OPINION: New Zealand is about to embark on a review of our immigration policies.
About time.
If it's truthful and honest, the review will find successive senior politicians and Governments sitting back, getting high and becoming addicted to a drug called immigration.
They just couldn't get enough of it.
Maybe it masked a failing economy? Maybe it saved them from having to have ideas? Maybe it helped with driving down wages because many migrants are happy for the opportunity?
But we opened the gates and boy did they come.
Has it worked? Yes and no.
Yes because we have a much more diverse population and yes because we have skills we wouldn't normally have.
Also yes if the goal was driving down wages.
But the truth is, it was bloody negligent to bring in so many people, yet not build the required infrastructure to make Auckland the best place on earth to live.
Houses were worth $300,000 when I arrived in Auckland in 2012 - they now cost $1 million but they're not worth it.
It took me 15 minutes to get to the airport in 2012 - it now takes 35.
For too long we have just allowed this to happen - growth for growth's sake, but people's living standards have not improved and there's evidence they've gone backward.
At one point the country's net immigration was more than 70,000 extra people per year.
If they're the right people that we need to make us better then I'm all for it, but if they are a drag on New Zealand - what's the point?
We've got to design this better and build for it.
None of this has been a secret, yet those in charge have been negligent.
They've got to get this right for the next 30 years.
Duncan Garner hosts The AM Show.
