For Queenstown’s sake, the government should put out the welcome mat to migrants to address the crippling worker shortage — and stop possible damage to our reputation.
So says National’s deputy leader Nicola Willis, who visited the resort last week.
She was speaking before the Labour government announced it was opening up more working holiday visas — a move her immigration spokesperson calls ‘‘too little, too late’’.
‘‘At a time when we need to be putting out the welcome mat for migrants, we’ve instead put a chain on the door,’’ Willis says.
‘‘We are really thrilled to see tourists coming back to Queenstown, that gives me huge confidence about the future for tourism in Queenstown, but only if we unlock it, and, right now, the worker shortage is holding things back, massively.’’
Willis says that’s evident with restaurants being forced to close several days a week, or shorten hours, and from the ‘‘stress that’s happening
for business owners and managers’’.
‘‘Many are working so many hours they don’t have a single moment left to think about growth, innovation, adding value, what they’re going to do next season.’’
Many are also worried about potential damage to long-term tourism prospects, because the ‘‘quality of offering’’ isn’t what it’d be if they had all the staff they needed.
Instead of Immigration New Zealand ‘‘acting like a semi-police force’’, taking weeks to process applications, Willis says they need to ‘‘act a bit more like the world-class recruitment agency they need to be in the midst of a global war for people and talent’’.
As for the government’s concern about migrants not being paid well, she adds: ‘‘Absolutely, we need to treat them well, and have high standards of work conditions, and the employers I speak to, want to do that.’’
However, Willis, who’s also National’s finance spokesperson, says by not letting enough migrants in, businesses can’t expand.
‘‘And we’re actually driving down conditions for everybody, because we don’t have that underlying growth’’.
Willis says that’s been identified by the Reserve Bank, which also believes it’s adding to inflationary pressure.
