Labour lied on refugees

When they were in opposition, Labour advocated for an increased refugee quota. When they were running for election, they explicitly promised to raise it to 1,500 a year. But now they're in government, they're saying that we're full:

The Government has stalled on plans to double New Zealand's refugee quota - and it's because of the housing crisis.

Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says Aotearoa need to sort that before it thinks about welcoming more refugees.

[...]

"What we have to do is make sure we've got the capacity to take those extra people."

Translation: we just don't have enough homes.

For context, the promised increase in the refugee quota is less than one percent of net immigration, and it would be completely buried by this year's decrease. So Lees-Galloway's "justification" isn't especially convincing. But more importantly, there will always be problems in New Zealand, but that's no excuse to ignore the greater problems of the wider world. Refugees are in desperate need, and we are nowhere near to doing our bit for them (we take fewer refugees per capita than the much-reviled Australians, for example). Labour promised to move part of the way towards correcting that, to be a more compassionate government than their predecessors. Sadly, it looks like they were just fucking lying to us, as usual.

The battle for MMP

A ballot for two member's Bills was held today and the following bills were drawn:

• Electoral (Adjustment of Thresholds) Amendment Bill (Iain Lees-Galloway)
  
• SuperGold Health Check Bill (Barbara Stewart)
  

Lees-Galloway's bill implements the core recommendation of the Electoral Commission's review of MMP: a 4% threshold with no "coat-tails" clause. This change would make our Parliament less representative than it is at present, so I am hoping it goes down in flames. Fortunately, I think I can rely on the venality of politicians to ensure that. ACT and United Future have already gone on the record opposing the change, I can't see the Maori Party supporting it either (at least not if they can think beyond the last election result, which could be doubtful), and National is hardly going to vote to render its scheming with Colin Craig pointless. So, if it gets its first reading before the next election, we're fine.

Unfortunately, in the long-term, we're not. The Electoral Commission, with its sniffiness about small parties, has set the frame for reform in an entirely negative direction. And eventually some government will act on it. We need to change the conversation away from "coat-tailing" MPs and towards thresholds. Unfortunately, National isn't exactly making that easy for us.