Yeah mate that's true but here's the thing. Any business that relies on below minimum wage migrant labour to be profitable is not a sound business. If you can't find a way to keep a business going and also have some respect for your employees and give them enough to live on, then are you really helping NZ that much?
I personally hate that our economy is mainly overpriced dairy exports and artificial property prices. Kiwis don't invest in anything that actually creates value. I don't like that the government subsidises dairy just because it's an important part of the economy. And I don't think migrant workers that are willing to do shit jobs should prop up orchards that would otherwise fail.
We need to be building profitable business that actually create value for the world, AND for the kiwis who work for them.
National has propped up dairy and done nothing to reduce housing prices because that's how they make the economy appear (falsely) to be strong. But if you measure the economy by more than just GDP, and take into account quality of life, diversity, equality, living costs, etc, well then our economy is actually quite shit.
To some extent, I say let those businesses who rely on cheap as chips migrant labour fail, and let's replace them with something better. It's worth a little economic dip if it means in the long run we have a far more structurally sound, diverse, robust economy, and not just a nation of property speculators.
