The New Zealand Herald released an analysis and
visualisation of immigration data from Statistics New Zealand this week.
Most of the recent debate about immigration between National
and Labour
has centred on work visas, and whether
too many migrant workers were coming into the country to take jobs away from
hard working kiwis. Contrary to the belief of many, it turned out that “Chinese
and Indian chefs” were not representative of the majority of work visas.
The article reported that “despite China and India being among the biggest
source countries for permanent residents, they are not among the top five for
direct migrant workers.” The top five ended up being the United Kingdom,
Germany, Australia, South Africa, and the United States, and so racists who
claim that Asians are coming and stealing all the jobs might be, well, wrong.
Harkanwal Singh and Lincoln Tan put a lot of work into this piece. They both clearly explained the data
in the article and presented the data through interactive visualisations to
communicate clearly with different audiences. They interviewed diversity expert
Paul Spoonley from Massey University to provide additional context to the data.
They interviewed an immigrant health worker to humanise
the data and show the tangible effects of recent policy changes. They did a
good enough job that the editor decided to make it the front page headline.
Then Winston Peters heard about it. You can imagine him making
his best impression of White Island, with hot smoke coming out his nose and
ears, furious that the media was reporting that immigrant workers might not be all Asian. Obviously, this
was unacceptable, and a press release had to be written and published! His criticism came in two parts:
“Asian immigrant reporters”
Harkanwal Singh is from India
and has been here for 9 years. He has
probably single-handedly made the largest impact on data journalism in New
Zealand, ever. He’s the data editor at
the Herald and runs the Insights
section, and supports the broader statistics and data visualisation communities. (Disclaimer: I know Harkanwal and have
done some work with him before). Lincoln Tan is from Singapore and has been here for more than 20 years. He’s been a journalist for the Herald for over 10 of those years and written hundreds of
articles, leading to a Canon Media Award in 2016 for Best General Reporting.
So sure, Winston is right in his press
release that Harkanwal and Lincoln are “Asian immigrant reporters”. Even
though he doesn’t say anything explicit
beyond this, it’s obvious that he is
attacking their credibility by implying that they have some bias or vested
interest when they report that the “top five source nations for migrant workers
[are] not Asian”. He makes it a bit clearer later in a phone call with Newshub
saying “you have two immigrants themselves as reporters for the Herald writing
what is clearly misleading information [and]
headlining it on the front page”.
What Winston is doing here is actually undermining immigrants so that they can’t discuss or argue
about the issues that affect them. He’s trying to disqualify the immigrants
from the debate, and that’s not going to be good for our democracy if smart and
well-intentioned people who try to
provide facts and analysis are marginalised
for their ethnicity or migrant status. This
is further confirmed when he says in the Newshub call “they’re like the New
Zealand Initiative, who are majorly immigrants themselves, and they are
heavy into being pro mass immigration” in
reference to their immigration report released in late January this
year.
The fact that these two particular migrant reporters have
contributed massively to New Zealand journalism doesn’t
matter to Winston. The fact that they have been in New Zealand for a long time
and are productive members of society doesn’t
matter to Winston. The fact that they are reporting on verifiable data that
come from a government agency doesn’t
matter to Winston. They’re migrants, and that’s sufficient to call the reporting
“propaganda”. That’s just lazy racism,
and we have to expect better if we want the immigration debate to go anywhere.
“Completely wrong and
based on flawed analysis”
The primary substantive complaint from Winston is that the Herald
article is based on Statistics New
Zealand data for Permanent and Long Term (PLT) arrivals and departures. It
turns out that this data is derived from
“arrival cards” at (air)ports, rather
than the actual number of visas granted. Apparently,
the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment (MBIE) has this data, so
the Herald article is therefore “rubbish”
according to Winston.
As much as it pains me
to admit, Winston does have a point here that is
tarnished by his personal attack on the journalists. The MBIE data may be a better indicator of where
migrants are coming from than the Statistics NZ data since it’s based on the actual visa numbers. To call
the Herald analysis “defective” is harsh though; the analysis is accurate and
still informative based on the official Statistics NZ data available. It’s also unfair when we consider that
politicians regularly quote the Statistics NZ data when braying on about “record
immigration”.
In fact, Winston has used the
same source
himself
for net migration statistics. He used that Statistics NZ data on the same day he criticised the
Herald for “creating confusion and spreading misinformation” for not using the
MBIE data.
Just as an aside, Winston’s arguments seem suspiciously
similar to the ones made by Michael
Reddell (published on his blog and in the NBR). In that article, Reddell
closes with a plea for MBIE to “markedly improve” access to this data, saying
that “good timely data just aren’t made
easily available”. This data is only
published once a year, while Statistics New Zealand publishes data monthly. It certainly helps explain why no one else
has been using this data.
This particular Herald article was based on PLT data, and maybe more articles can be written based
on better data. That’s not necessarily a
bad thing; the Herald article still represents an improvement in analysis and
data visualisation for the immigration debate beyond what we had before. The
immigration debate is hungry for better data beyond anecdotes, for better
analysis beyond preconceived assumptions, for better discussion beyond “record
net migration”. Politics only exists when we cannot agree on what the correct
answer is, when we are in the face of
uncertainty and imperfect information, when the decision maker has to make a judgement call.
Perhaps if we can find it, better data can be used to inform policy too.
