Speaker: Low-quality language on immigration
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mark taslov, in reply to
A higher population means a greater impact on the environment.
I responded at length to this other night, but I put it on ice, got bored writing it. But in response to this point, we have a relatively minute population dwarfed by our current environmental issues. Scapegoating immigrants for our incapacity to engage in sound environmental management is what it is.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
. Scapegoating immigrants for our incapacity to engage in sound environmental management
I don't see anyone doing that at present. But who knows what inanity is "beyond the pale" during an election campaign?
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Farmer Green, in reply to
we have a relatively minute population dwarfed by our current environmental issues.
Any numbers?
The point might be that NZ produces protein to feed 20 million people. Should we plan to cease exporting food when our population reaches that number?
We could produce just enough for 5 million and enough extra to be able to bring in a few million more tourists.
We've got to sell something as long as we are in debt. -
Farmer Green, in reply to
NZ ecosystems have not evolved with any ruminants.
And humans neither. Should we all go home?
:-)If the thesis is that we should not grow these ruminant-ready Mediterranean grasses in our Mediterranean climate , then what should we grow?
The grasslands that we now have , co-evolved with ruminants.
We have the grasses . . . .now what? -
mark taslov, in reply to
Cutting immigration would be easier and cheaper than reducing the impact of the present population.
Easier, cheaper - as aspirations seldom - if ever - propagate best outcome.
Should we plan to cease exporting food when our population reaches that number?
We could produce just enough for 5 million and enough extra to be able to bring in a few million more tourists.
We’ve got to sell something as long as we are in debt.I find the talk of food and tourists somewhat distracts from our entrenched racism.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
I guess we will have to wait and see whether promises to cut immigration , for whatever reason, is a successful election strategy.
If it is a good strategy, would promises to see every NZer given the opportunity to develop to their full potential, via some serious attention to education , be an even better electoral strategy? -
linger, in reply to
grasslands that we now have , co-evolved with ruminants
Well, no. These particular ruminants are not exactly the product of evolution aimed at efficient use of natural grasslands, either: rather, they, and the particular grasslands they inhabit in this country, represent the end result of thousands of years of selection by and management by (and ultimately, codependence with) humans. As you yourself know, they do not form a sustainable permanent system; they require continuous management and maintenance (though less so under some farming methods than others, and much can be done to make that work less intensive). Rather than a purely biological evolutionary process, we’re looking more at a process of cultural and technological development; and of course that’s where any future development of our land use will come from too.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
our entrenched racism.
Xenophobia might be closer to the mark ; perhaps .
Race doesn't seem to come into it ; no target racial group . . . no particular racial group is the perpetrator. -
Farmer Green, in reply to
any future development of our land use
What do you have in mind there?
What we have done in Godzone to date is to produce fertile topsoils using introduced grasses and ruminants and soil amendments, and the management of those things. -
mark taslov, in reply to
Xenophobia might be closer to the mark ; perhaps .
Race doesn’t seem to come into it ; no target racial group . . . no particular racial group is the perpetrator.Thanks for adequately illustrating how entrenched the racism and apoligism is FG. Enough were paying attention to the ‘Chinese-sounding names’ campaign to know which group was targeted. Quelle surprise, it was one of the same groups that was specifically targeted by our Government through the first half of the 20th C and then again - post apology - in the 21st century when the Labour Government rushed through legislation to make it harder for Chinese to gain entry.
Louisa Wall’s dog whistle by contrast was geared more towards students from the sub-continent: those exploited by agencies for immigration under tenuous pretense.
As pointed out over the page, “Asiatics”, “Asians”. have long been the target of New Zealand policy and as any historical reading will reveal, this racism has been a feature of our culture since the gold-rush.
Racism need not be perpetrated by a single demographic, racism is not limited to a particular group, but if you’ve been living in New Zealand for any stretch and missed the anti-Asian bent of our largely (but non-exclusively) caucasian population then all I can assume is that you’ve not been paying close enough attention.
And why would you need to?
As long as it’s a “successful election strategy” any minority is fair game right?
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Farmer Green, in reply to
t you’ve not been paying close enough attention.
It’s true that farming communities can be inward looking, but I live in a Chinese market-gardening community, and I experience none of what you are describing.
And my four part-Maori children , and Maori/Asian grandchildren have a similar experience. Caucasians are the odd ones out in this little part of Australasia.The historical example is just history . Nothing unusual at the time .
And extrapolating from the antics of the political class? As you say , they’ll do anything for a vote, which is what I was saying in reply to Neil"s musing about Labour cutting immigration. Here:-
I suggested some ways that they could “justify” curbing immigration while appearing to care for the environment and be non-racist at the same time. No more than vague plausibility is necessary.
We must move in very different circles. :-)
You can own "our entrenched racism" ; I don't think I want to be a part of that.
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mark taslov, in reply to
“some of my best friends are __ they don’t (AFAIK) experience __ so it’s not a problem”
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Farmer Green, in reply to
I hear you. :-)
I'm not sure that you hear me. But just as well that I was here, eh?"Thanks for adequately illustrating how entrenched the racism and apoligism is FG."
What would you have done without me? :-)
But you weren't saying that an anti-immigration bias is necessarily racist, I thought.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
As long as it’s a “successful election strategy” any minority is fair game right?
And this :-
" we have been systematically making the entire country more stupid for decades.
We learned long ago in this [media] business that dumber and more alarmist always beats complex and nuanced. Big headlines, cartoonish morality, scary criminals at home and foreign menaces abroad, they all sell. We decimated attention spans, rewarded hot-takers over thinkers, and created in audiences powerful addictions to conflict, vitriol, fear, self-righteousness, and race and gender resentment.
There isn't a news executive alive low enough to deny that we use xenophobia and racism to sell ads. Black people on TV for decades were almost always shirtless and chased by cops, and the "rock-throwing Arab" photo was a staple of international news sections even before 9/11. And when all else fails in the media world, just show more cleavage somewhere, and ratings go up, every time.
Donald Trump didn't just take advantage of these conditions. He was created in part by them. What's left of Trump's mind is like a parody of the average American media consumer: credulous, self-centered, manic, sex-obsessed, unfocused, and glued to stories that appeal to his sense of outrage and victimhood.
We've created a generation of people like this: anger addicts who can't read past the first page of a book. This is why the howls of outrage from within the ranks of the news media about Trump's election ring a little bit false. What the hell did we expect would happen? Who did we think would rise to prominence in our rage-filled, hyper-stimulated media environment? Sensitive geniuses?
We spent years selling the lowest common denominator. Now the lowest common denominator is president. How can it be anything but self-deception to pretend this is an innocent coincidence? "
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mark taslov, in reply to
But you weren’t saying that an anti-immigration bias is necessarily racist, I thought.
In theory, I guess, anti-immigration bias isn’t always definitionally racist but in practice the exceptions are rarer than the kakapo.
I can’t disagree with much in that article.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
The historical example is just history . Nothing unusual at the time .
And extrapolating from the antics of the political class?
You could do worse than read K.Emma Ng's Old Asian, New Asian, published by Bridget Williams Books. It's not "just history" we're talking about, and it's nothing unusual at this point in time, and it's not just the antics of the political class. Or you could do something as simple as ride the bus to work with my wife every morning. She's noticed that even in this very ethnically diverse corner of Aotearoa certain drivers tend to treat people of Asian appearance with less courtesy than they do others. Or let me show you how certain Pakeha kids, even at a school where several Asian languages are spoken, talk about or to their Asian classmates. None of this is "just history", it is still very much the present.
No, xenophobia doesn't have to be racist - and I did once see Winston Peters question the right of a man with a scottish accent to question him at a political event at Otago University, and I thought, "Well, at least Winston has the decency to be an equal opportunities xenophobe, at least on this one occasion". But in the context of NZ society, "foreign" is all too often a code for "Asian", and comes loaded with negativity. Not always, but all too often.
It would be nice to see an immigration debate stripped of any and all racism and xenophobia. I very much doubt that will ever happen, but it would be nice to see. It would also be nice to see a party with an immigration policy based firmly in humanitarian principles. Some come close, but none have won my trust yet, and NZ has spent decades reducing everything to a monetary value.
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
It would also be nice to see a party with an immigration policy based firmly in humanitarian principles.
Yes, and one which gives real consideration with respect to our shared governance with Maori. Not sure if I've posted this before, but it's a really interesting perspective from Ranginui Walker;
http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc0402/article_316.shtml
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Lynn Yum, in reply to
This is the kind of reason why I kind of zoned out of this discussion, in addition to me forgetting the password here. Some people refuses to acknowledge this kind thing happening, even when there are credible testimony supporting it. I don't feel like I want to cry "racism!" every single time. It is taxing.
I probably know a lot MORE Asian assholes simply because my social circle is a lot more Asian than your average Kiwi. Do I conclude, based on my data, that Asians are more likely to be assholes? No I don't. It is just people. Some people are just assholes. It has nothing to do with race. So whatever data people have on "Asians are asshole" have a perfectly good alternative explanation: it is just people.
All we anti-racists ever ask for is to treat each individuals on their own merit, and make no prejudice based on skin colour. Hence I have every sympathy towards Maori and notice the subtle racism towards them in all section of NZ society (thus giving a free pass to politicians to diss them at will with little repercussion, chicken and egg).
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Neil,
Having just watched the leaders debate Ardern wants to cut immigration because she's concerned about immigrants.
Why cut immigration when you can make life easier for immigrants.
Refugees often face a hard life. The answer isn't to decrease the number of refugees.
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linger, in reply to
You’re confusing two very different things there. Cutting immigration does not entail accepting fewer refugees. To put things in perspective: as of 2016, NZ had accepted only 33000 refugees in total since World War 2, but had had more than that number of immigrants in the past year alone.
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
Having just watched the leaders debate Ardern wants to cut immigration because she’s concerned about immigrants.
Agree with linger, you've confused our high volume immigration policy with our dismal refugee quota. And I don't think Jacinda was referring to refugees in the debate. I think instead she was alluding to the exploitation of many of our recent immigrants, both migrant workers and migrant students - e.g., the article I posted earlier;
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/337158/the-outcome-of-these-10-years-is-not-even-zero
and this;
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11766210
The difficulty she has in being really forceful and pointed in explaining herself is that many of the employers and institutions that have been doing and benefiting from the exploitation vote too. It is a disgusting underbelly that has grown beyond belief under this National government and many NZers know that their livelihoods depend on this sad state of affairs. At the same time they also know that the current practices (often unlawful) are both unethical and unsustainable. So, they are the somewhat conflicted fence-sitters - embarrassed that they have taken part in the exploitation but unable to imagine an alternative.
If we have a change in government it will take years to reverse this 'race to the bottom' damage that National has wrought and to wean ourselves back into a productive economy.
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Moz, in reply to
it will take years to reverse this 'race to the bottom' damage that National has wrought
I dunno, National has in other areas demonstrated a willingness to change the law when asked, then apply those changes very vigorously to the people who asked for them. Sure, it's usually "the dole is too low" and the change is to lower it, but the principle is there.
I suspect even the fence-sitters would agree that reform is needed, everyone needs clear guidance and violations need to be punished. My understanding is that the minister could change the guidance and increase enforcement to solve the problem without even a law change - it's already illegal to pay below minimum wage etc.
We've seen in Australia that it doesn't take much effort to find the violations, and action on those is generally easy. What's missing is political will, and usually a tiny bit of common sense. When you say to someone "I'm from the government, if you have this problem tell me and we will deport you"... that's not going to work.
A tiny tweak to the departmental guidelines saying "exploited workers in this situation will not be deported for complying with illegal demands" would work wonders. Although from a government perspective, the wrong sort of wonder: many more complaints, evidence of widespread, systematic lawbreaking... from the donor class. Ooops.
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
What’s missing is political will, and usually a tiny bit of common sense.
Yes, lucky for our exploited migrants, certain international markets have the will and the ability to force change;
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Moz, in reply to
certain international markets have the will and the ability to force change
That's good news. I especially like that they're using their anti-slavery laws against us, because NZ likes to think of itself as above that sort of thing (the fishing industry {cough}).
There is a certain circularity is stagnant/lowering wages putting pressure on people to buy cheaper food etc, which lowers margins in the food industry and puts pressure on wages. But then I look at where the money goes, and the percentage of GDP going to the owner class, and I think "like that, but the other way round". More money going to the richest, less for wages, less for food, fewer people can afford to say "slavery? no thanks".
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