New Zealand-India trade deal sparks racism backlash - Asia Specific podcast, BBC World Service

0:00 New Zealand has just signed a big free trade deal with India,

0:04 but it's caused quite a bit of a stir and even some racist language, Vandy.

0:08 That's right, Mariko.

0:08 A senior minister, has described this free trade agreement

0:12 and the increased visa access as a butter chicken tsunami.

0:17 And he has stood by his comments as a discussion about visa trade.

0:23 And I guess New Zealand future takes a rather divisive turn.

0:27 So we're asking what exactly is this free trade agreement

0:31 and what are India and New Zealand getting out of it?

0:38 As always, I'm Mariko in Singapore and this is

0:41 Asia Specific from the BBC World Service,

0:44 the podcast that unpacks Asia Pacific stories

0:46 with those who know them inside out.

0:49 And today I have BBC journalist Vandhna Bhan,

0:51 who grew up in New Zealand in the studio.

0:55 I also have Dileepa Fonseka,

0:57 a senior correspondent for BusinessDesk, joining me from Auckland.

1:02 Welcome both to Asia Specific.

1:04 Great to be on, Mariko.

1:05 Excellent.

1:05 Great to be on here too.

1:07 So, Dileepa, can you just explain to us about

1:10 this free trade agreement that New Zealand just signed with India?

1:15 Talk us through what's in it.

1:17 I think New Zealand has signed free trade agreements all around the world.

1:20 And in terms of the big countries

1:23 that we don't have bilateral free trade agreements,

1:25 you know, India is one, the United States is another.

1:28 So India was really the big one.

1:30 And that became a big push for the government when they ran for re-election.

1:35 New Zealand has tried negotiating a free trade agreement with India before.

1:39 And there are always problems because obviously

1:41 New Zealand's biggest export is dairy, milk.

1:45 And one of the most protected kind of areas

1:48 in the Indian economy is around dairy because of the small

1:52 landholdings and the need to, and the need

1:55 that the Indian people feel to protect their dairy sector.

1:58 So it was always a tough kind of negotiation.

2:01 And, you know, the New Zealand government probably got a lot out of it in terms

2:06 of a lot more than people were expecting for such a short period of time,

2:10 because they were, they had pledged to sign free

2:12 trade agreement before the end of their electoral term.

2:15 And the big things that India wanted were around people movement.

2:19 So allowing more access for Indians into New Zealand,

2:23 kind of migration settings and, you know, allowing them to to study.

2:29 And then also there's a foreign investment promotion clause,

2:34 which is also for proven to be somewhat of a contentious political issue here.

2:40 So that's investment from New Zealand going into India.

2:43 Yeah, I want to get to that controversy,

2:45 but I think I've covered my fair share of free trade agreements.

2:49 But why does immigration, what does it have anything to do with trade deal,

2:54 why is that in there?

2:56 When you think about New Zealand as an economy,

2:58 we are pretty much a low tariff economy.

3:00 We don't have many tariffs.

3:02 So it's not like a typical free trade negotiation

3:06 because when we are looking to negotiate with a country,

3:09 well, we don't have much in terms of tariffs to give up.

3:12 And we also don't have a very big market you know.

3:14 New Zealand is five million people.

3:16 So what does that offer to a country like India?

3:18 So one thing that we can offer is in terms of people movement.

3:21 And that's something that the Indians want.

3:24 They want more places for their citizens to be able to work and get educated.

3:29 And so that is one of the cards we've had.

3:32 But obviously that has proven, and it always proved even in past cases where

3:38 they tried to get a free trade trade agreement signed,

3:41 there was always a contentious point about how much people movement

3:45 do we allow in return for certain gains in other industry,

3:50 other kind of primary industries, agriculture industries, that kind of thing.

3:54 So Vandy, as Dileepa was talking about it, it's become a contentious issue.

3:58 But let's just put this in context.

4:00 The reason New Zealand is willing to accept more immigrants,

4:06 it's partly because of a, I guess, a brain drain, how quite a lot

4:10 of Kiwis themselves were actually leaving their home country.

4:13 Yeah, New Zealand isn't a really sticky situation, especially since post Covid,

4:18 where thousands of young Kiwis in particular have been leaving the country.

4:23 And look, I'm one of those young Kiwis who

4:25 left for the UK and am now in Singapore, but just in the last year,

4:29 in the last 12 months leading up to September last year,

4:32 74,000 citizens departed New Zealand.

4:36 That's a record high and that's a huge crisis for the country.

4:39 That's leaving a gaping hole in so many sectors.

4:42 Now, what is this due to?

4:44 This is due to a weak economy.

4:45 This is due to a high cost of living.

4:48 And there are better wages elsewhere, especially across the ditch in Australia.

4:52 And that's where most Kiwis are heading off

4:54 to, including actually our former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

4:58 You might have seen just in the last few weeks.

5:00 She also is migrating to Australia, Sydney,

5:03 and she put it down to better work opportunities for herself.

5:07 So really all Kiwis are thinking this.

5:10 This is at the front of mind for so many young people,

5:12 but that's leaving a massive hole in New Zealand.

5:15 It's leaving a hole in skilled trades and infrastructure,

5:18 healthcare and technology.

5:20 So of course a deal like this, where we're

5:22 getting we're able to get these skilled migrants from India,

5:26 they are able to fill that hole in New Zealand.

5:29 It's interesting, though, because there is a rhetoric from a loud minority

5:33 in New Zealand of perhaps some immigrants taking our jobs, right?

5:37 I'm sure many of us have heard that before as immigrants in these countries.

5:41 In fact, a social cohesion report just this year

5:46 said 31% agreed that immigrants are taking away the jobs.

5:50 But it's so interesting because actually those jobs are not,

5:55 they're there for Kiwis to take up.

5:56 But the Kiwis aren't there in the country to take those jobs,

5:59 and we need the immigrants to actually come in.

6:02 And that's where the skilled workforce,

6:04 this type of free trade agreement is really

6:06 going to help to get the economy moving again, to fill up the workforce.

6:11 And I guess it's not unique to New Zealand,

6:13 is it, that theory you hear it all over the world.

6:17 But this particular free trade agreement and this scheme

6:20 about more migrants from India moving to New Zealand,

6:24 it's prompted quite a vocal opposition voices.

6:28 So can you just talk us through why some people are not happy about it?

6:32 Yeah.

6:32 Look, one of the parties who's actually in government at this moment,

6:36 so we have a coalition in New Zealand made up of three parties.

6:39 And two of those parties, and it's a right wing coalition,

6:42 two of those parties, very much for this agreement.

6:45 The other one, New Zealand First, very much against it.

6:49 Now, New Zealand First has always been

6:51 quite conservative in its approach to immigration.

6:53 And they voted down on this.

6:55 They didn't agree with it and it was actually had to be the opposition party,

6:58 Labour Party to actually come in and vote yes

7:01 for this to get this free trade agreement across the line.

7:04 And that's not always what you see in government,

7:07 where, you know, opposition parties are saying yes,

7:09 whereas the party you're in coalition with is saying no to that deal.

7:13 And what's come out of it is the deputy leader of the party,

7:18 Shane Jones, came out and said this, and I want to quote him.

7:20 He said, "I don't care how much criticism we get,

7:23 I am just never going to agree with a butter chicken tsunami coming

7:28 to New Zealand." There was a lot of shock in regards to that comment.

7:32 I mean, we're still talking about those comments in New Zealand and globally.

7:36 He went on to say that this is unfettered immigration

7:40 and that it's going to clog services in New Zealand.

7:44 He says at a time we can hardly

7:47 afford to upgrade the infrastructure that New Zealand has.

7:50 Again, I think this is, a lot of people are saying that this is fear mongering,

7:54 the scare mongering towards an Indian community.

7:57 And when we're looking at the numbers, the demographic,

8:00 the Indian demographic in the country contributes so much to the community.

8:04 In fact, the New Zealand Treasury reported just

8:08 this year that immigrants pay their fair share

8:11 in taxes and more than that, for the percentage

8:14 of immigrants that are in the country, in fact.

8:17 So to say, comments like that, I think

8:19 the community has been very disappointed by it.

8:22 If we're looking at how the government's reacted to this, the Prime Minister,

8:25 Christopher Luxon, has come out and said the language is unhelpful, it's wrong.

8:30 And he said it doesn't sound right.

8:32 Now journalists pushed him.

8:34 Is this racist?

8:36 He was not able to say and go as far as to say that this is racist.

8:40 The opposition party, Chris Hipkins, Labour Party,

8:43 they have outright called this racist,

8:45 and they said that there's no room for that type

8:48 of racist commentary in any government that they lead.

8:52 And Dileepa, you're on the ground.

8:55 I've noticed that this comment has made news headlines for many days now.

9:01 What's been the reaction from the Indian community, but also has Mr.

9:07 Jones said more about this backlash,

9:10 given how much younger his comment has caused?

9:14 Well, Jones has sort of played it down as hyperbole and that he's

9:18 made an exaggerated argument in order to cut through on this, you know,

9:23 on this debate around immigration.

9:26 And but largely, he hasn't you know,

9:29 he hasn't walked, he hasn't reversed his comments.

9:32 You know, he just, to some degree, stands by them and is more taken issue

9:37 with the interpretation of them in terms of, you know,

9:41 not seeing it, people who don't see it

9:43 as the kind of hyperbole that it was intended to be.

9:46 At least that's his sort of perspective on it.

9:49 And, you know, if we think about how that's affected the Indian community,

9:54 I mean, you know, not just the Indian community, I think, you know,

9:58 there's other ethnic minority communities as well who

10:00 have been pretty shocked by it, I think,

10:03 and actually probably groups that you wouldn't

10:06 have necessarily assumed would be shocked by it.

10:10 Actually.

10:11 you know, I think it's probably fair to say that the government,

10:14 if you talk about the main party in government, the National Party,

10:17 they did enjoy a lot of support from the Indian community at the last election,

10:21 particularly because they were more conservative, business focused,

10:23 and that appealed to a lot of voters.

10:26 And also there were various issues that popped up in the previous

10:29 administration that also kind of angered the community as well.

10:33 But even people who are big stalwarts, you know,

10:36 that I've spoken to recently have had a problem with those particular comments.

10:41 But to some degree, actually, what they're often telling me is that this is

10:47 kind of tip of the iceberg in terms of things have really changed over here

10:52 in terms of the language that people are using,

10:54 the kind of incidents that people are seeing,

10:56 they haven't really seen something like

10:58 this at least directed at the Indian community before.

11:03 Yeah.

11:03 I want to get to that.

11:04 But what about the Indian government?

11:05 Because as you said, the comment is quite shocking.

11:10 Has has there been any reaction from the Indian

11:12 government which was signing that free trade agreement?

11:15 No, the Indian government hasn't said anything about it.

11:18 Not that I'm aware of anyway.

11:20 They do tend to stay silent on these kind of issues, mainly because, you know,

11:25 they don't get involved and they do enjoy

11:27 good relations with the government as a whole.

11:30 But these kind of things have proven to be a point of tension in the past.

11:34 Like there was a bit of a closed door meeting with Jaishankar,

11:38 the foreign minister of India under the previous government.

11:42 And what people told us, they said, is that he cracked a joke.

11:46 It was a joke, but it was interpreted as a bit of a slight

11:50 in New Zealand because he said something to the effect of, you know,

11:54 the New Zealand-India relationship is great.

11:56 You don't like our students, you don't really want to have our people.

12:02 And you beat us at cricket.

12:03 But other than that, everything is fine.

12:05 And it was it was made as a joke, but obviously people understood the subtext.

12:12 And Vandy, aside from this butter chicken comment,

12:15 there have been other incidents, haven't there?

12:17 Like graffiti in an area with a large Indian population.

12:22 Also, I saw some comments from Auckland's mayor which he later had to apologise.

12:25 Can you just talk us through?

12:27 Yeah.

12:27 So just like Dileepa was saying,

12:29 we're seeing a lot of these incidences pop up now.

12:31 I want to start on the mayor comments.

12:34 So Auckland's mayor, Wayne Brown, just recently, in the last few weeks,

12:38 he's been criticised for his comments towards

12:40 an Indian staffer at Radio New Zealand.

12:43 Now, what happened was he went to Radio New Zealand for an interview.

12:47 He was being escorted into the building by this Indian staffer,

12:50 and the Indian staffer said to him, you know, I'm sorry for the delay here.

12:54 Security is quite tight in the building.

12:56 Wayne Brown, the mayor, said, well,

12:58 security can't be very tight if we're being escorted by a Muslim terrorist.

13:03 A lot of shock there.

13:05 Obviously this Radio New Zealand staffer was quite distraught from it.

13:09 They talked to Radio New Zealand about it and it came out into the media.

13:13 Now the mayor has apologised, saying it was inappropriate.

13:17 But he also then went on to say it was a fumbled attempt at humour,

13:21 which I admit I got wrong.

13:23 So I think it's comments like this that are now, you know,

13:26 like David Seymour saying that it was a lame dead joke.

13:29 Wayne Brown saying it was a fumbled attempt at humour.

13:31 I mean, it's really excusing this behavior and this language.

13:36 And so this was an incident that shocked many people

13:39 a few weeks ago that outside of Papatoetoe High School,

13:42 which is in South Auckland and a large population of Indians go to this school.

13:48 They went to the school and they saw

13:50 graffitied at the front of it, kill all Indians.

13:54 So a huge shock there.

13:56 This call to violence, and I mean, it's a huge group in New Zealand.

14:00 Indians make up around 6% of the group.

14:03 They're very visible in the community right now.

14:06 Yeah, I definitely want to get to that.

14:08 Dileepa, you were earlier talking about how

14:10 things have changed, and I have to say,

14:12 the New Zealand that I remember the last time I was

14:15 there was in 2019 when Jacinda Ardern was a prime minister.

14:19 Obviously it was after a horrific terrorist attack.

14:21 But, you know, the communities were rather united.

14:25 And I'm just trying to understand what's causing

14:29 this kind of attitude or rise in incidents like this.

14:33 And we recently did an episode on Australia where after Covid,

14:37 there was a surge in immigrants coming into the country,

14:40 which may have led to the rise in anti-immigration sentiment.

14:44 I was looking at New Zealand's population, Dileepa,

14:48 and how the Indian population has more than tripled in the last 25 years or so,

14:54 and it's now surpassed Chinese New Zealanders to be

14:57 the biggest Asian ethnic group in the country.

15:00 And from my understanding, the heavily concentrated in Auckland.

15:05 Can you just put into the context of how that shift has happened,

15:09 and do you think that may have contributed to this kind of incident?

15:14 Yeah, well, I think it's important to put those numbers in context.

15:16 I think basically every Asian ethnic group has, you know,

15:19 tripled or something in those numbers over 25

15:23 years because for a long period of time,

15:25 there was no Asian immigration into New Zealand.

15:28 I think it's also important to probably note that although I

15:33 think the Indian population is perhaps larger than the Chinese population,

15:39 the difference isn't massive in terms of the differences.

15:42 So, you know, these are, you know, larger numbers than we've had previously,

15:48 but they're not necessarily overwhelming the country in terms

15:51 of looking at it on a nationwide basis of numbers.

15:55 But what has changed is, you know, inflammation landscape has changed a lot.

15:59 And also the Covid period was very disruptive

16:02 because although you look at the averages over, like a period of time, you know,

16:09 the actual annual rate doesn't look so

16:11 different in terms of migration to pre-Covid.

16:14 But the fact is, we had a point where New Zealand really shut its borders.

16:17 So there was no migration coming in at all.

16:19 And then obviously, you know, there were issues with inflation.

16:23 There were issues with supply chain shortages, shortages of workers.

16:28 Every sector was crying out for more workers.

16:31 And so when the borders really opened, then they had to well,

16:36 they felt the need to really open them and try and encourage people to come in.

16:39 And also, I think information landscape has changed dramatically.

16:45 You know, now a lot of forms of media

16:48 are present that weren't present in other ways of migration,

16:52 you know, during the 90s.

16:55 What we didn't have back then is we didn't have a lot of social media.

16:58 We didn't have a lot of unregulated media.

17:01 And a lot of the kind of conversations and things and like the rhetoric

17:07 that's coming through is happening on those channels more than in the, I guess,

17:14 kind of more regulated media.

17:16 The survey that you were citing earlier by the Helen Clark Foundation,

17:20 though, Dileepa was just talking about

17:23 British or European migrants versus Asian migrants.

17:26 But this survey from this year seems to suggest that Kiwis

17:31 were more welcoming towards British migrants

17:34 than Indian or other Asian migrants.

17:37 I mean, it's the way it is, isn't it?

17:39 Because we look different, we might sound different.

17:42 We eat different food,

17:43 we have a different language and we are quite loud and proud when it comes

17:48 to Diwali festival and we're out on the streets or it comes to, you know,

17:52 Chinese New Year and we're having Lantern Festival in the parks.

17:55 And I think touching on what Dileepa said, that, you know,

17:57 despite there being an uptick from Asia,

17:59 it's not a huge wave that we're really seeing.

18:02 It's never going to surpass the, you know, New Zealand Europeans.

18:06 But despite that, in this report, 36% say that immigration is too high.

18:13 And that's despite being a massive wave.

18:15 And I think it goes back to, again what Dileepa said, what you said,

18:19 you guys were talking about on the Australia topic is the economy.

18:23 The economy is very fragile in New Zealand.

18:25 There's a lot of economic anxiety.

18:28 And I think we see in countries in Western countries right now,

18:32 at this very moment in the UK, US, Australia and New Zealand,

18:36 that when you know your pockets are not fully full,

18:39 there's a lot of anxiety around housing,

18:41 around jobs, around all of that, that you want a scapegoat.

18:45 And Indians and ethnic people in New Zealand are currently that scapegoat.

18:50 I mean, if we're talking about the housing,

18:52 housing affordability is great right now in New Zealand,

18:54 it's actually a buyer's market.

18:56 So the government can't really,

18:57 people can't really put it on to that because the housing is looking great,

19:01 unlike what you're talking about in Australia,

19:03 but there's definitely from Covid, a huge economic fallout.

19:07 Brain drain goes into that.

19:09 And I think attitudes towards immigrants like we've seen historically change.

19:14 What about the upcoming election, not just in New Zealand, but around the world?

19:19 You hear politicians talking about populist policies ahead of elections.

19:23 Could these incidents rather vocal racist comments?

19:29 Could these comments be part of that, or is it more than that?

19:35 I think that's what people are worried about.

19:37 You know, I mean, I think the big thing for, you know,

19:41 a lot of people I think that I talk to is, you know,

19:44 just a sense of being scared or a bit of unease actually,

19:48 because you talk about some of these incidents,

19:51 like racist graffiti being painted onto a school.

19:56 These are things that, you know, people have never really seen here before.

20:00 People are just scared and they're worried that the election

20:03 campaign could mean a lot of this, you know,

20:06 and they've already had a bit of taste of it with the debate around India FTA,

20:10 because India FTA suddenly opened up this issue of migration.

20:14 I mean, the migration debate was actually bubbling away in New Zealand anyway.

20:19 But this did kind of put more

20:21 of a focus on Indian migration specifically, I think.

20:24 Honestly, I had no idea about this.

20:26 So thank you so much for telling us this story, Vandy and Dileepa.

20:31 My pleasure.

20:32 I mean, it's been all over my socials,

20:34 so I'm really glad that we're able to share

20:36 this with the rest of the population here in Asia.

20:39 Thanks very much for having me.

20:41 You've been watching Asia Specific from the BBC World Service with me,

20:45 Mariko Oi in Singapore.

20:47 If you have any questions or thoughts on what we

20:49 covered in this episode or any other stories from the region,

20:52 please leave us a comment below.

20:54 You can also get in touch with us on email asiaspecific@bbc.co.uk

21:00 and click like and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

21:03 See you next time.