National Party signals immigration policy shift
Sydney (13 May)
New Zealand’s National Party, the largest party in Parliament, will pursue a careful policy on immigration to protect social cohesion, on the back of a perceived rise in anti-immigration sentiment.
“My message to the business community is that when it comes to immigration, when faced with a choice between social stability and your bottom line, I will choose the former every single time,” Prime Minister Chris Luxon said on 13 May, at a pre-Budget speech in Auckland.
Luxon’s comments come a week after his coalition partner, the ACT Party, proposed a series of measures designed to improve confidence in New Zealand’s immigration system.
“Today, Kiwis who are proud of our settler heritage are asking themselves why something doesn’t quite feel right with immigration. ACT believes their suspicions are correct,” Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour said.
The Government would deport serious offenders, limit benefits for immigrants, tighten rules around skilled visas, create an infrastructure levy for visa holders, and more, under ACT’s plan.
ACT and National’s mutual coalition partner, New Zealand First, also withheld support for the recently signed New Zealand-India Free Trade Agreement (NZ-India FTA), partly over immigration concerns.
Luxon’s speech explicitly pointed to immigration’s impact on social cohesion as a key driver of National’s planned policy shift. But it is not clear that New Zealanders’ attitudes towards immigration have changed in any substantial way over recent years.
In its 2026 Social Cohesion Report, the Helen Clark Foundation found that 36% of New Zealanders believe that the country has accepted too many immigrants in recent years, up just 1% point from 35% a year earlier.
The share of New Zealanders who believed that immigration levels in recent years were ‘about right’ similarly declined by just 1% point, from 44% to 43%, between 2025 and 2026, according to the Helen Clark Foundation’s reports.
There have been recent anti-immigrant incidents that could point to changing attitudes. But most of the incidents have involved figures and movements with long histories of similar actions.
In April, New Zealand First MP and Resources Minister Shane Jones said, “I am never going to agree with a butter chicken tsunami coming to New Zealand,” during a discussion about the NZ-India FTA. His rhetoric was neither new nor unique. As The Spinoff outlined in 2017, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has periodically made similar comments since at least 1996.
True Patriots of New Zealand – a group linked to Destiny Church, a Christian fundamentalist group – have also disrupted multiple Sikh community events over the last year. But groups linked to Destiny Church, far from representing public opinion, have a long history of similar protests targeting a wide range of minority communites, including New Zealand’s trans community.
By Avinash Govind