Clayton Mitchell New Zealand First MP

More revelations from the Ministry of Thin Air. This must be this blue government's most valuable department, as it appears to be the first port of call for answering tricky or uncomfortable questions.

This week, again it is immigration on the agenda. Our new net immigration figure for the year is 71,300. Seriously, how is our infrastructure supposed to cope? Our schools, health system and housing? We're getting more new people every day than we've had new Police in the last eight years.

So what is our Prime Minister's response to this new increase? Why do we have no reason to be concerned about hordes of unskilled migrants arriving, looking for work? Apparently it's because Kiwis are on drugs.

When asked why New Zealanders could not fill job vacancies, the Prime Minster told the ‘New Zealand Herald' in the article titled ‘PM defends net migration levels, says foreign workers needed because Kiwis failing drug tests' that: “One of the hurdles these days is just passing a drug test”.

He then went on about our oh-so-effective health and safety laws requiring people to pass drug tests.

Fair enough, so Prime Minister can you give us the numbers of Kiwis who have failed workplace drug tests? Fortunately, the Ministry of Thin Air is there to save the day again. He said the Government did not keep records of failed or refused drug tests, but businesses raised the issue with him “two or three times a week”.

Let's help him out by assuming it's three times a week. That would be 156 cases a year, so why did we need the other 71, 144 extra people in the last year?

The simple fact is there are none so blind as those who will not see. This blue government has a vested interest in selling us to the highest foreign bidder, and they have pinned all of their much-vaunted reputation for financial management on regular short-term injections of foreign money, through open-door hyper immigration. So they will keep pulling arguments and statistics out of the Ministry of Thin Air, as long as they're in the driver's seat.

But September – and the General Election – is coming.