Multicultural New Zealand strongly condemns the “butter chicken tsunami” remark made by Hon Shane Jones as reckless, misleading, and deeply disrespectful to migrant communities.

In the absence of clear and robust legislation in NZ that adequately defines and addresses hate speech and racism, Multicultural New Zealand despite being a volunteer-led organisation with reach to at least one in five New Zealanders considers it necessary to call this out plainly.

This remark is not an isolated slip; it reflects a deliberate use of racialised language that normalises division and draws on deeply entrenched supremacist attitudes that have no place in a diverse, modern Aotearoa.

Let us be clear: the facts do not support this rhetoric. The official material on the New Zealand-India Free Trade Agreement describes capped temporary entry commitments, including the equivalent of 1,667 three-year temporary employment entry visas per annum, capped at 5,000 at any one time. Of these, 1,466 are tied to 13 skilled occupations drawn from Immigration New Zealand’s Green List [1]. This is not an open-ended migration flood. Calling it a “tsunami” is not analysis. It is polemic dressed up as politics.

It is also worth noting that the Government’s own Beehive release on the agreement is framed as a trade and export announcement. It focuses on tariffs, market access, and economic opportunity. It does not present the agreement as some mass immigration programme.

It is telling, too, that the Prime Minister has described the immigration scare story around this issue as “absolutely false”, and called such language “alarmist” and “unhelpful”.

More concerning, however, is the deliberate reduction of a community to a stereotype. Referring to people as “butter chicken” is not humour, it is demeaning. It reduces a diverse, long-established community to a takeaway label, ignoring both their contribution to New Zealand and their place within it.

We must ask: what image is being deliberately constructed here?

Because pairing a racialised food stereotype with the language of natural disaster is not accidental. It frames migrants as a threat, something overwhelming, something to be feared. That kind of framing has no place in a country that prides itself on fairness, inclusion, and respect.

New Zealand’s Indian communities are not new, nor are they a “wave” to be managed. They are part of the fabric of this nation, contributors to its economy, its culture, and its social cohesion for generations.

Public figures carry a responsibility to elevate the quality of our national conversation. Resorting to caricature and hyperbole may generate headlines, but it erodes trust and undermines the very cohesion we are supposed to be building.

If this is the level of language used to describe fellow New Zealanders, then the issue is no longer migration, it is leadership. New Zealanders deserve better than fear dressed up as humour.

[1] Source: MFAT, New Zealand-India Free Trade Agreement: Key Outcomes. The page states that New Zealand has agreed to provide the equivalent of 1,667 three-year temporary employment entry visas per annum, capped at 5,000 at any one time.

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