To Pokeno With Them!

A Labour minister delivers an ultimatum to ornery Aucklanders.

It’s beginning to look as though the Government’s cunning plan is to encourage New Zealanders, especially Aucklanders, to emigrate. If enough people push off, then the desperate struggle to feed the voracious organism that is our biggest city becomes redundant, and we can go back to the good old days when politicians got themselves filmed in empty sports arenas lamenting the exodus overseas of everyone’s kids.

How else to explain the relentless anti-charm offensive by key Labour ministers? It began as a smarm offensive: “Together we can fix this.” But it has now advanced to what can only be interpreted as a scram! offensive. “If you don’t like it, naff off.”

There are signs recent and intending immigrants here are getting cold feet. But this new policy is aimed at the established citizenry. Honing his initial tough-love approach to tough cheese, Housing Minister Phil Twyford now says if Aucklanders don’t like what Auckland will become under the Government’s KiwiBuild plans, they should move to Dairy Flat or Pokeno. This is on the “let them eat cake” continuum of political empathy.

What makes it the more pointlessly abusive of querulous citizens is that, on sober analysis, it’s a hollow ultimatum. It will be several years before KiwiBuild makes any appreciable difference to Nimby-minded locals. If they did then decide to move to the likes of Dairy Flat and Pokeno, those rural retreats would rapidly turn into over-burdened quasi-urban areas. Disgruntled original rural retreaters would then have to find pastures new for their lifestyle properties – whereupon they would fall foul of the coming strictures proposed by Environment Minister David Parker against occupying rural land that could be used for horticulture.