Today on Newshub Nation ` the construction industry is under pressure. So what's being done to ensure KiwiBuild targets can be met? We ask Construction Minister Jenny Salesa. Are we looking at immigration all wrong? We ask two leading economists why they think current policies aren't working and get their take on a new approach. Plus, she's suffered discrimination and violent attacks, but now this refugee can call New Zealand home. Find out what makes her story so extraordinary. Kia ora, good morning. I'm Lisa Owen. Welcome to Newshub Nation. The construction industry is under pressure, with demand for both residential and commercial work pushing the sector to full capacity. It's estimated that just a 1% increase in productivity would increase national GDP by around $139 million. And productivity has to increase for the government to hit its KiwiBuild targets. I'm joined now by Construction Minister Jenny Salesa. Good morning, Minister. Malo e lelei. Malo e lelei, good morning. Tell me, you've got 100,000 homes to build over the next 10 years, but you're 46,000 workers short at the very least. So what are the two most significant things that you're going to do to turn that labour shortage around? So, we have already convened a ministerial working group that consists of eight different ministers. We know that construction skills is one of our main focuses, and we know that we don't have the current numbers of skilled people in this area. Right now, we're told that we're short by about 30,000, but that by 2020 it will increase to about 46,000. I've got to say, though, Lisa, that one of the other things we're looking at is building not just traditional ways of building houses. We're also looking at new ways, innovative ways of building houses ` prefabrication. And I want to talk about prefabrication a little bit later, but you are aware of those numbers, so you've got a working committee with eight ministers. You've got a problem now, though, with shortages, so how long is it going to take you to get the labour you need, and how are you going to get it? So, right now, as of 2017 December, we have over 10,000 people ` 10,700 ` who are here on work visas for construction. The majority of our workforce, though, Lisa, in this area ` 2560 people ` are New Zealanders. So we're looking long-term at how we train up our own people, because when we look at the construction sector ` yes, we are looking at bringing some skilled people from overseas, but the majority of our workers are New Zealanders; they are local people. So how many workers ` skilled workers ` are you going to bring in from overseas? As you say, you've got close to 12,000 construction visas right now, so how many more workers are you going to bring in from overseas? So, what I can say, Lisa, is we have the KiwiBuild visa scheme ` that will be just in addition to all of the current skills categories that people can bring in. So, right now, we have businesses, we have developers ` nothing is stopping them; they can go overseas and bring in the skilled workers that they need. So, at the moment, the short-term solution is that we need skilled people, yes. But what we're doing as a government, for the first time, is we're looking at a skill strategy and an action plan. And we're doing it not just myself as Construction Minister, I'm actually doing it together with seven other ministers and eight ministries together. So we're looking at what we can do. We have to start the training sometime. If I can go back, Lisa, in 2011, 2012, Auckland Council and construction industry employers, they got together here in Auckland, they wrote a report and they presented it to the minister of the day. And that report actually stated that by this year, 2018, we will be short in Auckland by 30,000 skilled workers. That was in 2013. What we're doing as a new government is we're actually addressing that issue head on` But how are you addressing it head on? Because if you're talking about training new people ` and that's great, it's laudable ` but it's three to four years to get an apprenticeship through, so you're going to be past what the projections are for your peak labour requirements by the time you train those apprentices. So, right now, how are you addressing that labour shortage? So, right now, we have just over 23,000 young people who are training as apprentices right now in polytechnics. But if I can go to the new methods ` so prefabrication. In terms of KiwiBuild, we're not looking just at the traditional way of building houses. So, at the moment, the majority of our builders are small businesses. They employ about five people or so, right? 90% of our construction workers are small businesses. But when you look at the traditional way of houses being built, those small businesses with five workers, they build about two to three houses per year. What we're looking with prefabrication is` There is actually quite a few prefabricated folks here in New Zealand; I visited one of them over at Masterton. They actually pre-cut the houses in a factory right here in Masterton. But when you actually look at how fast those houses are built and put up, it takes one registered builder` one licensed builder and four senior skilled people, and they can put up, build a whole house within four to six weeks. So, yes, we're looking at addressing the skilled folks right now ` we're doing that. But in addition to that, we also have to look at other innovative ways of building` So prefabrication, then, what are you doing to encourage upscaling of prefabrication? Because I'm told that there was discussion about a factory going in at Pokeno to do prefabricated houses. Are you in talks with someone about that? So, one of the things that Minister Twyford and I did ` this was a few weeks ago ` was we opened up the conference for prefabrication. It had several hundred people who are already in this industry here in New Zealand. What they informed us, both myself and Minister Twyford, is that in a year and a half ` by 2020 ` prefabrication here in New Zealand will be able to produce and build 7000 houses ` medium-built prefabricated houses` But they want guarantees. To upscale, to increase their labour force, to increase their production, they want guarantees. So what are you offering them in terms of that? So, one of the things that we're doing with this ministerial group that we've got convened, which includes myself, Minister of Housing, Minister of Education, Immigration, Infrastructure and other ministers, is we're looking at the training component. So, at the moment, we're looking at ensuring that we have skilled people that we train up here in New Zealand` But that's not a guarantee. This is about scale of production. They want to know that there's going to be contracts for them if they expand their businesses. So what can you do about that? So, KiwiBuild will begin on the 1st of July. So the lead minister for KiwiBuild is Minister Twyford. So from the 1st of July onwards, we will know much more about the details of KiwiBuild, including for prefabrication. In terms of procurement, if I can just cover` Is there going to be some announcement about prefabrication? Are you in talks with any particular builders or firms about a large-scale prefabrication factory? We ` both Minister Twyford and I ` have had a few discussions with a few people. There are no announcements to be made. And any announcements in this area will be made by the lead minister, Minister Twyford. But what I can say is, in terms of prefabrication moving forward, it's definitely one of those options that we're looking at. One of the experts that this conference brought over was from the UK, Mark Farmer, who` one of the statements that he made was that in order for us to meet our KiwiBuild targets, we have to look at prefabrication. We agree with Mark Farmer. We have to. Okay. Prefabricated houses are hard for people to get mortgages on, so how are you going to address that? One of the things that Minister Twyford is looking at is that issue ` in particular, financing. All right, I want to go back to the KiwiBuild visas, which you talked about. So that is only up to 1500. Your policy is up to 1500 overseas construction workers on KiwiBuild visas at any one time. Do you think that you're going to have to increase that number in order to meet labour shortages? KiwiBuild visas is only one of the visas that is a new kind of visa we are bringing on ` so 1500 for KiwiBuild, yes. But right now we already have more than 10,700 people who are here on construction-related visas. All of those categories are open to building firms and to construction enterprises to apply for. But even taking into account those 12,000 visas that are already with construction workers, your ministry tells you if you do nothing, in two years' time, you are going to be 46,000 construction workers short, so those 12,000 are not enough. Lisa, you're not actually counting the numbers of people. As I said, right now in construction, we have 256,000 people employed in this industry. The majority of them are New Zealanders. So you're not counting the ones who are currently now learning construction trades,... ...are in trade, you're saying? ...who are already` they're in polytechnics. You're not counting our architects. So, just last year, in terms of architects, engineers graduating out of our universities ` over 6000 people. So we're not just looking at overseas people coming through. We are long-term. We have to actually train up our own. I get that. But you do accept that you are going to require some overseas workers in construction in order to meet these targets. Do you accept that? And what I'm saying is that the visa categories already allow for that. KiwiBuild is only an additional visa. OK, so you're saying that there will be no increase in the KiwiBuild construction visas. We already allow for companies to be able to hire plumbers, electricians` Under the skilled` ...under the skilled workers, yes. Yes. I'm asking about KiwiBuild. So that's stuck at 1500? KiwiBuild, after it's announced on the 1st of July` We've already mentioned a number of times that KiwiBuild will have to be ramped up. In the first year, we're looking at 1000 KiwiBuild homes; in the second year, 5000; in the third year, we're ramping up to 10,000, and then, from then on, ramping up to more houses. And so for us to be able to meet our KiwiBuild targets, we should be able to, in the first year, meet that 1000 target. With the workers you've got, you're saying? The other thing I need to mention, Lisa, is one of the things that we've done ` both myself and Minister Twyford ` is we've talked to industry. So, for example, Master Builders, who have about a third of our construction builders as members of their organisation, they've told us today that this year, as an umbrella organisation, they can build 1000 houses. That's just Master Builders. But that's just the beginning, because the lion's share of your houses are going to be built in the back five years of your 10-year target for KiwiBuild. So you're telling me you've got enough labour to do the first two or three years. Is that what you're saying? Yes. And we're training. As I said, the training will take some time. Lisa, we've been in government five months or so. You cannot expect us to come up with the magic` That's a sixth of your term, yes. ...of actually having all these skilled people. Had we` No, but people are asking what the plan is, and that's what I'm trying to get to the bottom of. So, in terms of the budget, because you have` Obviously the KiwiBuild start date is when the procurement comes in. So what have you asked for in the budget to help boost the construction sector? Have you asked for anything? So, I cannot say anything about the budget, not right now. We'll all have to wait until May. But I can say this ` in terms of procurement, one of the things we're looking at, and we expect this to happen with KiwiBuild, is we're looking at those companies, those developers that will take on KiwiBuild contracts. One of the things that will be new, moving forward, is that we expect them to take on apprentices. So in addition to all of us now` In exchange for a KiwiBuild visa worker, they have to take on an apprentice at a living wage. Is that what you're talking about? What I'm saying is that we expect them, as part of taking on government contracts in the procurement process to build KiwiBuild homes, that they will agree, hopefully, to take on apprentices. Is that going to be a requirement? To get a KiwiBuild contract, you're going to have to take on apprentices? And are you going to specify how many? What I'm saying is it's not set in stone yet, but I expect, moving forward, that is one way. We have to look at several different ways of ensuring that we get to the skilled numbers of people that we need right here. Including a target for the number of apprentices they would need to take on in order to get a KiwiBuild contract. Is it going to be that set in stone? We would expect that our developers, our construction companies, would be in agreement, moving forward. What about small companies, though, Minister? Because you were just saying, 26% of companies that build houses build one to five houses a year, so is that a realistic expectation for them ` to need to take on apprentices in order to get KiwiBuild contracts? It should not rule out small companies, and I'll tell you why. We have Master Builders. We also have the Building Council. One of the things that we've had, in terms of discussions with Building Council, who have about one-third of the builders under them, is they tell us that already, right now, it's part of what they do. They're already mentoring between 40% to 60% of folks that come through. They really are training apprentices right now, and they are small businesses with four to five employees. Okay. We're running out of time. So, you have acknowledged the 1500 KiwiBuild visas and said that people can bring construction workers in under the skilled immigration jobs, but here's the thing. Labour wants to cut immigration by about 20,000 to 30,000 people. That was what you campaigned on. So if it comes to it, what is more important, Minister ` cutting immigration or meeting your KiwiBuild goals? When we look at construction, and we know that there's already 10,700 coming through under construction skills visas now, KiwiBuild visas are only 1500. We expect that we would be able to have enough people coming through and enough people that we're training ourselves in New Zealand to be able to meet our KiwiBuild targets, especially when we're looking at 1000` So you won't compromise your pre-election immigration targets in order to meet your KiwiBuild requirements? When we're looking at the KiwiBuild target of 1000 for the first year, 5000 in the second year and 10,000 in the third year, Lisa, I'm pretty confident that we will be able to meet our KiwiBuild targets. Do you have any projections for how many workers? So 12,000 at the moment on work visas in the construction industry. Do you have any projections for how big that number is going to get during the KiwiBuild construction phase? I can tell you how many workers we do need now, which is 30,000, so we're hoping` But you don't know how many of them are going to come from overseas. When we look at, as I say, prefabrication ` and it doesn't need that many workers to build a non-traditional house in an innovative way ` we are pretty confident that mixing the two, training up our own people and getting into prefabricated houses, we will get to our targets. So prefabrication is the silver bullet? It's part of the solution. It will provide part of the solution for KiwiBuild. All right. Thank you for joining me this morning. That is Jenny Salesa, the Construction Minister. Now, if you've got something to say about what you see on the show today, do let us know. We're on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Or you can email us at the address on your screen now. Up next ` we are thinking about immigration. Are we thinking about immigration all wrong? Well, we meet two economists who say we need to switch our focus. Plus, she was a stateless refugee brutally attacked in a Hong Kong camp. Find out how this woman's found a new life in Auckland. Labour campaigned on cutting immigration numbers by around 20,000 to 30,000, reducing the strain on housing and infrastructure, but immigrants also contribute to GDP growth and prop up our labour market, so is there a magic formula for hitting the right balance? Our next guests say we need to look at the whole equation differently, and they've written a book explaining why. I'm joined now by consulting economist Julie Fry and Peter Wilson, principal economist from the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research. Good morning to you both. BOTH: Good morning. Julie, we currently kind of measure the value of immigrants coming here by GDP ` you know, whether they make us richer as a country in a dollar sense. What's wrong with that? It doesn't take into account everything that New Zealanders care about. So when we look at GDP impacts, that's great, that's valuable for the economy, but people care about things like our environment, the impacts on our work-life balance, the impacts on the Treaty relationship; and we're arguing that we should set immigration policy with all the things that people care about in mind, rather than just the financial and economic impacts. Just the dollars and cents. Yeah, that's right. So, Peter, in simple terms, then, if we're going to take those factors in ` which you have called wellbeing measures, basically, aren't they ` what ones are important in the context of immigration? What would you use to measure wellbeing? In the book, we set out 12 dimensions. We've taken 11 that the OECD use in their wellbeing framework and we've added the Treaty of Waitangi, so that's housing, income, jobs, the environment, security. The important thing about our framework is they're all important; you can't just pick one and say that migrants are having a bad impact on housing, so let's have less migrants, because migrants have good impacts on jobs, they have good impacts on the community. So it's taking all the costs and all the benefits into account rather than just looking at the single thing of GDP. You've got to know that some people listening to this will think, 'Well, that sounds complicated.' Is it? It's complicated but better. We say that complexity is a feature, not a bug, in this work. It makes it harder to do policy. We call the book Better Lives for a reason. We think you can get better lives ` not perfect; you have to think about more things. But a lot of the things we're talking about, people and ministers and policy advisors, they do it now anyway, but they do it implicitly, they do it roughly, so we're talking about a bit more transparency and being very clear about what's important to you rather than hiding things under the carpet. So, Julie, how would you actually measure those things, then, in the context of policymaking? If you're going to decide ` let's just take some random numbers ` that 1000 immigrants is the right number based on this criteria, who do we consult; how do we measure? Well, we haven't done the actual measurement yet. This book is setting out proof of concept and 'does this, as an idea, work?' so we've got to that point. The next step is to look at data and indicators on each of those dimensions, and the OECD does this in their better lives framework ` so they compare countries' performance on a wellbeing basis by looking at different data series. So there's some foundational work, but we'd have to look at the specifics. What do you think will happen if we don't do this, if we don't take wellbeing measures into account? What could happen politically and socially? My concern, having lived in the United States and the United Kingdom, is when you don't bring these concerns up and allow people to address them in public debate and to say, 'I'm concerned about whether migrants are impacting on the housing market' ` is one issue that often comes up ` if you don't have that conversation, people still express their concerns in other ways. If you look at Brexit, if you look at the rise of the far-right in Europe, if you look at the Trump presidency, these are all, in part, driven by people responding to feelings that they have about migration. Some of those feelings aren't based in fact. If we look at the migration and housing debate in New Zealand, migrants are a small part of the issue. We're talking about capability in the housing sector being a larger one, but people still have these concerns, and if you don't address them, people vote based on those concerns. Yeah. So if we look at a couple of specific areas of immigration, Peter, the number of Permanent Residence visas, according to your book, has remained relatively stable over the past few years, so what particular group is pushing up the numbers? It's temporary workers. It's some of the people you were just talking with the minister about ` people coming on temporary skills. There's been a very big increase in working holiday scheme visas, up from 6000 to 64,000 over the last 10 years, and they're people with employment rights. The other big growth has been students, who, although they're coming here for their education, they also have pretty wide employment rights. So currently there's about 190,000 to 200,000 visas issued each year, and only about 20,000, 25,000 of those are for permanent residents. So ` and let's be clear of that ` what people would regard as permanent residents, like come here to stay here for the rest of their lives, in essence, is what you mean, isn't it? Yes, that's right. Or indefinitely. Yeah, it's not forever, but it's moved countries. 'My home is now New Zealand.' So let's look at the students, because the students coming in have work rights, as you say. A lot of them would be working in areas of unskilled labour and part-time work. Do we really need to be importing labour for that kind of stuff? Probably not, and that's an interesting point. And one of the things we're concerned about from a wellbeing point of view is, sure, it's great for employers to have young, educated employees who can work in these part-time jobs, but what impact is that having on the wellbeing of people who might take those jobs, who could be less well educated New Zealanders? But we're also worried, with both students and working holidays, that it's habituating the gig economy ` that if you're a cafe owner in Queenstown and a PhD student from Sweden comes and talks to you about a job, they speak really good English, they're really bright, and they'll say, 'Can I have a couple of shifts?' and you'll say, 'Sure.' So you're just getting into that idea that employers in these areas will get over-qualified people who are prepared to work for a short period; what impact is that having on people in New Zealand who might not have perfect skills? So we've got to take that into account. So wellbeing is a scale, because it flows in both directions ` say, the wellbeing of the student who might be exploited and the wellbeing of the person that you're talking about in New Zealand who perhaps might want that job themselves. Julie, I'm wondering ` because the international education business is worth a lot of money to us, right, $3.5 billion a year ` should we be prepared to downsize that and lose that money based on the welfare criteria? What it says is you would need to look at the impacts on employers and the business in addition to those impacts on the students and on the competing New Zealanders in the labour market. So we would weight those effects in the framework. We would say we care about the impact on employers, we care about the impact on students, and we care about the impact on locals. So we'd take all of those into account when making a decision on numbers. And you considered both sides of the argument in your book. What's your gut feeling on that, having looked at the numbers and the impacts? As Julie said, we haven't done all the formal analysis yet, but I think you'd probably see a different sort of migrant and pattern of migration, and that's the important thing about what we're talking about. We're not saying have no migrants or reduce migrants. It's not just about the numbers; it's about what sort of migrants would you want to prefer? Our current criteria, just looking at GDP, you want young, fit, probably single people who don't have kids to come in, do a job, and leave, cos that's great for GDP, but whether having those people just in and out all the time is good for the communities they live in or for the wider community. So you might say let's have a bit more focus on people who might settle longer, so they'll come in to do a job but stay. OK. I had a look on the list of labour occupations that we're looking for, the list of labour shortages, and there's things like bakers, dairy farmers, bee keepers, arborists, chefs, mechanics, panel beaters. Are we really not training people for those jobs in New Zealand? What does our immigration pattern tell us about our education system? One of things that we talk about in the framework is that maybe we are using immigration in some places to compensate for the shortcomings of the education system. And when we look at when there are labour shortages, immigration is one solution, as the minister was saying. Training local people is another solution. And yet another solution is to change the wage rates and working conditions of the people we employ. So there's a whole range of options that we can use to address these concerns. Immigration is just one of the tools in the box. Do you think people will think this is radical thinking from you two? (EXHALES SHARPLY) You know, what kind of reaction are you expecting? Whether it's radical or not, it's been around. Wellbeing as a criteria has been around since there was economists. But it's a whole field of study now. It is. It's the new black. But the OECD started doing its Better Life work over 10 years ago. One of the things we're hoping that the book will prompt is that governments and other people will actually start thinking in these terms. We've known about using wellbeing frameworks for a long time. Treasury's had one for a long time. But migration policy in particular has always been just about GDP and GDP per head, so we're hoping that the reaction will be, 'Yes, this is a good idea,' 'Yes, it makes policymaking a big harder, but we get better results,' so we're hopeful that people will pick this up or be honest and say, 'We can't make it work; we're just going to look at GDP. 'We're not going to pretend that we're doing this any other way.' Julie, when you consider the low end of the labour market, there's disproportionate representation of Maori in that end of the labour market, and when you think about our current immigration policies, do you think that we are breaching our Treaty obligations in any way? I think one of the things that we think of the Treaty and describe the Treaty in the book is one of New Zealand's first migration policy documents, so I don't look at it as a breach in terms of specific outcomes, but in terms of intent, I think the Treaty was clear we should be having a conversation with Treaty partners about this, and we should be discussing them and involving them at the strategic and potentially at the operational level as well. Just one of the things we had to do in constructing our framework was we had to add the Treaty in, because the OECD didn't have an indigenous people component, so that's a bit where it is quite new thinking to think about how do you think about the impacts of migration on indigenous people? How do you involve them? So you would recommend more direct consultation in New Zealand over our immigration policy ` direct consultation with Maori about the numbers of people coming in and the types of jobs they're taking. That's one way of doing it. You could do it at the national level, because at the moment, migration policy is very much set by Cabinet with very little consultation, so it's an absolute exercise of sovereignty. The ministers control the border. We would suggest that certainly there should be more consultation with iwi at that level but also at the local level, talking about how can iwi help migrants settle? How can they welcome them to their country? That's an important part of Maori culture ` is welcoming visitors ` and resettling migrants well is a really important way of doing it. So it should be both at the local level and at the national level, but the key point is talk about migration from a wide range of perspectives and include the Treaty dimension as one of those. It's not the only thing you talk about, but it's an important thing that should be talked about, and at the moment, it's not. Before we go, I just want to ask you both about` The economic development agency Infometrics has just predicted an economic slowdown that will drastically reduce immigration ` is what they're saying ` that it will cause net migration to fall from 68,900 to 17,000 by 2021. Can I`? The interesting thing about the migration debate in New Zealand is that we swing between two phases, right? There's the 'Oh gosh, who's going to be the last one here? Will they turn out the lights, please?' and 'Oh wow, there's more people than we can deal with.' Migration and economic performance are very strongly correlated, so if the economy turns down, fewer migrants are attracted. This is just what happens. I mean, it's... It's part of the bigger discussion. It's part of the bigger discussion. All right, thank you both for joining me this morning. We're out of time. But if you do want to know more about Julie and Peter's book, it's called Better Lives: Migration, Wellbeing and New Zealand, and it's published by BWB. Still to come, we dissect the week's political news with our panel ` economist Bernard Hickey, former Green MP David Clendon, and business journalist Fran O'Sullivan. Plus ` she was granted citizenship here under exceptional circumstances. We hear the extraordinary tale of Eliana Rubashkyn. Welcome Back. Eliana Rubashkyn's road to New Zealand has been a long one fraught with prejudice, harassment and violence. But she's just become one of our newest citizens under what are classified as exceptional circumstances. Lydia Lewis spent time with Eliana and found out just what makes her story so exceptional. Eliana Rubashkyn has just become one of New Zealand's newest citizens. As a New Zealand Citizen... ...so help me, God. ... so help me, God. She has waited six long years to walk across this stage. They were actually encouraging me to dress my national dress, but I don't have a country to call home. Officially stateless, Eliana didn't have a national dress, so she chose all black to represent her new home. This piece of paper means everything to the 29-year-old pharmacist. It allows her to travel... ...and be safely recognised as a woman, as Eliana, and as a country that will protect and respect my rights everywhere where I go. Eliana is a refugee from Colombia. She came to New Zealand after being persecuted and assaulted, first in Colombia, and then in Hong Kong. It's the first time I'm Eliana, female and, you know, someone that belongs somewhere. Finally. (SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) (LOUD APPLAUSE) Eliana was born with a mix of sex chromosomes, that gave her both male and female physical traits. Intersex is a general umbrella for a lot of medical conditions that can be obvious or not obvious. So they can be physical... Her parents chose to raise her as male. But she identified as female. And her differences made her the target of bullying, discrimination and hate crimes. She fled Colombia after being stabbed, planning to study in Asia. However, hormone treatments made her so unrecognisable that authorities in Hong Kong didn't believe she was the person in her photo identification. With her passport confiscated, she was granted refugee status, and sent to live in a shipping container in a makeshift shelter on the outskirts of Hong Kong. While there, Eliana was harassed and assaulted for being different, culminating in a vicious gang-rape that put her in hospital. She spent three weeks in hospital where she had surgery, and was treated for infection. She still needs more surgery to repair the physical damage. With no passport, she was considered stateless. She had nowhere to call home, and no citizenship rights anywhere. If you don't exist for any country, you are considered an alien or someone that doesn't actually even have rights. The United Nations asked New Zealand to accept her as a refugee. Refugees are usually housed with other people of the same gender or of the same culture. Eliana was housed with other refugees from Colombia, and ended up facing the same prejudices she tried to escape. They are housed often with people who may be fleeing the same country as them, and they may be fleeing for other reasons. But they're housed with people who may share the same ideologies and negative attitudes towards them. Which can create some real dangers and feelings of unsafety and significantly impact on their mental health. Although life at the centre is beautiful and wonderful for so many people, for our rainbow communities, it can often be the toughest moment in their integration process into Aotearoa. Four years ago, Aych McArdle was working at Rainbow Youth when Eliana knocked on the door. Since then, they have supported her through the resettlement process. Eliana is the first emergency refugee case to be settled for her refugee identity in New Zealand. Qemajl has been working at the Mangere refugee resettlement centre on and off for almost 20 years. And that's what Eliana experienced? His team battles with time zones. They sometimes work through the night on priority cases. He says staff members received training on working with people from different backgrounds and specialist teams are brought in to assist with rainbow refugees. But Aych says more needs to be done. My dream for all people working with our newly arrived refugees and asylum seekers in Aotearoa ` we'd form, like, an epic rainbow pathway committee to map out what is the perfect journey, or the ideal journey for one of our new refugees coming here. Eliana says she found parts of the resettlement process challenging, but she's grateful for the kindness of the staff during that process. She now shares a much happier life in New Zealand with her husband, Itamar. But dealing with the trauma she suffered in Colombia and Hong Kong is an ongoing challenge. That's been something I've been working on. At least in Hong Kong my life was not, you know, taken. You know, in Colombia, many people like me... ...ended up dead. Or their bodies disappeared. After hearing of Eliana's mental health struggles, her mother sent a gift all the way from Colombia to help. (COOS) Why are you so scared? Why are you so scared? She's my therapy. She keeps me happy, she keeps my anxiety low. She's a really nice girl. She's a genuine love. Don't bring it. No, she's gonna bring it. She's a good girl. She wakes me up in the morning, she's a really, really, really lovely girl. She's very smart, she brings bowls. Over the past four years, Eliana says she's been denied citizenship twice. She's filled out dozens of forms, attended meetings, and told her story over and over, hoping someone would believe she deserves special consideration. Usually, to be a citizen, you need to have been in New Zealand for five years, and have lived here for the majority of that time. But not everyone meets those requirements. It may be that they're a refugee and that they have difficulty obtaining travel documents, or it may be for other medical or family reasons that they were unable to meet the five-year requirement. So far this year, 9000 people have been granted citizenship in New Zealand. Only 47 were granted under exceptional circumstances. That's less than 1%. They told me you are not an exceptional person, your story is not exceptional, we don't think you can be considered an exceptional person. But when now I apply ` same situation, same circumstances ` and suddenly my story and my situation is exceptional. Now she is a citizen, Eliana is entitled to work, and has started a new job in a pharmacy. That makes me feel useful. Because there is many times in life that I feel useless. Another happiness is Itamar, her Israeli Jewish Husband. He came to New Zealand to be with her after meeting online. They've been married for three years, but are still waiting for his residency application from 2016 to be assessed. In a statement, immigration New Zealand told us... The couple hope to have children, but things are still uncertain. Itima's third work visa expires in December, and it's not certain he'll get another one if his residency get's declined. Immigration New Zealand has been incredibly unhelpful, incredibly difficult with me. My husband is the only thing I have in my life. He's, like the only thing that I can consider family. In July 2017, Itima was close to being deported. After reading other people's deportation stories in the media, Eliana thought immigration would drag him out of their apartment in the middle of the night. And took steps to make sure he wouldn't be taken without her. They can simply even open the door of my house and come in the middle of the night and take him away. So that's why I tried to, as much as we spend time together, I want him to be handcuffed. And that was giving me a feeling of safety. Itamar's family in Israel do not support their relationship, and do not accept Eliana as she is. But Itamar does. There's things to be worried for in this world than the gender of a person. Both take comfort in their Jewish faith and the support they get from the New Zealand Jewish community. At a recent event in Auckland to mark Yom HaShoah ` Holocaust Remembrance Day ` Eliana spoke about her family's experiences. My mum is a refugee. My great grandmother was a refugee. I am a refugee. And we all ran away from different things. I'm running away from hate and discrimination, and lack of understanding of gender diversity. My mother ran away from anti-Semetism. My great grandmother ran away from anti-Semetism. We all run away sometimes from hate. Because we just want to be loved. Eliana says the men involved in her rape have never been charged. Still to come, we've got a taster of National MP Jami-Lee Ross's ask me anything session where he discusses everything from justice reform to Grey's Anatomy. But first we catch up with our panel, business journalist Fran O'Sullivan, former Green MP David Clendon, and economist Bernard Hickey. Welcome back. I'm joined now by our panel ` former Green MP David Clendon, economist Bernard Hickey, and NZME business editorial director Fran O'Sullivan. Good morning to you all. We heard this morning from Jenny Salesa, the construction minister. She seems to be thinking that prefabricated houses, Bernard, are going to be a big part of the answer to KiwiBuild, but there didn't seem to be any guarantees or hard commitments around what the government could do for those people upscaling. We could really do with some urgency and some guarantee of supply for this industry. It really needs to get going. And this has been talked about for a long time. We should really have had, after eight months in power, some sort of announcement about a massive factory being built in the likes of Pokeno to build a good chunk of these 50,000 affordable houses that New Zealand needs for Auckland and to repeat some of the successes of Christchurch. Remember Mike Greer homes built a huge factory which helped solve Christchurch's housing problem, and that's something that's needed, and I'm sort of surprised that it's taking so long to get these things up and running. They should be putting down the foundations for this big factory now. We still seem to be waiting. Fran, she kept mentioning there that there's an eight-minister working group. We've spoken to some industry players who said they've been consulted to death; they're sick of consultation. What are you hearing from people? I think I thoroughly agree with Bernard; they really need to be out of the blocks by now. But it does also take time to build the factory and gear up. I really think they need to do something more bold, more urgent, and just bring in some mass already to erect housing out of places like China, which do this at scale ` did, for instance, after the major tsunami in Japan. Sometimes if you believe that the housing crisis is as bad as it is ` and Labour made such a big thing of that in the election ` I think they need to take emergency measures, and they need to acquire land, and they need to put up some houses smartly at the same time as they're gearing up for local prefabrication. David Clendon, politically, how would that look, if you started shipping in pre-made houses from China? Wouldn't be a good look for this government or any government, I think. We've had a lot of commitment to New Zealand-made. I do agree it needs to start quickly, and I'm pleased to hear the Minister talking a lot about non-traditional methods. You don't have to have four guys and a ute and a dog with a whole pile of timber on a bare site to build a house; we've got to do better and do faster than that. But the thing is with prefabrication there are issues around mortgages, and when I spoke to the Minister about that, because the bank won't fund you, Bernard, will they, at the same rate for another house. Were you hearing the kind of detail that gives you confidence that it's under control? Not really, and also the basic problem here is the government should be using its balance sheet to deal with an emergency in the same way that the government did with the Christchurch earthquake, the previous gov` You're talking about their debt ceiling ` spend more. The government can borrow money right now at 2.7%, and it should be using that to deal with the emergency. As Fran says, this is an emergency. We have tens of thousands of people in Auckland who don't have enough housing. It's affecting the economy. It's affecting health, all sorts of things. And not only to build the houses, but the hospitals and the schools and the roads and the rail to go with them. David, obviously, Labour, Greens, they agreed to this 20% debt GDP. Could they back down on that? They seem quite firm on it. It was obviously done for reasons to make themselves appear as fiscally responsible as the National Party. Is it a mistake? Capping it at that level? Possibly. You can argue, with hindsight, that maybe it was too tight a restriction. I think it was important for the Greens and Labour to talk about being fiscally responsible, because that was the accusation coming at them ` they'd be the borrow-and-spend government. We've also already, I think, heard a few signals from Jacinda Ardern that maybe there's some wriggle room in there, and, frankly, there was always a little bit of room, but I guess some of the unexpected costs around health, hospitals collapsing, roading projects and the like. so I do think that they could negotiate themselves out of that ` what appears to be a bit of a trap for the moment. Because Jacinda Ardern made it very clear on Monday that it was much worse than she expected. And Treasury has warned the government, as we reported at Newsroom this week, that 19% of the hospitals are either in poor or very poor condition $14 billion needs to be spent on infrastructure. The bond markets have no problem at all with the government borrowing to build infrastructure that lasts for decades. And that's the point. You can get long-dated bonds and exceptionally long-dated bonds. The thing I can't understand ` we talk about these once in a generation, opportunities, things that we should be doing ` why don't they take an intergenerational viewpoint and take an investment philosophy; don't think about it as borrowing, but think about it as investing in the future, harness the private sector, go back to PPPs in some areas, and bring private capital in to share the burden of the investment. Things really do have to move fairly fast, and they're just burning time now. David, on another topic, we heard there a new theory on immigration, in essence ` not completely new, but using a well-being index to measure how many immigrants we bring in, not just GDP. What do you think of that? I think anything that gets public policy away from a reliance on a single measure of GDP has got to be a good thing. The Greens used to talk about contrasting standard of living, which is a much more GDP-associated measure, with quality of life, and I think that having that matrix they're talking about could be very` it's a powerful conceptual tool. I think, OK, it still needs to be drilled into and applied to something as complex as immigration, but it's absolutely a much more balanced approach, and I think for a lot of communities, people in New Zealand ` and particularly Auckland ` are starting to feel like they're losing control of their communities when they see large numbers of immigrants in small areas. There doesn't have to be any inherent racism, but people just get worried, and I think that's one of the aspects in that well-being framework they're talking about ` is allowing that social capital to evolve within the context of an apparent onslaught of migrants into traditionally quite stable communities. All right, then. Do stay with us. We'll be back after the break. Welcome back to Newshub Nation and our panel. Fran, this week, we had expectations hosed down, dampened; Jacinda Ardern was warning us ahead of the budget in May to temper our expectations. Is it because of National's lack of investment in infrastructure, in Middlemore, in other things, or is it Labour looking for an out with their numbers? Oh, I think they're finally working out that the $11 billion figure which Steven Joyce talked about, that actually part of that is there is a gap, and I think now what they're having to do is, yes, they're trying to manage down expectations, so did National when it came to government 2008 ` talked about the decade of deficits ` there's always projections that lie ahead which give you those sorts of big numbers unless you make changes, and I think what they're trying to do is obviously blame-storm to some degree, because they're going to have to make some unpalatable choices or perhaps not deliver as fast as they would like to, but I think they should switch it round. They do have the vast body of the country behind them, and I think they should not spend so much time in trying to muck around and talk about their predecessors and just be very focused on what they want to do and really develop this kind of investment ethos that we were talking about before and go out and relax a little bit on the borrowing and borrow a bit more and do some of this stuff. The country would applaud it, in my view. Bernard? Because we've had this population shock that came out of the blue and there's 200,000 people extra in Auckland in the last five years, you can say to the public, 'Hey, no one really expected this population shock. 'It's a bit like a natural disaster. We're responding to it. 'We're building infrastructure which will be here for generations to come, 'and when you do that, you borrow some money and you invest it.' David, do you think they're focusing too much on what National's game was and not enough on their own play? Yeah, I think the intricacies of who said what to whom and when, that gets lost on most of the population. People want to see some progress. They want to see homes built. They want to see their trip to work shortened. They want to see the infrastructure appearing on the ground. Governments will be forgiven a lot if they actually achieve some positive gains and some material progress. The whatsits behind that, the financial arrangements, it flies over most people's heads, I think. Do you think Labour has got the frighteners on about the numbers, though? I think certainly they'll be fretting, I imagine. That's not a particularly well-informed comment, but certainly I do see that the numbers they anticipated having the money to put a bit of largesse in their first one or two years of their term. That must be under some stress, obviously. I think too there's some signalling to their own party, to ministries. Remember they're in the key budget-making decision weeks ` the last week, the next week, before Jacinda Ardern had to go overseas ` so their cabinet meeting actually ran overtime on Monday because they're right now making the hard decisions, telling their supporters and the ministries, 'Hey, back off, guys. 'We're doing the best we can.' Are you worried ` Infometrics has come out this week, saying that they're expecting immigration numbers to slump, partly because the government is not going to be spending on some big roading infrastructure projects. Should we be worried about growth? Because they're saying that growth is (CLICKS TONGUE) going down. I don't see the same worries in the way that consumers are spending, the way that trucks are going on the road. All these indicators say we're looking at growth of 2% to 3%, and we've seen so many forecasts of falling migration in the last three or four years. Something structural has happened, particularly with the growth of the emerging middle class in Asia who want to come to New Zealand on holiday and to train their kids, to put them into education. And New Zealand is in a much stronger position than it has been for a long time, and the momentum in the economy is there to keep it going ` according to the latest figures I've seen, around the 2% to 3% mark. The Prime Minister, David, is heading off for a trip to Europe ` Commonwealth leaders meeting. There is talk at the moment about what the US is going to be doing in terms of the strike in Syria and whether the UK is going to join in. Is there going to be pressure on us to support any action, and do you think we should? There may well be pressure on us ` you know, the traditional alliance of Western countries. I don't think New Zealand should move without UN support, and I don't think they're going to get that, frankly, in terms of Syria. There is so much confusion and smoke and mirrors about what actually happened in Syria ` the notion it was a false flag attack, all these sorts of things. So without a UN mandate, New Zealand should not support any strikes that the US and the UK do? As a default, no, I don't think we should. Do you think we might come under pressure around the Russian spy scenario as well? We don't have any spies, so what possible opportunity is there? (LAUGHS) Yeah, well, it's gonna be interesting if it comes up with the meeting and Theresa May. Fran, just before we go, Donald Trump` This was interesting. The CTPP ` I think that's the right letters ` Trump has asked his advisers to go back and have another look at this trade deal. Given he was so against it, are we taking this second look seriously, and what's the motivation? I am taking it seriously. I took part in a round table organised by the state department recently in Auckland, and a number of the participants from the ex-administration and occupying pretty high roles in US think tanks` I mean, essentially, the going plan was call it the Trump Pacific Partnership and he'll be in. Essentially, there's a lot of pressure coming from US business; US business is not happy at not being part of this new CPTPP and that the US is seen as the outlier, and there's a sense that the jawboning with China is getting some results in the sense that China has conceded in one or two areas, which China needed to do, and they really want the US back at the table, so I think he's been listening to some pretty powerful people within the Republican Party and within US business. So Trump can change his mind. Oh, yes, he can. I think we'll leave it there. But he can change it again. (CHUCKLES) All right, well, National Party MP Jami-Lee Ross was on our Ask Me Anything segment this week, answering questions from Kiwis all across the country. What many people wanted to know was why he lost his temper in parliament over not getting his lunch break. For you, sir, to refuse to even allow me to raise a point of order is grossly disorderly and disrespectful of members of this house. It wasn't my finest moment. Gonna give you that. It was adjuring urgency. It was a pretty heated debate. Speaker, at the time, wasn't allowing any of our guys to even be able to raise a point of order, and we didn't think that the new deputy speaker that was still learning his role should be ignoring 56 MPs in opposition. We went too far. It got pretty heated. I don't like that video all that much either. There's rules in parliament. You should follow the rules. One of the rules is that the house can't progress past a certain time. Wasn't about lunch; it was about the Speaker ignoring us. But I should have done it better, and I admit that. And that is all from us for now. If you didn't catch all of the show, you can watch now on ThreePlus1. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you again next weekend. Captions by Madison Batten, John Gibbs, and Elizabeth Welsh. www.able.co.nz Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2018