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New Zealand is in a more difficult position, govt would welcome inflation to chip away house to income gaps, but needs to run tight monetary policy to avoid corrections due to interest rate hikes! Our peers like AUS have more margin available to them!

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Its not just about the availability of skilled and unskillled workers

It's the inter-connectedness of - housing - traffic - wages - mobility of labour - immigration

You can't discuss one without discussing the others

You cant solve one without simultaneously solving the others

8 May 2016

If you are talking about Auckland ... there is a direct relationship between where you live and where you can find a job that pays enough to make it economically

worthwhile making the journey each day

Someone living in Laingholm Southwest of Titirangi would have to think long and hard about taking a shelf-stacking job in East Tamaki

An unemployed supermarket shelf-filler living in Pukekohe is unlikely to seek a job in New Lynn and even more unlikely they could afford to re-locate to put

themselves in a position to seek that job

While employers can "possibly" make a case for importing a skilled migrants, very soon those same employers are going to have to provide suitable packages

including a company vehicle and company supplied (subsidised) accommodation close to the job. If they are (eventually) forced to do it for migrants, they should

offer the equivalent to the locals

That's the looming unforseen consequence of government caving in to the employer lobbyists

https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/81423/bernard-hickey-asks-why-over-third-million-unemployed-and-underemployed-new-zealanders#comment-857302

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