Just to reiterate there are a whole bunch of restaurant owners who make a point of paying decent wages with reasonable conditions. And yes it costs…

They both knew what they were saying when they said it. It's how English can say things like that…

Watching the Trumpcare debacle unfold in the States, the Crown Health Enterprise…

No, all I'm saying is that…

It's really pretty annoying to have a parade of business people trotted out…

Are you saying that that's too broad, that it doesn't cover what a degree used to be, that it isn't actually being measured against by NZQA, or that degree holding should be limited to institutions that were universities in 1965…

I suspect that the high water mark for that kind of…

Where they get paid more???????

This is the key.

If we had the capacity to house and transport and fairly pay these immigrants we wouldn't be having the panic attack we are having.

For the last two to three decades we've had governments, both national…

Alcohol abuse here is common, yes, but broader than the unemployed.

There is a case for revising aspects of the recruitment and approval of immigrants. The low value courses and qualifications offered by some educational providers puts New Zealand’s reputation at risk.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11847932

Just to turn it around all employed kiwis are one step away from being exploitative condescending psychopaths who dont give a fuck about anyone or anything but their comfort and self image. Sorta like Trump, who being a human, exhibits traits that…

And high living costs, especially in Auckland. We can thank in large part the housing bubble for that. And the self-appointed landed gentry who…

Ever thought for a moment that substance abuse is a symptom, rather than a cause, of societal malaise? And remind me…

I suspect non-Indians find working in…

No, it doesn't. That's quite ridiculous. You'll need to provide a bit more evidence for that claim than a third hand story about a guy hiring cheap immigrants in his kitchen and…

Doesn’t this tend to suggest that pre-NCEA schools (of the kind Mr Hooton attended) were rubbish at teaching logic and reasoning?

Ahh…Steve got in…

Mr Sahrawat said the pool of local talent was already low as highly trained New Zealand chefs and other hospitality workers were opting to work overseas.

Opting to work overseas might be for the experience and…

Doesn't this tend to support the prime minister's comments that unemployed kiwis are all lazy or on drugs?…

"You love the naan bread, right? The man who’s cooking this bread won’t be around if immigration [rules…

I may have mentioned this before. For us, the catalyst for…

I read somewhere a few years back that there were reports of foreign students commenting that they saw too many of their fellow citizens at the same tertiary institute. One…

Would they have been British Leyland workers in a previous life?

I had a conversation about this with my HK…

I follow a lot of local government issues – and my pretty sound impression is that the infrastructure deficit in NZ is a massive, massive problem -…

For one thing the govt released the handbrake. And about that time the Christchurch rebuild would have been kicking into top gear.

Reckon. Sort of. It's also what makes us kinda suck.

If there's a magic number that balances the need for in-demand labour categories against growing infrastructure costs, I'd really like to see it.

https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-zealand-visas/apply-for-a-visa/tools-and-information/education-quals-study/pathway-education-providers

But not necessarily in the government's interest to do in an objective and honest manner.

Yes. the ptb of Maoridom have had enough;

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/92110692/iwi-leader-makes-foreshore-and-sea-bed-claim-on-behalf-of-all-maori

I hope they do well.. as frankly it would be hard for any alternate governance model to do worse.

I’m not sure where that data came from, as Micheal Reddell does…

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11840377

How this "Cornell" is allowed to operate legally with this name I have no idea, but it is a pile of sleaze in the middle of our "education precinct".

Awesome though that sounds for any employer, it's harder to see it as good in the social balance.

It's not an argument for things to stay as they are, just an acknowledgement of where we are.

Raising wage up to the living wage is simply a necessary cost to pay for a humane society.

It's an…

Actually it's not explicitly stated, but many small businesses actually rely on…

The standard of most educational institutions (not mine) is a lot worse than Russell imagines, I think. They will pass anyone to keep the numbers up. There are students who…

Yeah, that's exactly what I was getting at in the post.

It's that we aren't assholes and we try not to treat paying customers as criminals (as our principal competitors in the Australia, the…

No surprise for those of us who spend most of our time travelling and sharing campsites with this group.

These are the Young People, often doing a 'gap' year between secondary and tertiary education, who arrive here with the intention of…

A jump in enrolments from China and the Americas will push the number of foreign students in New Zealand past 130,000 this year, Education New Zealand says.

The government agency responsible for the international education sector said the students would spend about $4.5…

An unprecedented influx of immigrants is exacerbating a housing shortage and stretching infrastructure such as schools and hospitals, sparking heated political debate around the issue ahead of this year's general election.

"Now, more than…

Living in Auckland's CBD I'm very happy to eat cheap takeaway food and drink cut-price alcohol, served by workers below the minimum wage. Occasionally the media…

I was disgusted to read the Herald on Sunday editorial suggesting that the Uber driver who added a return Akl-Wgtn trip at the END of his shift should be treated as a hero. I wonder if they'd maintain that attitude if he'd fallen asleep…

The worst part is that it's probably true. I remember my favourite Indian restaurant for ages had stunning quality at insanely…

I was listening to a RNZ Checkpoint segment on Friday, talking about how…

Not true. India is the largest source, by work visas approved, for calendar year 2016. From data on the Statistics NZ website (the same that Andrew Little got his notorious…

Fair call. You may well be right.

Sure, Australia and Canada are less dense, but they are HUGE countries, full of desert in the one and tundra and ice in the other.…

So, is that better or worse for global warming and the NZ environment? And is tourist excrement in our picnic areas better or worse than cow excrement in our rivers?

Hold the phone:

New Zealand's tourism boom has propelled the industry past dairy as the top export earner as the number of visitors increased by one million in the past six years.

For the year ending December last year total exports of dairy…

I think it is worse than this. Many of those who would most benefit from higher education are unable to attend in…

And NZ has struggled to monetise its local innovators who could reduce the nation's dairy industry dependency, because most of the local investment capital has gone into the housing bubble instead…

Why?

Don't you think NZ is great because it has a small population? Our big cities are practically land locked. and greater populations just mean increased density, more pollution, and reduced quality of living. The 1/4…

This Chart Helps Explain Why People in the Rust Belt Are Fed Up

I'm not sure it welcomes the poor or the prosperous, but more those at the poorer end of the middle class who want to emigrate and can't get into Europe, US, Canada etc. I also…

Mmmm yeah I'd like to see the real numbers on this, I suspect that a lot of the export earnings in…