Utter madness

Lobbyists ExportNZ want to more than triple the size of New Zealand, growing the population to 15 million in just 45 years in order to provide them with "scale" and more exports. Its utter madness. Quite apart from the question of where all these people will come from (Statistics New Zealand projects a population of about 6 million in 2061, so they're talking about finding an extra 9 million people from somewhere), there's also the question of where they'd go. ExportNZ's plan would involve tripling the size of every urban area in New Zealand. It would mean the end of the quarter-acre paradise, and a definitive shift to high-density living (which, while more efficient from an urban planning point of view, is also not what people actually seem to want, at least on current models). And it would likely mean the end of our uncrowded wilderness and our relatively clean natural environment.

One of the great things about this country is that it is relatively empty. And judging by the results of the Herald's entirely unscientific poll, most of us would like to keep it that way.