workers, but I have seen no proof that medium and high skilled migrant workers push down wages. Many have to take pay cuts to work here. For example, you may not realise that for a chef to get through immigration they need five years experience, two of those as a Sous Chef. These are highly skilled and highly paid.
House prices have been shown to be more affected by returning kiwis than migrants.
Confronting the problems
There are serious problems around immigration, but carefully managed and implemented policy should fill skill shortages and train NZ workers, open opportunities for new business, introduce new practices and technologies and open new markets to NZ business.
The reason I am posting about this is because of the poor management of immigration over the past decade and most especially the last two and half years.
I lobbied Cunliffe and Cosgrove to put some of the $11 million migrant levy collected every year into retention of skilled workers attracted here because we were losing 24% of them needlessly. No one listened.
Changes made in 2005 were a step in the right direction, but I have been trying to feed back the effect of policy changes – what is really happening at the ‘coal face’ to no avail. No one wants to listen.
Once we agree that migration is necessary for New Zealand we need to get on with making it an effective and positive process in conjunction with other portfolios to better the position of the New Zealand people.
Look forward to your comments.
Why do the Auckland media constantly refer to this as a “Christchurch” group? I find that bloody insulting, typical Auckland holier than thou bullshit.
How about “Act, an Auckland based political party”????
Unfortunately, the old home town (mine) does have a depressing record in spawning groups of this kind, although thankfully, they’ve declined since the nadir of the seventies and early eighties. Even so, the Nationalist Workers Party/National Front/Right Wing Resistance is an annoying microscopic buttock blemish. However, they’re based on derivative overseas UK neofascist models. And ironically enough, their hate speech outbursts signify that they have neither the education or sophistication to behave in a more pragmatic or electorally viable manner, unlike the French Front National or British National Party.
As a person of happily polyglot origins, fortunately I don’t meet their ghastly ‘purity’ criteria. Boohoo. It’s all that Indian immigrant and Ngai Tahu ancestry in my genes.
[Craig – can you try posting test comments that vary your name, email address, website, and (if possible) IP address, to try and identify the factor that triggers our moderation on every comment you make? Use Open Mike, I’ll delete the tests later on. I’d like to fix it so you don’t get stuck in moderation every time. — r0b]
However, the fact is that most white supremacists usually have criminal convictions for assault, dysfunctional upbringings, alcohol and drug problems and gravitated toward a subculture that reinforces their disturbed families of origin and violent responses to life’s problems. Hence, they feel the need to lash out at economically prosperous and yet ambiguously accepted ethnic communities ie New Zealanders of East Asian origin or descent. Fortunately, the rest of us come from mainstream multicultural Aotearoa/New Zealand.
My email to Kyle
Hi Kyle
Good on ya, placing yourself up for attack yet again.
BUT … always a but
It is all immigration that should be stopped, including selling NZ to the USA etc, yeah bringing up the Asian invasion stuff presses buttons in the mind of the pig ignorant masses, but the real issue is that NZ is over populated now (and has been since 1800, when Maori started running out of food and had to eat each other)
We see 100s of poms (etc) escaping GB and coming over here with their pounds, forcing home prices out of reach of the first home buyers etc, I know been going on for years.
As I was saying back when the Foreshore and Seabed was being proposed, we needed to close the border and place machine gun posts at 100 meter spaces around our coast, give every Kiwi ‘out’ there 6 months notice then thats it, you are in or you are out.
But then I want having children band, and any child born (after say 10 months from the ban starting), to be made a ward of the state, and the parents sterilized and made to support the child for 18 years, but without ever seeing it, that would make idiot breeders wake the fuck up)
Robert
*shakes head* and you wonder why you’re not taken seriously. So much disregard for people in such a little space.
methinks ’tis a poe*
*poe = piss take of idiotic position. good poes are almost indistinguishable from the real dickheads
Overkill.
An M249 LMG has an effective range close to 1km, for instance.
I suggest that every 400m would be ample, as long as you had clear lines of fire.
Brilliant. Solves the unemployment problem. 15000 km of coastline at 1 machine gun per 400 metres times crew numbers times three shifts- quarter of a million, no sweat.
Then there’s the guns, the uniforms, the admin, the infrastructure- pillboxes, searchlights, generators, barbed wire, minefields, notices for same………
Plus access to each machine gun post would take care of John Key’s cycleway.
End of poaching. End of illegal fishing, drug-running, smuggling, immigration.
Fortress New Zealand. CV, you’re brilliant.
can I also suggest adopting a modern form of cannibalism? we’ll have quite a bit of red meat going spare as a result of this, and we have all those useless eaters. So instead of benefits or food banks, we can provide food parcels…..Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease will inevitably result, leading to an exponential decrease in useless eaters.
We need immigration. Badly. We lack the skills required for economic revival. The Baby Boomers as a whole aren’t helping anyone. Many are too selfish to pass on their skills. Where are all the male teachers? Pathetic.
We lack the skills required for economic revival. The Baby Boomers as a whole aren’t helping anyone. Many are too selfish to pass on their skills
Eh?
Signed: One of many babyboomer teachers, who has taught on vocational & academic courses.
The first choice of most skilled migrants is to get work in Australia. More jobs and better pay. Higher quality of managers and supervisors.
If they come to NZ it’s commonly because they were rejected by Australia. We are their fall back choice.
They come to NZ, get their citizenship here, and then use that to go to Australia.
Serious. I mean, we can’t even keep our own people here.
Thats very true CV. Thats why we have to invest in education. We need to tick up the biggest loan in world history. Let them come. Build our country. We should be a haven for new ideas. Let them do whatever they like, just don’t pollute us.
Or will Australia just buy our country in 15 years?
Cheaper to take it over by political subterfuge and buying out a few dozen key people.
Yup. By that stage, Ozzies can take almost all the talent and Kiwis can keep most of the trash.
That’s when the country can rebrand as New Trashland Inc.
The Baby Boomers as WHOLE. As in, those who have run our country for the last 20 years. I don’t mean to make those who do a good job feel bad – I’m sure you do an excellent job, Carol.
But I see too many of that age who simply enjoyed the fruits of the good times, and now in the bad times it is expected that the youth and the poor, who have already been dealt massive costs from economic de-regulation, will bear the burden of the costs again. There are many baby boomers who DO care and aren’t selfish. But there are those who sold our country down the drain. The ones who signed those laws. The ones who created a system where somebody like John Key is our example of success. We desire greed and ‘freedom’ over love and community. The West is dying.
I understand you don’t mean all boomers, Samuel. But why single out boomers at all, when there are as many differences within generations as between them. Many of us boomers have agitated and voted most of our working lives for social justice, fair pay for a fair days work, a decent living income and living/working conditions for all…. education, healthcare etc.
And there are many self-centred, apolitical, middleclass consumerists in all generations. Consider this: Brash and Roger Douglas are too old to be boomers; many who support neoliberal consumerist society are too young to be boomers eg: I’m pretty sure this includes National MP Chris Tremain who has Hollowman Lusk as a campaign manager (see Mallard on Red Alert today), Matthew Hooton, Whaleoil, David Farrah, Jamie Lee Ross etc. And I see many middleclass people of younger generations who are more interested in their latest shiny consumerist toys than thinking about politics or those struggling to make ends meet. Meanwhile there are also boomers from diverse ethnic groups who have struggled all their lives on low incomes.
Why single out one generation at all, when the problem is people who actively support and/or benefit from the inequalities generated by free-market capitalism – adults across all generations at the expense of some other people from all generations?
Yes Key, Clark, Goff etc are boomers, and they have/had much power….. but others will follow, some pollies trying to make a fairer society, while others (like JL Ross & C Tremain), will be working for the better off classes.
Oh, and to get back on thread, I would think Kyle Chapman is too young to be a boomer too.
But, yes, some skilled younger immigrants will probably have more to contribute positively to NZ society & economy than Chapman is doing.
Yeah it isn’t any particular group that is responsible, it is the system that has been handed down for last 2,000 years or so.
It is kinda fuelled by the general dumb public’s apathy, no matter when they/we were born, Hitler used it, I’m sure the Romans used it, people just don’t see the writing on the wall until it is to late.
We all think ‘it will never happen to us’ that is partly why we have so many road deaths etc.
In the end we are just bacteria, and we behave exactly the same, we have grown our population until the test tube is full.
We with computers are the elite now, we are at the top of the food chain, and like bacteria we don’t have a conscience, we just want more of our fair share, we don’t care about the 4 billion who don’t have computers, enough food to eat, or fresh water, we are right Jack.
We are no smarter than Easter Island stone cavers.
Ofcourse there are people from very differing demographs who uphold the capitalist consumer society and profit from it, I don’t deny that. Just as I agree there are many Baby Boomers who do the opposite.
Maybe I shouldn’t say ‘Baby Boomer’.
What I am suggesting, is that those born from 1935-1950 have overseen the growth of a system, which now lumps debt on the youth, whilst they themselves had so many governmental benefits in the past and in the future. By the time I am in my 60s there probably won’t even be a pension, yet I am taxed now at work to pay for the pensions of those 65+. Roger Douglas and Don Brash are close enough to the age of the group. They weren’t old enough to go to WW2, let alone remember it.
It is people of this age that are running our country. Alan Gibbs, Henry Van der Heyden, Douglas Myers, Michael Fay, John Todd, Peter Cooper, John Spencer, The Goodfellow family.
These are the people who profited from successive NZ government’s failures to invest in a diverse range of industries., and the there after de-regulation and privatization of public assets.
It is time to change this system.
As a boomer who has fought against this system for 35 years, and watched with despair as our assets were sold in the 80’s, Richardson gutted the country in the 90’s and successive governments had a competition to see how many jobs they could lose, wages for the skilled and productive go downhill while bludgers got megabucks and watched, mostly younger, people vote NACT in again i do not think you should say boomers.
It is wrong to ascribe greed and stupidity to any particular generation. X and Y will benefit from assets the boomers have built up as well as having less competition for jobs and housing.
It was the pre-boomer generation that voted themselves tax paid pensions and welfare for National party voters in the 70’s and the younger ones who vote tax cuts now having had no experience of the negative effects after 9 years of Labour.
http://kjt-kt.blogspot.com/
Now we see any speech against neo-Liberal madness ignored by the media while we continue to be raced headlong into disaster by mad ideologues and those who stand to gain by stripping NZ.
The right wing do not believe in free speech. See what happens to any hard hitting, beyound token, letters you write to the newspaper.
But we are a diverse lot. I have had some benefits from the NZ Government, but not as many as you might assume of boomers. And I am probably like many who have spent a high proportion of my adult life living overseas, consequently I have money in retirement funds in more than one country.
I got free primary & secondary education, reasonably good healthcare etc. I did a teachers college course way back, because it would give me a grant (it wasn’t uni level then). Back then only a small proportion of people went to Uni (1-3%), and the vast majority were white men. They also could earn big money in their holidays at the freezing works – not so women. I was bonded to the education dept for 3 years or had to pay $600.00 to leave the country – a fair amount back then. After working for 2 of the years, I’d had enough from the repressive and unequal NZ society, paid back the $600.00 and headed overseas. By then I had started a BA parttime while working fulltime.
I got various vocational & graduate qualifications in the UK, again studying parttime, mostly while working fulltime (a little bit of it parttime.) My employer paid most of my fees, but I paid for everything else. Earlier I had come back to NZ to finish my BA in one very heavy fulltime year. Student allowance didn’t quite pay my rent. The rest of my expenses I paid from my savings.
When I came back to NZ I did a further graduate course, with student allowance sometimes – sometimes I earned too much for that, as I worked quite a bit. I also got a student loan for fees & again lived off my savings.
Now I have paid back my student loan, and am earning, mostly part time. I get a small amount of retirement pension from the UK government, which I’m told will be deducted from my NZ entitlement, when I am of age.
I wonder how many other boomers in NZ will be getting a high proportion of their pensions from overseas, rather than from NZ taxpayers or other NZ schemes. Kiwis have always lived a lot outside NZ. I also have a small amount of Aussie super in an Aussie fund – it was compulsory when I worked there.
I don’t own a house – never have, and have lived very frugally most of my adult life.I have never voted for a right wing party, and have joined many leftwing poltical campaigns. Now it seems, boomers are becoming a scapegoat for all that is wrong poltically here. The problem with boomers is that there are a lot of us, but that was not anything we did. The problem is not any one generation, but those who have actively promoted and supported the whole neoliberal scam.
Yes things are getting tougher for many young people – though not all. Those with wealthy parents and/or high paying jobs are pretty well-off.
I guess the real test if you believe in freedom of speech is when you can support and defend that which you find totally repugnant
I know what you mean, and yeah.
But nah, you don’t have to support and defend that which you find repugnant, you just have to defend their right to be repugnant.
You can quite legitimately counter protest, and call them out for their repugnance, and say “we don’t want this this sort of thing here, fuck off n@zi boy” etc. Coz all of that is just free speech as well.
The ACLU in the states, for example, has defended the free speech rights of Naz1s to march down the street when councils have tried to ban them. They have also defended the free speech rights of Sean Hannity, and the privacy rights of Rush Limbaugh.
So in the US context I’d say that ACLU are pretty solid defenders, the right wing? Not so much.
Based on what?
Based on the fact that the left in the US generally supports the ACLU, the membership of the ACLU tends to be liberal left, the ACLU defends the rights of people that they not only disagree with, but the rights of people that attack the ACLU. eg, Limbaugh, Hannity, Naz1s.
The ACLU gets attacked by the right in America as, variously, a commun1st front, anti-christian, anti-conservative and lord knows what all else.
Teenaa koutou Katoa
Personally, I don’t mind the Kyle Chapman’s of this world. He is highly visible and naked to the eye.
The people that I am concerned about are those that appear egalitarian but actually have a really fucked way of thinking too. But at least, Kyle Chapman speaks clearly to his prejudices.
Which, at least, makes him an honest man.
+1.
and all that is really needed to debunk RWR is RWR themselves. the more they open their mouths, the stupider they look.
Teenaa koe, terryg
Well, yes, absolutely.
Paul Spoonley really needs to write an update on his fascinating work on New Zealand’s microscopic neofascist sects from back in the eighties, I think.