18 April 2002

The flawed Reserve Bank Act is being used once again to crank up interest rates and to put the squeeze on farmers, exporters and families with mortgages while luxury spending on imports and overseas trips will be made cheaper.

Failure to provide skills education in New Zealand has resulted in immigration policies that rob poorer countries of their skilled workers, bump up NZ population and put pressure on the local housing market.

This housing pressure tends to make Auckland look prosperous in an election year but its inflationary pressure has negative effect on the provincial economy, export sector and long term prosperity.

Christian Heritage has policies for a widespread increase in skills training and wants government-induced inflation to be taken out of the underlying inflation target equation.

NZ Statistics graph for long term migration trends over the last 4 years suggests that the rise in housing costs are the result of government election year strategy and should be taken out of the equation for the Reserve Bank Act inflation target.