Let rich Americans into New Zealand if they want to build houses, former PM says
- John Key, who held the top job from 2008 to 2016, said it was ‘crazy’ to ban foreigners from buying property in the country
- He also called on the government to loosen border restrictions so foreign students and overseas workers could enter
John Key, who held the top job from 2008 to 2016, also said in an interview with talk radio station Newstalk ZB that border restrictions should be loosened so that universities and companies could bring in foreign students and skilled workers and pay for their own quarantine.
“Let’s focus on what we can do. We’ve got this crazy foreign buyer ban,” he said.
“Why don’t we let in rich Americans who want to build a house in New Zealand? Who cares? They’re in Mangawhai or somewhere, they are going to create thousands of jobs. Why do we care if someone who lives in New York wants to spend NZ$10 million building a house in Auckland, using [our] craftsmen and [our] tradespeople?”
He was speaking after telling a conference in Auckland that New Zealand should not be complacent about better-than-expected business conditions because “we have a financial crisis coming”.
High property and share prices, and apparently falling unemployment, were giving the country “a false sense of what’s happening”, he said.
“We know that the economic contraction is going to happen for New Zealand. We know that tourism, for example, is 5 per cent [of the economy] just on its own, and to take those international tourists out, that’s pretty rough,” he said.
“A lot of those things are beyond our control, but there are things that we can do faster, and that includes letting foreign students in and letting a bunch of other people come in that companies would happily pay for because they would create jobs.”
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Key said no one wanted to lose the sense of normality that now exists in daily life, in contrast to lockdowns and social distancing overseas, but he did not see any justification for keeping foreigners out while letting New Zealanders come home from coronavirus hotspots.
“What is so magical about that group, when we have companies who want to bring in employees from overseas who will be happy to pay for quarantine and who will happily make sure that it’s done to exactly the same standard as the New Zealanders that are returning?” he said.
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Key, who is now chairman of ANZ Bank, told the earlier conference that the looming economic crisis would exceed major downturns of the past.
“There is a lot of stress in the system … We are in the early part of what is going to be a very significant contraction in the New Zealand and global economy,” he said.
